It's small, has glowing tubes, is packed full of features and can drive a floorstanding speaker with ease. The QUAD VA-One is a superb amplifier and it's really cute too!

This is no gimmicky amplifier, but a fully specced great sounding little amplifier from QUAD Electroacoustics.

It has one line input, 3 digital inputs (coax, optical and USB) and on-board aptX Bluetooth. The build quality is superb with good speaker binding posts and a very nice sounding headphone amplifier as well.

The valve complement is 4 x EL34, 2 x ECC82, and 1 X ECC83 delivering 15W into 6 ohms, or 12W into 8 ohms.

It has a beautiful liquid open sound which we found especially good with female vocals. The old HiFi favourite Sarah McLachlan filling the room effortlessly, but it can rock too. We gave it a try with the other latest QUAD creation: the Z3 speaker and it was a revelation. With only 15W it won't go to "party" levels but what it does deliver is expansive and open, giving a real insight into the music. The QUAD VA-ONE is even small enough to be used as part of a desktop audio system, for which the USB input is an added bonus.