These days, more and more of us are using a smartphone as our main source of music on the go, so ensuring it sounds good should be high on your list of considerations.
LG went above and beyond any other smartphone manufacturer this year in this department, by offering a modular design for its LG G5.
It means the flagship device can mould itself to the phone you want it to be, switching out its bottom section so that various other elements can be added.
The most important one for us of course, is the Hi-Fi Plus DAC. Tuned by B&O Play, it offers support for hi-res playback up to 32-bit/384KHz, boosted from the 24-bit/192kHz available natively.
It delivers the space, subtlety and dynamic handling that its native sound can’t muster, and neither can its competition. It transforms the G5’s music performance and taking the phone as close to a standalone high-res player as we’ve ever heard.
It’s not just the sound that wowed us though – the innovative G5 also offers a sharp QHD screen, with a natural colour palette and stacks of detail, a superb camera with enough manual controls to keep wannabe photographers happy, and a snappy performance that’ll never keep you waiting.
The LG G5 with Hi-Fi Plus by B&O Play may be a mouthful, but it is the complete package, and that’s why it's our smartphone of the year.
MORE: Awards 2016: Best smartphones
As for tablets, it’s round two for the Apple iPad Air 2, which picks up our tablet of the year for the second year in a row.
Despite some stellar competition, not least from Apple’s own stable with the iPad Pro 9.7in, the Air 2 still balances price and performance the most convincingly – particularly thanks to a recent price drop and storage boost making it better value than ever.
MORE: Awards 2016: Best tablets
See all our What Hi-Fi? Awards 2016 winners
