T3 Awards 2020: Kanto TUK of North America is a gen-u-wine Bluetooth speaker for the discerning

T3 Awards 2020: Kanto TUK is our #1 Bluetooth speaker, Sonos Move is Highly Commended

(Image credit: Kanto)

published 10 June 2020

For the T3 Awards 2020 we still have a best Bluetooth speaker category – not to be confused with the one for multi-room speakers. However what we're generally talking about is wireless speakers. At this point, no really high quality Bluetooth speaker exists that isn't either small and portable or a speaker that uses both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

That's certainly the case for the Sonos Move, which is Highly Commended in this category. However our winner is a bona fide Bluetooth speaker – there's no other wireless connectivity – that thinks it's a complete hi-fi system. This is the Kanto TUK, and it's from Canada, like Leonard Cohen, and moose.

Supporting Bluetooth 4.2 – SBC, AAC and AptX – this is a stylish stereo pair of speakers – one houses a gamut of Class D amplifiers, while the other is its passive slave. Sexy.

As well as Bluetooth there's a pre-amped input for your record player turntable, plus your standard line level input, an optical digital one, and USB for connecting your laptop. It's a complete hi-fi system housed in a pair of speakers, in other words. If you want more bass – though we wouldn't say it lacks it – there's even a subwoofer output, too.

The fact it's proper stereo means it sounds better than just about any other Bluetooth-only speaker, and performance is consistently good across all the physical inputs as well.

Your colour choices: white, as seen above, or black, as not seen above. For those who want the ultimate convenience of Bluetooth music, with a whole load of additional connectivity options for the rest of your audio arsenal, Kanto TUK is a must. It's the best musical thing from Canada since Neil Young or Skinny Puppy.

Highly Commended: Sonos Move

Have you ever wanted a Sonos One that could run on battery, be chucked on your patio without fear of its destruction, and be connected to with Bluetooth as well as the usual Wi-Fi/Sonos app methodology? Well… now you can.

• Read our full Sonos Move review

Sonos One packs Alexa and Assistant, it sounds pretty much exactly like a Sonos One and it also functions very well as a Bluetooth speaker.

• All the winners so far in the T3 Awards 2020

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."