eero Pro 7 - Next Generation Wi-Fi In Minutes

Although it's tempting to resist it, technology is always changing, constantly evolving.

A cynical consumer might suspect built-in or planned obsolescence - manufacturers deliberately designing their devices to work worse and worse over time to create demand for a new, updated version of the same product.

The truth is, as human beings, we're never satisfied.

We got the internet. But we wanted it to be wireless.

We got Wi-Fi. But we wanted it to be powerful enough to stream music and movies.

We got high-speed fibre connectivity. But then everyone in the house was using multiple devices to do all sorts of things all at once.

Gaming. Streaming. Working. Chatting. Browsing. Running all manner of IoT devices.

More. More. MORE.

So in 2025, it's entirely possible your existing router just isn't cutting it.

The eero Pro 7 tri-band mesh Wi-Fi system should sort it all out for you - and as home networks go, it's one of the easiest to set up I've ever trialled.

Simply use your Amazon login details to sign into the eero app and you'll literally be up and running in under five minutes. Unlike so many other routers I've set up in the past, the eero Pro 7 devices take very little time to boot up and they appear on the app straight away.

Assigning an SSID (Network Name) and a name for each router couldn't be easier. There's even an option during setup to simply replace an existing, older eero unit.

Adding a second and third device to create your mesh network is just as straight-forward; turn it on, add it with the app, all done.

And yes, each compact and subtle eero Pro 7 device has my favourite feature; the ability to deactivate its status LED once it's all up and running. Have I mentioned how much I hate silly lights? Only about a million times? Okay then, moving on...

eero Wi-Fi products come under Amazon's gargantuan umbrella and that means some serious compatibility advantages. Not only are these latest mesh routers backwards compatible with earlier generations of eero products, Amazon has even started building Wi-Fi extending abilities into its latest Echo smart speakers.

So even if the whopping 560 square-metres of coverage from the 3-pack of eero Pro 7s I'm reviewing here isn't quite enough for you, just placing an Echo Pop in a dark spot can extend your coverage even further.

I was keen to try this out and although I do own a few compatible Echo speakers, because the coverage from this three unit system is so comprehensive, although the app recognised these units under the list of connected devices, it deemed most of them unnecessary to use as extenders because they wouldn't add any useful extra capacity. Smart.

As you'll see from my testing in the video below, the available download speeds are impressive, everywhere around my house. Of course, to make full use of these speeds, it helps to have a Wi-Fi 7 capable device, like my trusty Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Although that phone is now 18-months old, its Wi-Fi 7 chops have future-proofed it and made it more useful than many other Wi-Fi products still being released today.

But it's not just faster speed on offer here, sheer capacity is perhaps an even more important factor. Because these are tri-band routers, transmitting and receiving on the 2.4, 5 and 6GHz bands, there's plenty of room for everyone - up to 600 devices in fact.

eero uses something Amazon calls TrueMesh to route data through the fastest path available, while something else known as TrueChannel eliminates congestion, interference and dropouts.

On top of all that, each eero Pro 7 unit (like most things Amazon makes) is also its own smart-home hub, supporting all Matter, Thread and Zigbee devices.

Try as I might, I've struggled to find anything that under-performs with the eero Pro 7 system, which makes me wonder why you'd need to extend your budget up to the current top-of-the-line, eero Max 7 router, which purports to be even faster and more powerful.

One reason might be the number of built-in LAN ports. While each eero Pro 7 router has two 5 GbE ports, on the primary router, one of those will be taken up by the very nice, braided ethernet cable (supplied in the box) running from your modem. That leaves you with just a single LAN line at your fastest access point.

I've found running an external switch from this connection works perfectly well but it'd still be nice to have another couple of ports to connect to directly - which is exactly what you get on the bigger eero Max 7.

My only other grizzle is nothing to do with the eero Pro 7 specifically; it's the same issue I had years ago when upgrading from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6... Not all of your existing devices will work with the new Wi-Fi 7 network just because you give it the same name and password - be warned. The tablet I run my Plex server on proved particularly touchy, connecting then disconnecting randomly - not really what you want when you're trying to stream Gladiator II. Luckily, this was easily fixed with a network reset on the tablet (essentially wiping its Wi-Fi memory and starting again).

