Rega Brio Mk7

Introduction

If you say the word ‘Rega’ to people with a passing knowledge of the hi-fi category, there is a good chance they will mention turntables.

This is perfectly logical; it’s what the company started out producing and an area where they are still hugely influential. You only need to look at the Planar 3 RS to see they are still incredibly good at it.

This does undersell quite how adept Rega is at other components though. They are in fact capable of building an audio system in house that goes from the tip of the stylius on a turntable to the cone of a speaker, inclusive of cabling and they can do this at a few different price points.

To do this, the company has been making amplifiers for many years and the latest arrival from the company is the Brio Mk7 which sits above the entry level and beneath the full width designs.

As the ‘Mk7’ bit suggests, the Brio has been around for long time. It is one of the devices that really helped Rega move from great turntable manufacturer to great electronics manufacturer.

It has actually been out of the range for a little while as the older model ceased production before the new one became available but we knew it was coming and now it’s here for your consideration. It arrives in a category that is newly revitalised and full of some very fine amplifiers indeed. How does it stack up?

Price

The Rega Brio Mk7 is available in the UK for £799 through a nationwide chain of Rega dealers and it is at a price point where Rega allows it to be shipped online as well.

There is… some volatility… in the pricing of items being imported into the United States but it is current listed for $1,095. In Australia, it is on pre order for $1,699 AUD.

One interesting extra that this price covers is that the Brio MK7 is covered by a lifetime warranty. Naturally, this comes with terms and conditions; if you decide to pour a can of diet coke over it, Rega isn’t going to mend it for free but, if they decide that the product has gone wrong in a way that it shouldn’t have done, regardless of how old it is, Rega will fix it – pretty neat eh?

Design

• All metal, half width chassis
• Full remote control… with standby no less
• Timeless and elegant design

The Rega is a half width design, which has been a feature of many versions of the Brio over the years.

This means takes up a commendably small amount of space and, if you have something like a Planar 3 RS turntable with its external power supply, or a streamer like a Bluesound Node Nano, that could sit alongside the Brio on a normal width shelf, taking up less room than an Audiolab 6000A MkII does on its own. If you find yourself in a place where space is at a premium, this is potentially rather handy.

Don’t go thinking that the Brio is a featherweight either. It’s made of metal and feels extremely solid. Even judged at the asking price. This is a different sort of solid to the Audiolab 6000A MkII or the Fell Amp. The Rega is not as interested in the detailing or finish; it has rather fewer design flourishes than either.

Where it hits back is that it feels solid and confidence inspiring in a way that actually feels rather more high end than pretty much anything else I can recall testing at the price.

The Brio Mk7 comes with a remote control that allows for you adjust the volume and select the input. This is on a cycle process rather than a direct access system but this is keeping with most other amplifiers at the price.

Something you get, for the first time ever on a Rega product is a remote standby. This might not sound like a big deal but it’s not something I necessarily expected to see on a Rega amp so it’s rather nice to have.

Something that the Brio Mk7 does very well is look timeless and grown up. It might be small but it looks like a piece of Hi-Fi equipment. No aspect of the styling is ultra-modern or even especially daring; this is an amp that could have come out a decade ago but there are good reasons for that.

It might not look entirely of the minute but it’ll still look handsome and well thought out in a subtle and unobtrusive way in a decade’s time. It will be interesting to see how well the competition does at the same thing.

Specification

• 50 watts of Class AB power
• Analogue inputs and phono stage
• Digital inputs for the first time…
• … but some rivals can do more.

At a core level, it’s very much business as usual in terms of what the Brio is and does. Rega hasn’t deviated from what they have been doing with their amps for thirty years but this Brio does more and does so with some extra facilities.

The Rega remains a Class AB amplifier that provides 50 watts into 8 ohms and 72 watts into 6. No figure is quoted into 4 ohms but all of the test speakers used have presented a four ohm load for at least some of the time they have been running and nothing untoward has happened.

