Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsSounds Good When Works
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2021
I was so excited when I got this delivered, and boxed it up for return the same day.
Here is what was good:
- definitely the most 360 surround/atmos experience as compared to Sonos arc with one sl’s as surrounds (no sub but that shouldn’t increase surround effect) and as compared to a previous 5.2.2 (two subs and atmos height speakers) traditional home theater setup. Yes this did a better surround/360 atmos job than the traditional home theater setup I was using.
- airplay 2 function worked without a hiccup.
Here is the bad:
- want to know what content is playing? I did. And couldn’t. The screen at the top of the bar, which people have complained about position, stopped working within 5 minutes. Completely nothing shown anymore. I did a firmware update and power cycled a couple times then it worked. For another few minutes and then down again. I am quite certain this isn’t the intended function and must have been a defect, or maybe result of the poor interplay with my tv (more on that below).
- earc function non-existent with my LG Oled (cx model). I had seen reports of this but also seemed like the latest firmware addressed this. I was wrong. The soundbar did not receive earc signals from my tv. I know this because Apple TV outputs as lpcm, which means to send atmos from that to the tv then via arc as is without recompressing from the tv to the soundbar you need earc. This soundbar didn’t get the atmos signal. I tried connecting the Apple TV directly to the soundbar then from there to the tv and the atmos worked well. But… I don’t want to do that route. The tv supports hdmi 2.1 and I don’t want a middle man from my devices to the tv. I will add that this may be partially the tv as the culprit. The setup I prefer works with the Sonos arc setup, but I have had some “handshake” issues with that as well from the Apple TV to the tv itself then to the arc. I’ve only noticed this once and it didn’t last long, but I do want to mention. Just seems like getting multiple devices to handshake via hdmi and understand what each device is sending and receiving along the way in general can get complicated.
- sound quality was fair. Like I said, more surround and 360 atmos sound than many other setups, or even just about any other soundbar or basic home theater setup. But… I don’t think I would say more immersive. The bass is quite poor. The Sonos arc with surrounds setup even without a sub attached has better sounding and more powerful bass than this unit with the soundbar. Also, the sound isn’t as rich to me as with the Sonos. It surrounds you better, but doesn’t sound as powerful or as good and so I wouldn’t say more immersive.
- at the end of the day, if you tv and this get along well, or if you want to connect your devices directly to this first, which may limit your options in the future if you upgrade your tv and devices to support high end specs, then it is a very good home theater solution, granted with a bit less sound quality than other options. If you want more flexibility, look elsewhere.