Weirdly, only a few of the roughly 90 different devices that connect to my home network have acted up this way - most figured things out without a hitch. Conversely, when I went from Wi-Fi 5 to 6 I had to reset pretty much every single device. I never want to go through that again.

That's probably the real beauty of this eero Pro 7 system - not just how fast and powerful it is, or how easy it is to set up - but its glorious backwards compatibility. After all, not all technology is suddenly useless just because it came out last year.

    

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the eero Pro 7 3-pack.

WiZ HDMI Sync Box with TV Backlight, Gradient Light Bars and Gradient Floor Light - At Last There's a Cheaper Way

TV backlighting is perhaps one of the more unnecessary bits of tech you can invest in.

As much as I personally love it, it's certainly not something you need, especially given how much it can cost to set up.

Philips Hue has led the way in this department and I recently reviewed its updated 8K Sync Box - a crucial bit of kit you need before you can even start adding actual lights to your system.

Oh... and if you go with Philips Hue, you'll also need something called a Hue Bridge - this is essentially the wireless hub any Philips Hue lights connect through instead of pairing directly with your Wi-Fi router.

But why am I talking about Philips Hue when this review is about three different WiZ products?

I wouldn't usually focus on competitor products in a review but in this case I'm making an exception because both Philips Hue and WiZ are owned by the same company; Signify.

This is a phenomenon that pops up in the tech industry from time to time - two established brands competing with each other even though somewhere along the way they were brought (or bought) under the same umbrella.

On the surface, one would assume the master plan is to appeal to different slices of the market - Philips Hue using its heritage heft to corner the more premium end of things while WiZ keeps it a bit more cheap and cheerful.

What I've learned while reviewing the HDMI Sync Box with TV Backlight, Gradient Light Bars and Gradient Floor Light - all from WiZ - is the Venn diagram displaying every product from WiZ and Philips Hue shows quite a bit of crossover.

It's easy to be confused by this so if you'd like to add some synced backlighting to your home theatre experience, I'll do my best to help.

The first big difference between Hue and WiZ is you don't need the extra Bridge to connect and control your WiZ devices - just fire them up, open the WiZ app on your phone and they'll appear pretty much automatically.

Using the app, you can create a whole WiZ home, naming the rooms and devices as you wish. That part's easy.

However, it took me a while to find the section of the app that lets you configure your lights to sync with the picture on your TV. My impression is the WiZ app was designed to control all kinds of smart lighting and the TV sync box didn't turn up until fairly recently, so was just added to the app as a bit of an afterthought.

That's not to say it doesn't work once you DO find out where the settings are - look it up under the "Library" tab, if you're wondering. There, at the top of the options, you can choose to sync your lights with video or with music.

Music uses your phone's microphone to listen for the beat, tone and changes in volume to create a wireless light show to match.

Meanwhile, once you choose the video option, you can then customise the sync mode - Cinematic, Vibrant, Relaxation or Rhythmic - and alter the brightness, saturation and intensity. You can set the lights to come on automatically when the HDMI Sync Box starts receiving a signal and you can even balance the brightness of whatever WiZ lights you've paired up.

For example, in the video below I've plugged a Chromecast with Google TV into the WiZ HDMI Sync Box but the two Gradient Light Bars at the bottom of the screen seem to be a bit brighter than the TV Backlight strip running around the top and the sides - this can be equalised using the app.

You'll also need to indicate exactly where you've placed the lights in the room - this part looks pretty much exactly like the same experience in the Philips Hue app. You simply slide each light around the room with your finger, adjusting the height and position so it can mimic the action on screen exactly.

I like the way the WiZ HDMI Sync Box comes packaged with the TV Backlight strip, complete with its own sticky backing or the option of some little sticky clips to hook the Backlight up with. Unfortunately, the TV I was sticking it to had a textured surface that the little hook things refused to stick to, so I had to go with the more permanent sticky backing on the light strip itself.

While I chose to use the WiZ Gradient Light Bars to fill out the effect along the bottom of my TV, if the base of your telly is obscured by a giant soundbar or something similar, you may feel you only need the effect of the Backlight strip on its own.

The Gradient Light Bars also come with two kinds of mounting stands. You can set them up horizontally, as I have in the video, or you you might want to stand them up vertically and move them further out to extend the backlighting effect on either side of your screen.

