Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2021
I purchased this product to replace a Bestian sound bar with wireless sub that I'd previously purchased here on Amazon. Though I absolutely loved my previous sound bar, it went bad, and they no longer make that model. I've now been using this one for a couple months, so I feel it's time to leave a review.
Over all, I'm not thrilled with this sound bar and sub. In fact, I wish I'd not have gotten it.
Firstly, forget adjusting bass and treble. This sound bar has three presets, and that's it. That would be doable (although still lousy) if the subwoofer worked well, but the problem is that the bass on this is really very weak. Sometimes, I need to hold on to the subwoofer and feel it ever so slightly vibrating to even confirm that it's doing anything at all. Look, I'm not someone who needs huge, thumping bass. I've never owned a serious sound system. I'm not remotely an audiophile. My previous sound bar was like $80, and it far surpassed this one on the bass front. To add insult to injury, one night while I was watching TV, the subwoofer randomly started putting out extremely loud, thumping bass. Like it was seriously impressive. It was obvious to me, though, that something had gone wrong. I unplugged the subwoofer and plugged it back in. Upon powering back on, it was back to normal. This tells me that the subwoofer is technically capable of producing amazing bass, but the ability to do so is "locked away" so to speak.
Secondly, the remote doesn't let you just select any input you want at the touch of a button. It has a dedicated Bluetooth button. Other than that, each input has to be cycled through one at a time. Why? How difficult is it to place a dedicated button for each input? Every sound bar I've ever purchased and used has dedicated input buttons. Why not this one?
Thirdly, this sound bar is lacking an input that my previous one wasn't. It seems that pretty much no sound bars use this input anymore, so I can't really fault TCL, but it really messes up my setup, which will be explained in my fourth point. I use the sound bar for both my PC and my TV in my bedroom. My previous sound bar had both an AUX input and an RCA (red and white) input. My PC was hooked up via AUX and TV via RCA, and I would simply switch between the two of them. The RCA input is apparently not found on sound bars anymore. I purchased this feeling okay about that because I knew it had HDMI ARC, so I figured I'd just hook up my TV using that. Which leads me to my next point:
Fourthly, this sound bar isn't particularly compatible with my setup. Look, I know that my setup is strange, but it's not previously caused me any issues. I have an old 1080p Insignia Roku TV. At the time I purchased it, Roku TVs weren't running particularly powerful hardware, and as a result, this one's very slow. To address the situation, I have a newer, higher end Roku plugged into the TV, so I'm essentially running a Roku through a Roku TV. I then have a Roku remote which allowed me not only to control the external Roku, but to turn on and off the TV and control volume. It wasn't an elegant solution at all, but it worked without a hitch—that is until I began using HDMI ARC with this sound bar. That messed up everything. Now, my Roku remote won't power the TV on or off. While it does still control volume, it doesn't show the level on the TV. It does show the level, however, if I use the remote that came with the sound bar. That's irritating, but whatever. The real issue, like I said, is the inability to power my TV on and off with the remote. In fact, every time I want to watch TV or turn it off, I have to use my smart speaker to do so. So as if that doesn't complicate things enough, it turns out that the sound bar, when unused for a few hours and set to play the TV's audio via HDMI ARC, often times won't produce any sound. The only fix is to turn off the sound bar and turn it back on. Not a big deal in itself, except that it's a daily occurrence.
Fifthly, a couple times now, the sound bar has acted as if I'm holding down the volume up button, even though I'm not even touching the remote. The volume indicator on the sound bar itself goes to the maximum level. Lowering it is futile, as it "fights" me and immediately goes back up to the maximum level. It's been a while since the last time it happened, so I don't remember how I solved it, but simply powering it off and on again didn't solve it. I think I just had to wait some minutes before it went back to normal.
Look, a lot of these are fairly small issues. However, that's way too many small issues. Totally unjustified. I can likely fix everything in my fourth point by purchasing a new Roku TV so that I don't need to effectively run a Roku through a Roku, but that's a few hundred dollar investment, and at the end of the day, why should I spend that money for a sound bar that has lousy bass, anyway? The TV's picture is more than acceptable, I'm not looking for a larger or higher resolution screen, and as clunky as my setup is, it always worked perfectly before adding this sound bar into the mix. At this point, I'm considering selling this months-old sound bar to a friend for $50. He just moved into a new apartment with a new TV, and doesn't want much bass for fear it'll annoy his neighbors.
