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I don’t want to be mean—but your streams are too compressed, your pixel count is too low, and your surround sound is not surrounding. It’s cool, though, because you can upgrade your outdated TV with a new one, feel actual bass with a new stereo, and otherwise entertain yourself with all manner of home entertainment appliances. The gear listed below is the best of 2026 in different categories.
The best overall home entertainment product of 2026: Samsung S95H OLED TV
Samsung’s flagship TV is about as good as it’s possible for a TV to be. It uses “quantum dot enhanced” OLED technology to deliver the brightest 4K picture of any TV on the market. The colors are HDR10+ certified. The blacks are as black as my soul. The 165Hz refresh rate destroys lag. The S95H offers built-in spatial audio, with room-filling, directional sound, and the design is as excellent as the specs: The screen is matte, and the frame is metallic silver, so it looks like a piece of art, and it’s thin enough that you can hang it on the wall like one. It’s not cheap, but it’s the kind of television that will impress your neighbors.
Best projector of 2026: Anker Nebula Cosmos 4K SE
There are projectors out there with brighter pictures and more features, but the Anker Nebula Cosmos 4K is my pick for best of the year for its balance of quality, portability, and price. A projector like the Epson Pro Cinema LS12000 is nice, but it costs nearly $6,000, and it mounts to the ceiling so you can’t use it to show a movie in the backyard or bring it over to your friend Gary’s house. The Cosmos is designed for versatility. It automatically focuses and scales its crisp, bright 4K picture on any flat wall in seconds, and it costs less than a grand. It even has a handle for easy carrying.
Best soundbar of 2026: Sonos Arc Ultra
Soundbars have come a long way in the last decade or so. The best of them, like Sonos’ Arc Ultra, dish out sound that rivals multi-speaker set-ups. The Arc Ultra uses “sound motion technology” (that’s what they call it, anyway) to push deep bass and clean mids and highs into your eardrums. It can even deliver Dolby Atmos spatial audio, despite being a single speaker.
Best wireless surround sound system: Sony Bravia Theater Quad
If you want better sonic separation than you can get with a soundbar, but you don’t want to run speaker wire everywhere or deal with a clunky, old-school receiver, the Sony Bravia Theater Quad is the solution. It’s four flat, wireless speakers you place around the room or mount to the walls, and a receiver that’s about the size of a paperback. Despite their small size, the speakers’ front-firing and up-firing drivers bounce sound off the walls and ceilings to create an immersive soundscapes for movies and music.
Best streaming player: Google TV Streamer
It seems like every TV, physical media player, and toaster has some kind of smart streaming feature built in, but they are almost always laggy and badly designed. Say “nah” to that noise with Google TV Streamer. The pebble-like set-top streaming box costs less than $200, has a processor that is 22% faster than its predecessor, double the RAM, and an Ethernet port for a solid wired connection. As a bonus, Google TV also acts as a Matter hub to control your smart home. I’m not crazy about the ads and lack of Wi-Fi 6, but until there’s a new Apple TV, this is the best streamer on the market.
Best physical media player: Magnetar UDP800 MKII
The Magnetar UDP800 isn’t for casual media consumers, but if you’re the type who demands picture and sound at the highest possible quality, you’ll want to slip your discs into this player from Magnetar: It’s a monster. It laughs at the compression of Netflix by reading 4K video at bitrates up to 100 Mbp. It humiliates Spotify with lossless audio in formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. It is also a true universal player: it plays everything from 4K UHD Blu-rays and standard DVDs to Kodak Picture CDs. Like most niche gear, it’s expensive, but being a purist is worth it.
Best video game console of 2026: ROG Xbox Ally X20
The distinctions between PC, portable, and consoles gaming are blurry these days , so I don’t know if the ROG Xbox Ally X20 technically “counts” as a console—but it definitely counts as an awesome piece of home entertainment tech. It’s a full-blown Windows 11 PC disguised as a portable gaming system that can hook up to your TV for full console gaming too. The ROG Ally X20 lets you play Xbox Game Pass games and Steam games right out of the box on a portable system, so it’s all things to all people.