A pair of WiZ Gradient Floor lights can take this either further to each side or, as I have in my case, you can use one or two to project synced lighting effects on the wall behind you - working in much the same way as surround-sound speakers do.

As you'll see in my video, this works brilliantly and the immersive way the rear-projected effect brings you into any scene with fire or explosions is particularly convincing.

Another reason I've made the comparison to the Philips Hue range is you can't argue with the value for money. Right now, to buy the WiZ HDMI Sync Box with TV Backlight, the Gradient Light Bars and Gradient Floor Light altogether costs more than TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS LESS than the Philips Hue Play HDMI 8K Sync Box on its own.

From what I can tell, there's not a huge difference between the WiZ Gradient Light Bars, the WiZ Gradient Floor Light and their Philips Hue Play counterparts. Build quality seems great, with nice brightness and colour, although I will say the base of the Floor Light is fairly narrow and it's not super stable on uneven surfaces like thick carpet and plush rugs.

And when it comes to the WiZ TV Backlight, my impression is it's just not as bright as the Philips Hue version - although not everybody has the privilege of testing them together like I do and you might not notice in isolation. I certainly appreciate how much thinner, lighter and more flexible the WiZ strip is - it makes installation a breeze.

But... to keep it real, there is a certain amount of "You get what you pay for" going on here. The first major consideration is how many video sources you have plugged into your TV. If it's just one Sky TV box, or perhaps an Apple TV or the like, that's fine. However, because the WiZ HDMI Sync Box only has one input, if you want fancy lighting effects for your gaming console or any other devices as well, that's going to be tricky.

I assume you could (in theory) run everything through a 3rd-party HDMI switcher of some kind, and then plug THAT into the WiZ box but in my experience, picture and sound quality start to degrade pretty quickly the more devices that get in the way.

Meanwhile, the Philips Hue Play 8K Sync Box has four inputs and yes, as you will have spotted, it's also capable of 8K transmission, when using the right source device and cables.

Back on the WiZ box, the single input is only HDMI 2.0, not 2.1 - so 4K at 60Hz is the absolute best quality picture you can expect.

Which for most people is plenty - so for most people, the WiZ option is definitely worth checking out.

Click here for more information on the WiZ HDMI Sync Box with TV Backlight, Gradient Light Bars and Gradient Floor Light.

Satechi FindAll Collection - Keep Track While You Travel

Anyone who knows me, or has read these reviews, or watched my videos, knows I love great design.

For me, great design is a good idea, executed well. It doesn't have to be a complicated idea - if you've got a good idea and you do it well, I'll probably love it.

Which is why I love the new FindAll Collection of travel accessories from Satechi.

To be frank, I don't know if I've come across a Satechi accessory that hasn't impressed me; the manufacturing standard and high quality materials have rarely let me down, if ever.

So I was excited to hear Satechi had entered the bluetooth tracker market in such a clever, streamlined, integrated way.

While Apple didn't necessarily create the tracker market from scratch, over the years it's done a fair job of dominating it and most of us are familiar with Apple AirTags, even if we don't own them ourselves.

Any iPhone user knows about the FindMy app which lists all the Apple devices you own and allows you to track their location. With the introduction of AirTags - small, innocuous discs with even smaller batteries inside - Apple enabled you to bring that FindMy capability to virtually anything you own, from your car keys to your luggage, your work security card to your pet.

While it's been easy enough to drop an AirTag into your bag or perhaps your instrument case, Apple (and other third-parties) have been only too happy to provide you with just the right accessory to help you attach an AirTag to your door key... or your cat.

With this new range of FindAll travel accessories, Satechi has gone one step better by "removing the middleman."

Why attach a tracker to your glasses case when the case can also BE the tracker?

Why slip a tracker into your passport cover when the passport cover can itself be tracked?

Get the idea?

In fact, Satechi has kicked things off with five ingenious FindAll products; Passport Cover, Glasses Case, Luggage Tag, Keychain and a Card. Yup, just a plain old card, the size and shape of a credit card, which will slip much more comfortably into a wallet or purse than a disc will.

The real magic behind each of these accessories is the built-in rechargeable battery, compatible with any Qi, Qi2 or MagSafe wireless charger. I've been using other trackers for quite some time - especially on the two things I always need to know exactly where they are; my keys and the access card for the building I work in. The discs attached to these items work well but I've been surprised how often I have to change the batteries. These are those flat, button batteries and usually they're exactly the wrong kind - when I go to replace them I invariably have every other model of battery in the garage drawer except the one I need.

