If you follow us on social media - most particularly Facebook or Twitter - you'll know we've spent the past 12 days revisiting 2017's most popular reviews on a month-by-month basis. Here, by way of a palate-cleanser before the new hi-fi and home entertainment year gets into full swing, we're having a slightly broader look at what floated your boat at whathifi.com during the last 12 months.
Reviews
The Top 10 most-read reviews of 2017 included a good spread of product types - everything from OLED TVs to noise-cancelling headphones feature, and there is a year-old multichannel amp and a 4K Blu-ray player in the mix too. Four of the ten are Sony products... but the review that generated more interest than any other was Onkyo's great-value A-9010 stereo amp.
MORE: How we test
News
Of the news stories that generated most interest last year, some were entirely predictable (CES 2017 highlights, Bowers & Wilkins' new 700 series of speakers), some were less so (the audio performance emphasis of Oppo's UDP 205 Blu-ray player, JBL launching its largest wireless speaker). Some concerned products that were barely products at all, and some turned out to be just wishful thinking.
But we're pleased (and, admittedly, slightly relieved) to confirm last year's most-read news piece related to our revealing all of 2017's What Hi-Fi? Award-winners.
MORE: A look back at the first What Hi-Fi? Awards, 1983
Advice
Or, as it might as easily be called, Everything You Need To Know. Half of the advice pieces that form 2017's Top 10 were so subtitled, and whether it was product-specific or concerned a more general area of hi-fi knowledge, you've enjoyed learning Everything just as much as we've enjoyed informing you.
Elsewhere in the Top 10, the cutting edge of technology (be it strictly audio or home cinema-centric) needed a through explaining - it always has, it always will and we'll always be here to help you out. But the year's most popular advice page outlines everything you need to know about Sonos - because strong brand recognition is as important in the world of consumer electronics as it is anywhere else.
MORE: High resolution audio - everything you need to know
Features
We kind-of knew it anyway, but the Top 10 of 2017's features proves once again that everyone loves a list. From the world's most expensive speakers (or most expensive headphones) through great music to test your speakers to great film scenes to test your surround-sound set-up, a list is a conversation-starter and no mistake.
There is space in the Top 10 for system-builders too, but the most popular feature of the year was, inevitably, a list. And, in this instance, it's a regularly updated list of upcoming 4K Blu-ray releases - so you can plan your purchases well in advance.
MORE: Follow the What Hi-Fi? playlist on Twitter
Best buys
This is what we're here for, of course. Fundamentally, whathifi.com exists to help you get absolutely the biggest bang possible for your home entertainment buck - which is why our regularly updated Best Buys pages are so relentlessly popular.
Some of the most-read pages are about reasonably broad areas, some are much more specific - and the year's most popular is one of the latter. It seems you just can't enough of researching the best in-ear headphones around.
