System selector!

Given three similar budgets, Mark Craven, Steve May and John Archer assemble three different AV setups focused on movies, streaming and gaming

£3,000 Atmos movie maestro - built by Mark Craven

YOU CAN, THANKS to the proliferation of Dolby Atmos soundbars and TVs with built-in systems, assemble an Atmos audio AV rig for far less than £3,000. But if you want to go down the traditional separates-based route, this sort of price tag seems like a good place to start. And the nature of such a system means it has future upgrade and expansion potential. Swapping one component doesn't mean changing everything else.

It's still a fairly tight budget, however, and with the desire here for fully discrete Atmos audio the TV choice is an area where I've looked to skimp. Not for me a new, 2023-era flagship OLED, as a set like Samsung's QE65S95C (p42) would blow my budget. Instead, I've scaled the size down to 55in and hunted for earlier-generation bargains that are still available, with a pencilled in price tag of around £1,000.

Where to look? Well, there are OLED screen options at this price, some 42in or 48in, which feels like a compromise too far. Interestingly, however, there are OLED TVs that debuted in 2021 still doing the rounds, at prices greatly reduced at launch - both LG's 550LEDC1 and Sony's XR55A80J were selling, at the time of writing, for £899 and £998 respectively, as stock is cleared. However, I haven't looked that far back, instead opting for LG's OLED C2 model, at 55in, for a bargain ticket of £1,099. This generation not only upgrades the panel (to Evo) and processor, but features an entirely more stylish central stand.

Up and at 'em!