With the Satechi FindAll Collection, that's just not an issue. Pop any of them on any wireless charger and not only will they juice up surprisingly quickly, the charge lasts an amazingly long time - up to 5 months for the Passport Cover right up to 18 months for the FindAll Card. Simple, right?

And pairing each device with your Apple account is also a piece of cake; you just push the pairing button on the FindAll device and add it using the FindMy app on your iPhone or iPad.

Unfortunately - and this is actually quite a bummer - at this stage Satechi's FindAll gadgets are only compatible with Apple devices, so if you're an Android user you're going to be left looking on in envy.

One other little niggle; the FindAll Card isn't quite the same size as a normal credit card. It's thin - but not quite that thin. This means while I was able to easily slot it into my billfold-style wallet, when I tried to slide it into my slimmer card-keeper, the slots weren't deep enough. Ironically, that card wallet was also made by Satechi.

But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Not only are each of these accessories available in Black, Sand or Desert Rose, they're made from a water resistant vegan leather that not only feels great to touch but is supposed to wear well against the knocks and humidity changes regular travellers know only too well.

And besides showing up in the FindMy app on your iPhone, you can then get directions to their location, share that location with a friend and once you get there, you can play a ring tone from any of these devices remotely, so you can find exactly where it is - even if its been dropped down a seat cushion or stashed in a drawer or cupboard.

Each item would be a quality product, even without the location features. The Luggage Tag has a convenient magnetic privacy cover, so you're not flashing your address and phone number to the whole airport. 

The Passport Cover has several slots for other cards and room to slide your boarding pass in too. 

The Glasses Case folds down completely flat when not in use. Pretty clever.

And the keychain is just cool (well, my one is because it's all black, including the keyring itself).

All in all I was surprised how much these five simple objects appealed to my geeky brain. Not only easy to pair but quick and easy to charge up too. These are definitely the sort of "Why didn't I think of it?" devices that immediately become essential tools. If you're planning on travelling soon, they're certainly an elegant and stylish way to keep track of your stuff.

     

Click here for more information on the Satechi FindAll Collection of travel accessories.

Avast Scam Guardian - Effective AI That's Free to Try

It's a sad fact of modern life; if you haven't been scammed already, you've definitely come close.

Nothing makes you feel more gullible than catching yourself with your finger poised to click that link to pay your "outstanding road toll." Or thinking, "As a matter of fact, I AM expecting a package." Then wondering why you'd have to pay to receive it. And who wouldn't want to earn up to $457 an hour working from home?

Although, taken out of context, these sorts of scams all seem pretty obvious, I know from experience if you happen to receive the wrong email, message or text at just the right time, anyone can be susceptible to the latest con.

So what you need is some kind of online chaperone. Someone who's seen it all before, looking over your shoulder, calling out anything suspicious and encouraging you to think before you click.

Avast has come up with new feature that does pretty much exactly that. It's been included in Avast Free Antivirus at no extra cost and if you subscribe to Avast Premium Security, you'll get an even more advanced version, called Scam Guardian Pro.

Early last year I reviewed a similar product from Avast's sister company called Norton Genie. Back then, this was an online tool you could copy and paste suspicious text and web links into to check if they were the real deal. This year Norton incorporated the feature into its paid cybersecurity suites so it's probably no surprise to see Avast matching the offering.

What IS surprising is to see much of Scam Guardian's functionality added to Avast Free Antivirus. 

I've dabbled with several free cyber-security apps over the years and I'd have to say, I keep coming back to Avast as one of the best free offerings out there - by adding scam protection, obviously it only gets better.

But in order to test the full power of what Avast has come up with to keep scammers at bay, I've been supplied with a subscription to Avast Security Premium. The subscription version has quite a few extra goodies bundled into it; you can protect multiple devices, set up your own firewall and even keep all your apps up to date automatically.

Weirdly, when I logged into Avast on my Android phone, I received a further upgrade to Avast Ultimate - more features still, including a VPN and a junk file cleanup tool.

Turns out, there's also a bit of a difference with how Scam Guardian works on my Mac compared to my phone.

