If I had an unlimited tech budget for expensive gadgets, a rib-shaking home theatre system would be near the top of my list. A screen big enough to get lost in a film, a sound system to match, and a very comfortable chair would be a good start, too.
There’s much more to explore beyond the living room, though. You can buy a bath that makes its own ice, relax beneath a heated sauna dome, or even order a single-seat electric aircraft. This wish list not-so-so incidentally covers eight such extravagances, with a few that would take considerably more nerve than settling down for a film. On that note: action!
A cinema-sized TV
Samsung’s Micro RGB MR95F measures 115in across the diagonal. It’s an enormous TV, and I’d want to rewatch Dune Part Two on it before doing much else. An anti-reflection coating helps keep glare from spoiling the picture in a bright room.
The interesting bit, though, is the backlight. It uses tiny red, green, and blue LEDs that can be controlled individually, allowing finer control over colour. Samsung claims full coverage of the BT.2020 colour gamut – a broader range of colours than most TVs can display. That doesn’t make every film more colourful automatically, but suitable content can take advantage of the extra range.
This is Micro RGB, rather than MicroLED, so the picture still relies on a backlight. It supports 4K gaming at up to 144Hz, too.
Speakers that are a work of art
A pair of Bang & Olufsen Beolab 90 speakers costs £143,600, which is difficult to get your head around even by the standards of high-end hi-fi.
Each speaker packs in 18 drivers facing different directions. Together, they let you adjust where the sound goes and how widely it spreads. You can focus it on your favourite chair when you’re listening alone, then widen it when other people are in the room.
They also measure the room’s acoustics and adjust their output to account for the effects of placement and furniture. They don’t have look the part either, which is the bare minimum you’d expect, for this price.
A chair that moves you
DavidHugh’s Aiora promises the sensation of floating while you recline, all, seemingly, without the aid of any psychedelic aids. Its mechanism keeps you balanced as you move, so you can settle at different angles without reaching for a lever to lock the chair in place.
There are no motors or springs, and nothing to plug in. Your own movement controls it – with no electrical components to charge, swap, or maintain. How refreshing.
Designed and made in Cambridge, the chair is available in several finishes, with the leather Signature priced at £9950, plus delivery. DavidHugh offers demonstrations – useful when the whole appeal is a sensation that’s hard to describe.
An ice bath without the ice runs
If you enjoy cold plunges (all the more power to you), the appeal of Brass Monkey’s Ice Bath is fairly straightforward. You can schedule the temperature through an app and have it ready for you, without buying bags of ice every time.
In fact, it makes its own. Below two degrees, thin sheets of ice form and break away into the water. The cooling system can take the bath down to zero degrees, while a filter and UV treatment help keep the water clean. You’ll still need to maintain it of course, but it still takes most of the faff out of a regular dip.
The British-built bath starts at £12495 before delivery. Cold immersion puts extra strain on the heart, and anyone with a heart condition (or tight budget) should get medical advice before taking the plunge.
A sauna without a spare room
A warm lie-down sounds rather more inviting. Bon Charge’s £1995 Sauna Dome lets you do that at home, with your body on a mat beneath a heated dome and your head left outside.
It combines infrared heat with red and near-infrared light, plus pulsed electromagnetic field technology, or PEMF. These functions can be used separately. The company also promotes sleep and recovery benefits, although evidence for other red-light treatments doesn’t establish what this particular device can do.
The two dome sections fit inside each other for storage, so it doesn’t need to occupy a room permanently. At 33kg and 180cm long when set up, though, it’s still a sizeable piece of kit to find a home for.
A racing simulator you can feel
Vesaro’s I Stage 5 adds physical movement to the familiar wheel-and-pedals setup. Four powered D-BOX supports lift and tilt the cockpit, while vibrations let you feel inevitable details like running over a kerb. It won’t recreate the sustained forces of driving a real car, but the action still extends well beyond the screen.
Three curved 32in monitors fill the view ahead, and a direct-drive steering wheel provides resistance and feedback through your hands. The PC, pedals, and sound system are included in the £52591 listed price. Vesaro assembles and calibrates it before delivery, too.
An electric Porsche
Porsche quotes 0–62mph in 2.2 seconds for the Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach package, with up to 1034PS briefly available through Launch Control. For a first go on a circuit, I’d want someone who knew what they were doing in the driver’s seat.
The Weissach package removes the rear seats to cut weight and adds a fixed carbon rear wing. It’s still a four-door car, just a rather less useful one for taking the family out. UK prices start at £189,000.
A flying machine
The Jetson One is a single-seat electric aircraft with eight motors and propellers surrounding an open cockpit. You take off vertically and steer with a joystick, while a computer handles stabilisation.
Jetson quotes around 20 minutes of flight time and a software-limited top speed of 63mph. There’s hands-free hovering and radar-assisted landing, and the company has reported its first Italian customer delivery.
You can order one, but new orders are for 2028. British buyers would also need to establish what permissions they’d require to fly it here – the licence exemption advertised by Jetson applies to the US.
Training and somewhere suitable to fly would have to come first. But the prospect of taking off in one of these is enough to put the home cinema on hold.
