Take a look-y at the kooky Kanto UKI: Kanto's new small speaker brings distinctive looks to your desktop or bookshelf

Kanto Audio UKI prototype speaker in sage green

(Image credit: Kanto Audio)

Kanto sound for a fraction of the price
Launching in the second half of 2025
$199 / £199 (which is around AU$320)

Kanto makes the superb Ren powered speakers, which we absolutely loved – but at $599 / £599 / €719 (around AU$1,199) they're a fairly big ask for budget-conscious buyers, and the same firm's Ora 4 speakers currently retail for up to $349 / £399. So it's good to see a much more affordable pair that once again matches interesting design with Kanto's audio expertise.

The new Kanto UKI bookshelf speakers are unusual-looking compact bookshelf speakers – to my eyes they look like something you'd expect to see from aspirational brand Vivid Audio (seen more recently at High End Munich, if you skip to point 3) or in Demi Moore's apartment in The Substance – and they're much more affordable than anything you'd expect to see in those worlds. If they sound as good as their bigger and more expensive siblings, they could be sensational.

Demi Moore looks into the mirror with tears staining her cheeks — Kanto only gave us one product image so here's the incredible Demi Moore in *The Substance.* Perhaps she's considering some new speakers? (Image credit: Mubi)

Kanto UKI speakers: key features, pricing and availability

The distinctive clamshell design of the UKI speakers is available in four colors: black, white, cobalt and sage.

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Each speaker has a 3-inch concave cone driver for the mids and lows, a 3/4-inch silk dome for the highs and a subwoofer output if you want to beef up the bass. There's USB-C, RCA and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity for computers, turntables and wireless streaming respectively, plus a headphone jack on the front of one speaker.

You can't buy the UKI just yet – the version being shown off at CES is an early prototype – but it'll launch in the second half of 2025 with a recommended retail price of $199 in the US and £199 in the UK. That's roughly AU$319.99.

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.