50 watts isn’t a vast figure but it is sufficient to drive most equivalently priced speakers. Revisions to how the board is laid out, the power supply and better components in the signal path have all been performed to squeeze more performance out of the amp itself.

Analogue connectivity is the same as it was for the previous Brio, You get a moving magnet phono stage and three line inputs on RCA connections. This should be enough for most systems and keeps the Brio Mk7 competitive with key rivals. 

That phono stage is more than a box ticking convenience feature too. Rega has been evolving the basic circuit for some years now and, given how seriously they take their record players, you can work on the principle that it’s a pretty serious but of kit.

The big news for this Brio is that the analogue connections are joined by digital inputs. This is the first time it has been done on a half width Rega amp but they have been present on the larger Elex and Elicit models for some time now. These comprise a single optical and coaxial connection and both of them support PCM to 24-bit/192kHz.

Like the other Rega amps that have had these inputs added, the decoding hardware is built around a Wolfson WM8742 DAC, which is quite an unusual choice in 2025. It’s probably not what you’d classify as state of the art but it’s a device that Rega has been using very successfully for years and that more than meets the requirements of the two digital inputs in use here. 

Adding these inputs creates a catch though and it might be a deal breaker if you intend to use a 2.1 sub/sat system. Because the digital inputs have been added, what you don’t get on the rear panel is any form of pre-out or subwoofer out connection which might make connecting up a 2.1 system tricky and would mean using a subwoofer with a high level input.

This is part of a list of features that the Rega foregoes compared to some amps around this price point. In no particular order, there is no Bluetooth, no HDMI eARC and no USB input, all of which feature on various models in competition with the Rega at this sort of price point.

How much this matters to you will come down in part to what other equipment you have and what you need the Rega to do but there is no escaping that some rivals do more than the Brio Mk7 does.

Performance

• Exceptionally satisfying to listen to
• Digital inputs have a genuinely enjoyable presentation
• Phono stage is the star though

When we get to this section of a review, there is always a slightly awkward element of ‘you just have to trust me on this one.’ This isn’t a washing machine where I can tell you how long the cycle took and whether it got stains out or even a TV where I can make a note of peak brightness and behaviour with close to black material.

Here, I can’t point to such definable performance areas… but I can tell you that this is a great piece of audio equipment.

Absolutely key to this perception is that the Brio MK7 is delivering a sound that is fundamentally and consistently right. Give it the hard driving indie of Out of a Dream by The Slow Readers Club and the manner in which the Brio Mk7 responds is hugely engaging. 

It delivers a convincing perception of a full frequency response and balances a level of energy and top end sparkle so that the music sounds lively, with enough refinement to ensure that less than perfect bits of your collection will still be listenable. It’s a sound that is audiophile when you need it to be and happy to crack on with Spotify when you don’t.

The digital inputs are no less successful too. There are subtle but appreciable differences between the Wolfson DAC in the Rega and the ESS devices used in most of its rivals. Listen to an older recording like The Age of Consent by Bronski Beat and, while the Rega isn’t the most detailed sounding amplifier going, you never feel that there is anything missing and the tonality on offer is genuinely lovely.

Where this can be quite interesting is that, if you have something like a Bluesound Node Nano, which uses an ESS DAC and does sound rather good with it, the difference running digitally to the Brio can make for an intriguing point of difference and there have been plenty of points where I have preferred what the Rega is doing.

The phono stage is the star of the show though. If you are building up a system with a view to vinyl being the main format in use, there is nothing under £1,000 that can match the sheer musical satisfaction of the Brio Mk7. Listening to Orbital’s Brown album, the performance is exceptionally similar to the  what I secured from the more expensive Rega Elex Mk4 into the same speakers.

Sure, the Elex will go louder but the presentation of the two is extremely similar. More than any other amp at the price the phono stage of the Brio Mk7 feels like a completely natural extension of the amp itself.

Should you buy it?

FAQs