The desktop version displays a Scam Guardian tab on the home dashboard. Once you click this you're presented with an AI prompt window to paste your questionable text or link into. The Scam Guardian will attempt to do its thing and if it can't initially find any details connected with the info you've inputted, you can then ask it to do a deeper search. Scam Guardian will let you know which sites are safe, which aren't and perhaps most importantly, it'll admit if it's not sure and will encourage you to proceed with the proper precautions.

In fact, you can ask it anything about cyber security and safe online practices, making it one of the more useful forms of AI I've interacted with.

You can also grant Scam Guardian permission to monitor your web-browser to ensure you don't venture anywhere too risky online. And if you give Scam Guardian access to your email accounts, it will scan all messages as they come in for questionable content. This must be some kind of beta feature though, because while I could easily add my personal Gmail accounts for Scam Guardian's perusal, it told me it wasn't able to add my work address. Actually, that's probably just work IT being a little heavy-handed with its own high levels of cyber security.

The mobile app on my Android phone seemed a little more streamlined. You grant Scam Guardian the required access to your email and messages as part of setting up the Avast app when you first sign in. If you want websites monitored, you then designate Avast Safe Browser as your default - although oddly, this doesn't mean you end up using that browser. Instead, you nominate your preferred browser in the Avast app (mine is Arc for example) and then, what seems to happen, is when you click a link, Avast Safe Browser checks it first and if it's legit, hands it over to your usual browser and you take it from there.

So the scam monitoring is more behind-the-scenes on the phone version of the app - no AI box to paste text or links into.

Both versions seem to do an excellent job and you can check the automatically generated log to make sure all links have been scanned appropriately.

Look, I know you probably think only idiots get scammed and you'd have to be thick not to spot one but what if?... And if you can make use of Avast Scam Guardian for free, why wouldn't you?

    

    

Click here for more information and pricing on Avast Premium Security.

JBL Tour One M3 Smart Tx - The Moment Business Travellers Have Been Waiting For

Right, here's the scenario; You're on yet another plane for yet another business trip. But you're an experienced traveller. You knew not to eat too much in the lounge because they'd be serving a meal half-an-hour after take-off. You've calculated the exact amount of alcohol required to help you get to sleep without making you feel yuck. And you have your fancy pair of noise-cancelling headphones so you can genuinely enjoy the in-flight entertainment and even more importantly, tune out the plane noise, the screaming babies and... well... everything else.

One problem. Now you need to go to the loo. Which means taking your fancy headphones off again, getting all tangled up with the cable and the tray-table and the person sitting next you and it's all a bit of a disaster really.

Help, JBL! Help!

On the face of it, the JBL Tour One M3 Smart Tx wireless, over-ear, noise-cancelling headphones are just the kind of cans that hypothetical business traveller might have chosen.

They're very light, extremely compact and they fold up even smaller to fit in an extremely well-designed case I'll get into in detail shortly. 

The Tour One M3 headset is comfy - really comfy - not just because it's so light but also because the ear cushions and the padding on the headband are extra squidgy. (NB: squidgy is a technical term only fine headphone connoisseurs like me know how to use properly)

That means you'll have no problem wearing them for extended periods - like on long-haul flights, for example. You'll also need outstanding battery life for those marathon listening sessions and you'll be hard-pressed to outlast the Tour One M3. 

JBL claims about 40 hours playback on a full charge - and that's with Active Noise Cancelling on. Flick it off and you can listen for up to 70 hours. Which seems unbelievable. And yet, here I am still listening after only one charge when I first took them out of the box.

In terms of sound performance, I've been more and more impressed by JBL's headphones over the last few years. I used to think of them as being sort of a big-bass-boom one-trick-pony - and make no mistake, the Tour One M3 is certainly capable of respectable bass punch - but these latest 40mm mica dome drivers offer so much more, right across the frequency spectrum.

This means a conventional dance track like Dua Lipa's "Hallucinate" keeps pumping along nicely - every bass drop expected yet still impressive. Meanwhile, Lorde and her production team are up to all kinds of sonic trickery on "Shapeshifter," a song that just keeps growing and growing, adding more and more layers and you hear each one throughout.

