Sony is an important presence across all areas of the AV and hi-fi worlds, from TVs and headphones to portable music players, and even content. So of course, as we kick off the new year it’s one of the brands we are watching carefully for what’s to come next.

We have CES 2024 just around the corner, but Sony has a tendency to launch products throughout the year at some of its own events too. So what’s likely to appear? Here are a few educated guesses, and a couple from our wishlist too…

A growing focus on Mini LED

Sony has produced some of the best TVs you can buy for a few years running now – 2023’s flagship OLED, the A95L, received the full five stars from us a few months ago, while the excellent mid-range A80L OLED won our coveted Product of the Year Award for the whole TV category in 2023.

Despite its OLEDs so often stealing the limelight, Mini LED technology has been a growing focus for Sony too. In fact, the Mini LED X95L model was considered to be a joint flagship set alongside the A95L – and crucially came with a much more affordable price tag.

However, it’s the brightness capabilities of Mini LED TVs that could well be drawing Sony closer to the technology. During a visit to the company’s Yokohama offices, we clapped eyes on its BVM-HX3110 grading monitor, which offers a peak brightness of an incredible 4000 nits (in a 10 per cent window).

As one of the industry’s leading grading monitors, this capability opens up the option for content creators to master their content to the monitor’s full potential – and that means brighter content. As this happens, you’ll need a TV with similar capabilities to see the director’s true intention, and Mini LED offers that flexibility where OLED does not.

Whether that means we’ll see more than one Mini LED TV in the 2024 lineup remains to be seen – but perhaps a “mid-range” Mini LED model as well as a flagship one? Only time will tell…

Sony’s best noise-cancelling headphones yet?

It’s been two years since the release of the WH-1000XM5 over-ear headphones, and if previous form is anything to go by, that would suggest that we are due to see the latest flagship headphones in the company’s ever-popular noise-cancelling range.

Sony has done better than Sonos in keeping any details for the new headphones under wraps so we can only speculate as to what might be in store. However, the WH-1000XM5 set a high standard for noise-cancelling performance and audio quality, so we have high hopes for the next iteration.