We didn't expect a new entrant, let alone a brand new winner in the CD players category at this year's What Hi-Fi? Awards. It's been a fairly stagnant product category in recent years, that hasn't seen the same kind of trendy love given to turntables (a once nearly-extinct category as CD's star rose in the '90s) and further fallen out of favour in the last decade thanks to the rise of streaming.
But Arcam, just like it did in the stereo amplifiers category, has crashed the two-horse race between Marantz and Cyrus that's been the norm since the 2016 Awards. What's more, all three 2023 winners deliver a clear-cut step up in performance as you go up the price range.
