The New Rega Brio

Rega is best known as a manufacturer of turntables; this is, after all, what it started out producing and continues to enjoy a formidable run of form with. Since it began however, Rega’s range has expanded to the point whereby it can sell you a complete system, from the tip of a stylus to the driver of a loudspeaker. The Brio is one of the most important steps on the path between Rega being a turntable manufacturer and a highly regarded electronics company. For years it was the most affordable amp in the range (the Io now fills this role), and it cemented a formidable reputation for combining a phono stage that would do justice to any roughly equivalent Rega turntable with an amplifier that had enough power and musicality to make any sensibly priced pair of speakers sing. It wasn’t a complicated recipe, but it was an appealing one – and the Brio has been a strong seller ever since.

The Brio mk7 looks like more of the same – but all is not what it appears. Rega hasn’t done anything crazy with the basics, but this Brio does more and does so with some extra flourishes over Brios of old. At its core is a class AB amplifier that provides 50 watts into 8 ohms and 72 ohms into 6 (Rega doesn’t quote a 4 ohm figure, but my review sample hasn’t melted on contact with a 4 ohm load). These aren’t the sort of figures you can weld with, but they should be entirely sufficient for most domestic needs.

This power is made available to a moving magnet phono stage and three line inputs on RCA connections. In 2025, this is actually more analogue line inputs than some considerably more costly integrated amps offer and reflects that Rega still feels these connections matter. What you don’t get is any form of preout or subwoofer out connection, which might make connecting up a 2.1 system tricky. There is a headphone output on the front panel though, which works via 3.5mm connection.

The big news for this Brio is that the analogue connections are, for the first time on a half-width Rega amplifier, joined by digital inputs. These comprise a single optical and coaxial connection and both of them support PCM to 24/192kHz (or ‘to the point where on-demand streaming services stop working’ if the business of sample rates has no particular point of reference to you). There are rivals at this sort of price that can do more than the Rega can but, this is a very flexible selection of inputs.

Internally, Rega has used all the experience garnered from upgrading other members of the amplifier range to squeeze more performance from the basic platform. Revisions to how the board is laid out, to the power supply, and better components in the signal path are all there to make this a Brio… but a Brio that sounds better than any Brio before it.

Some of you might have read the hardware bit of this review, thought of a selection of alternative products and gone ‘well that has feature X or connection Y’ and wondered why you might plump for the Brio instead. The simple answer is that it sounds absolutely sensational.

What the Rega does with an assurance that devices that cost many times more can struggle to match is deliver the emotional content of the music you are listening to in a way that means you ignore any technical limitations because the result is so compelling. Indie foursome putting it all on the record? Not a problem. Classical instrumentalist channelling decades of practice to deliver the performance of a lifetime? Sit down and enjoy. There is a fundamental rightness to what the Rega does that will have you questioning whether you really need to spend any more money.

What’s also worth noting is that its technical limitations are hardly onerous either. The Rega doesn’t have as much low extension as some larger and more potent amplifiers, but the bass it generates is fast, tuneful and beautifully integrated to the rest of the frequency response. There are other amplifiers that can prise a little more space and three-dimensionality from a recording – but listen to the Rega via a remotely capable pair of speakers (I use the Q Acoustics 5020 and Neat’s utterly spellbinding Petite Classic) and the performance will feel compellingly real.

And those digital inputs? The really clever bit about how Rega has built the Brio is that they are largely the same as the analogue connections – they go long on capturing the emotional content of what you are listening to. When you feed the Brio some really beautifully mastered hi-res, you can argue that there isn’t the jump in quality that some relatively affordable digital solutions can offer – but this as much a reflection of the Rega’s ability with bog-standard files. There isn’t an especially dramatic jump to be experienced.

It’s the phono stage that remains the star of the show, though. My Planar 3 RS sample has returned to base by the time the Brio arrives so I wind up using a turntable, arm and cartridge combination that was getting on ten times the price of the Brio – and the Rega was able to reflect the qualities of this hefty front edge. With all the basics covered, no unwanted noise and plenty of gain, there is the same effortless ability to engage and delight the listener.