MLC Best of Awards 2022 – Winners Announced

The Sonos Move…well, it moved us. Not only it is portable and powerful, it’s also pretty good looking and sound fantastic.

It’s packed with WiFi, Bluetooth and even does a great job of adding a smart assistant in to the mix (Google or Alexa).

Unlike it’s smaller brother the Sonos One, this is Bluetooth ready and a tad larger.

Portability is great and the molded handle makes it easy to lift and carry anywhere, even the beach or pool. Not waterproof but can take some splashes.

It’s not cheap, but that’s OK.

It wins our 2022 Best Premium Portable Bluetooth Speaker award.

I really liked the Donner Dobuds One. A great sounding TWS budget earbud that comes pre-tuned with some deep and rich bass.

The companion app which you can download will allow to alter the EQ and adjust the ANC settings.

The case is nice shape and fits in the pocket pretty easy.

The hybrid drivers in this (Balanced Armature + Dynamic) make for an awesome combo.

The KZ PR1 are a planar driver in-ear monitor from KZ. It seems they have been polarizing for some but I love these and they take out the best budget IEM for 2022 without doubt.

While the Zes and Zax also impressed me the PR1 take out the award for such a wonderful sound stage and deep bottom end.

Nothing fancy about the OFC silver plated cable or accessories but the ‘gold’ is in the IEMs themselves.

Expect to see more planar drivers emerging in 2023 I expect.

It’s impossible not to be impressed with the DM30.

LED lights, accompanying software so you can control lights, gain, volume and some filters like High Pass is all crammed in to a budget microphone.

Great budget microphone for gaming, conference calls, podcasting and more.

The build quality is first class and the weight of the base/stand was a real surprise for a microphone at this price.

It’s still a permanent fixture on my desk although the PD400x might replace it in the future.

If there was ever a company to challenge Wacom this year, Xencelabs is it.

The retail boxing and attention to detail in the product is really impressive. The build quality is super and the wireless or wired options + the travel cases make it incredible value for money.

The Xencelabs pen tablet comes in different sizes and they also have the quick keys which is a cool addition to your creative tools collection.

The surface feel in addition to the software makes for a pleasant experience.

The real bonus is you get a pen case with 2 pens and multiple tips.

Graphic artists or digital moguls will delight in the Xencelabs products.

I described the tourbox as the Fidget Cube for creators. One of the coolest things I’ve ever added to my creative workflow.

You can program this thing to do most anything in your Adobe, Davinci, Apple creative suites. And after those you can program it to do anything you need with your computer.

As a saver of time, hand strain and mouse clicks, this thing is brilliant.

The TourBox Elite has the added benefit of being BlueTooth which is one of the reasons it won this award.

A wireless workspace is a good workspace.

If you’re a photographer, videographer or designer – the TourBox Elite is something to add to your kit.

These are an updated A10 for 2022. The original OneOdio A10 budget active noise-canceling headphones lacked some pizzaz but the update A10 has some decent improvements to them.

The features, sound and ANC features win it the best budget ANC headphones this year.

While there is still room for improvement on these they fill out all the things you need for travel, noisy offices or commuting.

The included hardcase, cables and comfort top off a great little set of wireless ANC cans.

On the SwitchBot amazon page they market this as a baby cam but it’s way cooler than that. Check out the link to their website for the promo video which really stretches it’s capabilities across your whole home.

I have this connected in to the SwitchBot Hub to give even more control.

It’s a 2K camera with full Pan and Tilt controls from within the SwitchBot app.

It can auto follow you around with it’s visual tracking and is super quiet when it does so. Impressive.

It’s a good looking unit and only needs a USB connection to run.

You can connect it in to your wider smart home via Alaex, Google and much more.

Great value, good quality and a great company. I’ve had their products for years and they’re still powering on.

It was quite a surprise to get the OneOdio and realise that they were 250 ohms. That means if you want the best out of these you’re going to have to power them correctly.

A studio rack will do the trick.

The sound of these is neutral enough, the comfort factor high and the build quality decent for the price.

If you’re after budget studio headphones then these are my pick for 2022.

I’ve used these for mixing video tracks and always happy with the results.

The FiFine H6 Gaming Headset has one really outstanding quality which is the microphone. This USB headset has very cool looking LED lights and a decent inline controls unit which also helps you mute and switch modes.

It’s comfortable and sounds good. For the price, it’s a great unit.

I’ve had this in my car for around a year now and it’ll be there for a while yet.

Everytime I start my car it just connects which has always been half the battle for me. The screen is really quite big so you need to consider where you are going to mount it but I love the size of the screen, the ease of connection at start up.

If you’re looking for a non-destructive way to get Carplay in your car, if it doesn’t have it, then this is a great choice.

I described this as a firecracker. It’s small and sleek but powerful and punches hard.

As an addition to my DT 1990-Pro studio headphones, it’s perfect. It brings them to life and have done with all the headphones I’ve used with them.

If you’re listening experience is lack lustre, then this tiny little unit, which is capable of DSD 256 tracks and MQA processing, is a cracker.

Best portable DAC Amp for 2022 winner.

While the iPad Pro 11″ M2 was announced in 2022, the 2021 11″ M1 model still gets the award.

Yes, the M2 is a faster iPad with a better processor and screen enhancements, not to mention the Pen Hover functionality but the M1 is still an award winner if you can still get a deal on it.

A great piece of hardware that will be hard to improve on in 2023.

I thought these were going to be a joke…but they were anything but. I had the whole office agape at their ability to translate the languages we threw at them.

The M3 are not ‘real time’ translation earbuds so don’t expect to have a fluid conversation with out any pauses. But, they are very fast at translating phrases and will allow you to travel to places you might have otherwise thought too hard to navigate.

China, Japan, India, Spain – these things take it all in their stride..along with the other 40 languages and 93 accents.