Of course, there's a lot of other technical wizardry going here - from the built-in Digital-to-Analogue Converter that combines with the LDAC wireless codec so you can enjoy "lossless" high-res recordings the way they were intended - to adaptive noise cancelling, using a grand total of 8 microphones to block out virtually everything except the thing you really want to hear.

As with other recent JBL headphones and earbuds, you can now use the JBL Headphones app to take the Personi-Fi 3.0 hearing test. You can then apply the results of this test to create your own personalised EQ - boosting the frequencies you struggle to hear.

But none of this is as groundbreaking as JBL's latest and greatest gadget; the Smart Tx audio transmitter itself.

Any avid JBL earbuds fan can tell you about the smart charging cases JBL has brought to the market, complete with their own touch screens so you can adjust settings or just check your battery life without having to open an app.

JBL went a step further with this year's Tour Pro 3 earbuds, turning that smart charging case into a wireless transmitter, which meant you could now use your True Wireless earbuds to listen to analogue sources like desktop PCs and yes, aeroplane entertainment systems.

Now, in a further stroke of genius, JBL has imbued the Smart Tx audio transmitter with all the abilities of those smart cases and more... and included it with the Tour One M3 headset.

You could already use the Tour One M3 as a wired device, either via the USB-C to USB-C or Mini-Jack to USB cables included in the box. The difference is - and this is the breakthrough - you can now plug those cables into the Smart Tx transmitter instead and continue to use the headset wirelessly.

This instantly solves that tray-table-tangle I described earlier - you'll be amazed at how freeing, how much less claustrophobic it is using your wireless headphones to watch your movie on a plane. Or rather, movies plural - the little Smart Tx box has a battery life of about 18 hours, which would be a very long-haul flight indeed. Not that it matters much; the transmitter has two USB-C ports so you can charge it while you use it anyway.

JBL has even thoughtfully thrown in a USB-A to USB-C adapter, so you should be sorted for any connection option, wherever you are.

All these bits and pieces nestle snugly into the the Tour One M3 hard-shell case. It's a high-end case, by the way - even the zip is protected by a rubber sleeve which looks like it'd keep any dust, debris and possibly liquids away from your new favourite headphones. Even the case has its own little piece of JBL genius - a hybrid carry strap and carabiner, allowing you to attach it to any strap, loop or tether.

This is yet another example of the cunning way JBL applies advances made in one product line to another - we've seen loop/carabiner options on JBL's 2025 portable speakers so why wouldn't they pop up here as well?

And the same philosophy applies to Auracast - the wireless connectivity option that lets you create a multi-speaker sound system at the push of a button. The Smart Tx box can work as both Auracast transmitter and receiver - so you can share what you're listening to with anyone else with an Auracast device - just as they can with you.

All a bit overwhelming, isn't it?

I'm trying to think of a feature the JBL Tour One M3 Smart Tx DOESN'T have... and I simply can't. Best of all, it's not just a clever box of tricks - it sounds fantastic, has phenomenal battery life and is light enough and "squidgy" enough to get you through the longest of flights - or bus or train ride.

AND it comes in Mocha. What more could you ask for?

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the JBL Tour One M3.

LG G5 - The Ongoing Evolution of OLED

If, like me, you spend far too much time trying to figure out which TV panel technology is currently "the best" you'll know it's a bit like asking, "How long is a piece of string?"

Not so long ago OLED was widely regarded as best kind of TV panel money could buy... assuming you were watching it in a dark room. For the uninitiated (and to be honest, I don't know how initiated any of us are) the primary difference between OLED and conventional LED screens is LED panels are backlit, while each individual OLED pixel turns itself on or off completely. This is a difference LG has been dining out on for years, the implication being nothing shows true black like an OLED TV.

This was technically true, as you can't achieve maximum contrast or total darkness if the whole screen has a backlight on behind it all the time.

However, the more you power up that backlight, the brighter the screen gets and until fairly recently, if you were doing most of your TV viewing during the day, in a room with windows, OLED screens simply couldn't compete with the power of natural light.

Well that's all changed. And LG is a big part of that change.

Whatever I'm about to tell you about the 2025 evo AI G5, rest assured LG's top-of-the-line 4K OLED TV looks incredible, day or night, dark or light.

LG calls this technology Brightness Booster Ultimate and it combines a totally redesigned panel with the power of the latest processor to make the G5 LG's brightest television yet.

