That you could do a lot worse than the Chord Electronics Huei almost goes without saying. In some systems, of course, it represents overkill - had I an even more expensive/capable turntable available when testing was happening then I’m sure the Huei would have even more to give. But even when dealing with the output signal of a record player costing less than double its price, the Huei is a balanced, eloquent listen. Those who crave excitement may find it a little less dynamic than is ideal, but for the rest of us it’s just a question of committing those control colours to memory before sitting back to enjoy.

The Huei’s appeal extends all the way from its rock-solid build and playfully colourful, sphere-based control and communication system to its impressive knack of extracting the best from a turntable/cartridge combo without being too painfully honest about the ropier aspects of a less-than-pristine recording.

There’s clearly the start of a trend here. The Qutest and Huei look to be the start of a range of very small, but immensely strong, components from Chord Electronics. It’s also not hard to see that this emerging collection of attainably priced, high-performance audio products coming to dominate that part of the audio world through the early years of the 2020s. If the Huei is anything to go by; the future’s polychromatic!

The Chord Huei is a capable performer, but it’s not as exciting a listen as we’d want at this level

I wasn’t impressed with the Huei’s interface because a phono amplifier needs an immediate and precise set up. The current system is too wishy washy and I docked the Huei a Rating point because of it. That said, set up will, more than likely, be a one-off experience. A rare event. That is, most users will input the settings and quite possible never touch them ever again so I didn’t want to be too hard on the unit.

If that is what you’re looking for in vinyl playback, the Chord Huei is a good place to start. And, I think, a good place to stop. This just might be the last phono stage you’ll ever need or want.

Chord Electronics' Huei is a great new phono stage that's likely to cause as much discomfort to its price rivals as the company's iconic and affordable DACs have done over the past couple of years. On every metric I can think of, it seems too good for the money – it is built superbly, has a versatile feature set, a sophisticated and distinctive user interface and also sounds a blast. The only caveat is that it's not in the business of flattering poor recordings, pressings or systems – you'll have to look elsewhere for that. But if you like hearing your LP records as nature intended, then right now Bartlett's new baby is the best you can do on a reasonable budget.