Sony has a reputation for turning out attractive kit, but the company has excelled with the DAV-SR4W. This is an elegant yet imposing system, able to blend into its surroundings at the same time as it catches the eye. If it performs half as well as it looks, we're in for a treat...

The floorstanding satellite speakers are the main attraction. Although they only house a 70mm woofer and 25mm tweeter, they are more substantial than most floorstanding sats we've seen. Far from being a mere cosmetic attribute, this sort of robustness should assist in limiting cabinet vibrations, helping to produce a clearer sound.

The centre speaker, carrying exactly the same drivers, sits horizontally and looks good either under or over a TV. Meanwhile, the meaty subwoofer is industrial in its design and promises to deliver a substantial wallop from its 160mm driver. However, Sony remains coy about specifications for these speakers. No frequency response or power handling figures are quoted.

The S-Master digital amplifier built into the main unit delivers 114W to each of the five satellite speakers, with 115W going to the subwoofer. The main unit remains svelte and streamlined, despite housing all the amplification, thanks to its digital nature.

Connectivity at the back is fairly poor. There is a Scart socket, which can output RGB signals, so most people will be content, but there is no component output. This is a blow for those with suitably equipped monitors - the absence of progressive scan images will effectively rule this system out for them. It's a strange omission considering the overall quality of this system.

Audio inputs for hooking up external equipment come in digital optical and stereo analogue forms, and there are colour-coded speaker terminals for connecting the loudspeakers. There is also a pre-out for connecting a surround back channel. This is a bit of a tease from Sony. The DAV-SR4W provides the decoding for 6.1-channel sound (Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES) but you have to add extra amplification and the actual surround back speaker yourself.