And what I love about that is it meant I hardly had to tweak it at all; it looked fabulous pretty much straight out of the box. Obviously, LG claims this is due to AI... because isn't everything these days? The cool thing about the AI built into webOS (the LG user interface) is it makes customising both picture and sound to your preferences so easy. Just run the AI Picture Wizard and you'll be presented with a series of images from which you choose the one or two you like best. The wizard then applies these preferences to your content and personally, I literally set it then forgot it.

From that point on, everything I watched, from any source or streaming service, looked wonderful. Intense colours, without being over-the-top. Precise contrast with no shadows or other weird artefacts. And above all else, bright. So bright. All day. All night.

Sound-wise, I'm going to be completely honest here; You don't want to buy this TV unless you already have a decent soundbar or some other kind of home-theatre system. LG promises a an AI-guided sound preference setup here too but heard through the G5's built-in speakers everything seemed tinny and artificial (intelligent or otherwise) and certainly any significant bass response was conspicuous by its absence.

Thankfully, LG supplied me with the S95TR 9.1.5 home cinema soundbar; 810W of glorious 3D Dolby Atmos power, spread across the soundbar, 10kg subwoofer and two rear speakers. 

This surround sound system is almost as smart as the TV itself, using AI to scan your room, identifying exactly where your speakers are and allowing for any volume differences and delays. It's belly-rumblingly good listening, the upward firing speakers often blasting out sound effects so convincing they have my dog looking around the room to see where they're coming from.

Thanks to LG's WOWCAST protocols, the sub and surround speakers connect wirelessly and both G5 TV and S95TR sound system are WOW Orchestra enabled, so you can combine the G5's built-in speakers into the system for an even more convincing, three-dimensional soundscape.

Back to webOS for a minute... I have mixed feelings about this operating system. Like many others, webOS has fallen into the modern trap of trying to provide too many features I'm pretty sure nobody asked for.

There's a customisable row of installed apps in the middle of the home screen. That's fine. But why do I need the row of PC-like category folders above it? After a couple of weeks I still don't really understand what they're for, even after clicking on them. Likewise, the endless scroll of viewing recommendations below the row of apps aren't very helpful when many of them link to services I don't currently subscribe to. That smells like advertising to me - and I think we're all agreed we don't want advertising on our $8,000+ TVs thanks.

In saying all that, the UI is easy enough to navigate and the settings menu is only a shortcut button away.

Which brings me, lastly and leastly, to the remote. Which I hate. I'm sorry, but there's no other way to say it. And I'm not the only one. Google "Hate LG TV remote" and you'll soon find out why. For some ungodly reason - again, I can't believe anyone could have actually asked for this - LG has given its remotes the power of a laser pointer, almost as if it expects its TVs to be used solely for PowerPoint presentations in corporate boardrooms.

What am I talking about?

Every time you turn the G5 on, or return to the home screen, or bump the mouse-like jog wheel in the middle of the direction pad, a "magic" pointer cursor appears on screen you can control by waving the remote in the direction you want. Except, it's far too frustrating to get it to go where it needs to be and virtually impossible to both steer AND press, which is what you need to do to make a selection.

Hey LG, there's a reason why other manufacturers haven't decided to copy this floating cursor party trick; it sucks. At least give us the option to disable it permanently. Sadly, no. This unwelcome "floater" disappears once you start using the direction buttons but then reappears once you're back on the home screen.

Look, I don't want my whinge session about the remote to put you off this otherwise stellar piece of TV tech. Take its gaming abilities for example... The G5 has a stunning 165Hz refresh rate and with a pixel response time of 0.1ms there's effectively no lag whatsoever. While playing, a push of the settings shortcut button brings up a gaming toolbar that allows you to make specific tweaks to give you whatever edge you're looking for.

Better still, LG now offers the Xbox cloud gaming app, which allows anyone with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription and a bluetooth controller to stream hundreds of A-rated titles without any kind of console at all.

This is undoubtedly one of the finest TV panels I've ever seen. The burgeoning powers of AI have been utilised superbly when it comes to customising the perfect picture settings just for you. Unfortunately, the overall experience of using the G5 is marred by an unnecessarily overcrowded operating system and the worst remote control I've ever encountered. Great telly though.

    

Click here for more information on the LG G5.

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