5 of the best pieces of portable home entertainment tech to know about right now

No matter how great your home entertainment setup, lugging a 75-inch TV with you whenever you’re on the road just isn’t practical. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to make too many compromises. Portable entertainment has come on enormously in the last decade, and some of the latest innovations mean that you can get a good approximation of the entertainment options you value no matter where you are in the world.

Here are five of the best examples of portable entertainment technology from the best TV brands, and more, you should know about right now.

1. Sony HT-AX7 portable surround sound 

While the convenience of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney Plus mean you can watch brilliant shows on anything with a screen and internet connection, watching in a hotel room on a laptop or phone just isn’t the same as doing so at home. And a lot of that is down to the sound.

Sony’s HT-AX7 tackles that problem head on. It’s an ingenious Bluetooth speaker that’s designed to bring surround sound system to you wherever you go. It does that via a base unit that resembles a compact sound bar, and two satellite speakers that can be positioned around the user to create a spatial audio experience. When not in use, the satellite speakers clip onto the base station magnetically for charging.

2. LG StanByMe Go

The LG StanByMe Go is something that will either leave you scratching your head, or muttering that it’s genius and hitting the pre-order button. It’s essentially a 27-inch 1080p screen that lives inside a protective suitcase shell for easy transportation and impromptu presentations, streaming and games (in both landscape and portrait modes).

Is it a tablet or a TV? Kind of both. It has a touchscreen, which makes it sound like an overgrown tablet, but it runs LG’s webOS TV operating system and has an HDMI port, so it certainly sounds a lot like a TV. Either way, you can get three hours of use from the built-in battery, meaning that you could use it to watch a full feature-length movie while camping, if you wanted.

3. Sonos Move 2

There’s no shortage of portable Bluetooth speakers on the market, both budget and high-end. But if you’re in the Sonos ecosystem, then the Move 2 is well worth paying extra for.

Not only do you get the high-quality sound you’ve come to expect from Sonos products, but it can become part of your home audio setup when not in use and docked. So yes, it offers all-day battery life, IP56 protection against water/dust, and big enough sound to fill even larger outdoor spaces, but it can also be part of your whole-home sound system when paired with other Sonos speakers over WiFi.

4. Valve Steam Deck

If you’re a gamer, you could awkwardly try and play PC games on your laptop in a hotel room, or cramped into an airplane seat. But why when Valve’s Steam Deck offers a powerful, handheld gaming PC with built in gamepad controls?

It’s serious hardware, which makes the Nintendo Switch look like a toy. And while not every PC game is compatible with it, SteamDB lists nearly 12,000 games marked as either Verified or Playable, meaning you’ll never be short of something to play on the go.

If you need even more compatibility, the $700 ASUS ROG Ally runs Windows 11, but it loses some of the pick-up-and-play user friendliness as a result.

5. XGIMI HALO+

Don’t want to take your chances with whatever TV your hotel or AirBnb provides? You’ll be wanting one of the best projectors, letting you cast a big screen television onto a blank wall of your choice.

In the interests of portability, our pick is the XGIMI Halo+, which is lightweight and small enough to pack into a suitcase or backpack without hogging all the space, and comes with a built-in battery for two and a half hours of running time. It also offers up to 900 ANSI lumens and high contrast for a virtual screen size of up to 200 inches, with Harmon Kardon speakers built in.