Soundbar recommendation

I need at least one and possibly two soundbars for the two TV's in my house. My list of requirements is short and is as follows:

1. The soundbar must sound better than the built in speakers on a TCL Roku TV
2. The soundbar must be capable of being controlled with the TV's remote and turn on and off with the TV
3. The soundbar should cost as little as possible

Thanks for any suggestions.

CNET likes the VIzeo soundbars. They have won their best cheap soundbar the last few years. I don’t know how cheap is cheap, but if you can afford it, I’d get a subwoofer.

I don't have a good answer, other than I was looking for a soundbar a year or two ago and all of the good Vizio reviews lured me into buying one from Costco. I am glad they have a generous return policy because I had a bunch of problems with it staying in sync with the TV and the remote and ended up returning it.

I have been eyeing one of the Sonos bars but their app support has made me wary, and looking at the new Roku soundbar too.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't have a good answer, other than I was looking for a soundbar a year or two ago and all of the good Vizio reviews lured me into buying one from Costco. I am glad they have a generous return policy because I had a bunch of problems with it staying in sync with the TV and the remote and ended up returning it.

I have been eyeing one of the Sonos bars but their app support has made me wary, and looking at the new Roku soundbar too.

I can answer questions about the Sonos bars, if you have any. I've also been known to have discounts available.

The Vizio models are the standard budget recommendations.

For what it's worth, I have one on a bonus TV that I used to keep for other people to play games on when they came over, you know, when having people over for fun was a thing.

It is what I would describe as not great but still vastly better than built in TV speakers.

So, with PS4 or PS5 and a TV with HDR, you'd have to do compressed Dolby 3.1 or 2.1 via optical because I'm guessing no soundbars do HDMI 2.0 or higher? Was thinking about getting one to get by for a couple years with our cheap TCL while we wait for HDMI standards in TVs and receivers to catch up. Already donated all our old receivers because they're kinda useless without HDMI 2.0.

I'm currently rocking a Vizio SB3630-E6 from 2017 (aka 36 inch 3.0) and considering seeing if there is an upgrade as I also have a new 75" TV coming as well. Looking to see if there is something that would be a decent improvement or stick what I have without moving to a full on 5.1 system. If it matters, my living room is probably small to medium in scale - 16 x 20 feet.

* What I'm looking for in terms of improvement is a larger/fuller sound and more importantly something that offers dialogue enhancement of some kind as I have a bit of trouble with that but my partner has even more trouble with. Seeing if we can move off subtitles on everything we watch with success.

* What isn't essential is a 5.1 system as I would rather not have rear speakers. My living room isn't tiny but it's not huge either and it's already getting packed with the 75" TV with the stand to match and my sectional couch.

* What also isn't essential is a sub-woofer as I live on the first floor of an apartment so I'm nervous about too much bass, and also I've always found myself less interested in a lot of bass anyways. However, it's fine if it's part of a great system.

* Considering Samsung HW-MS650 or Bose SB 300/500 options but unsure if they will be a noticeable upgrade from what I already have.

* Have seen the hype about Sonos Beam (or even the Arc if I can justify it), but I guess the whole ecosystem makes me nervous: Most of the talk online seems to be about how - these things don't come with a remote and you have to do everything with the phone app; people have connectivity issues; they have sunsetted support for older products. Seems like a perfect storm for a soundbar to be impossible to change settings in if something goes belly up with the company. Feel free to tell me I'm paranoid and the difference is worth it.

Yeah, I wouldn't buy Sonos... their artificial shutdown of their older products was indefensible. They backed off at least a little, but if they could do that so easily, then it was obviously never necessary in the first place. They were just trying to get you to replace speakers that didn't need replacing.

New CEO wants to juice the bottom line quickly, screws customers, customers get angry, CEO backs off partway, but only partway.

Not a good outfit to deal with, I don't think.

If I were shopping soundbars, I'd definitely check out any options from Denon to see what I thought. They really, really understand sound, so if they put their name on something, it'll probably be first-rate. Haven't actually shopped for any, but that's where I would personally start.

I got a Klipsch Cinema 400 on a black Friday deal. It's just to get us by until I can get a proper 5.1 setup in the family room. It's great and clean for 2.1 and much better than the TV speakers. It will probably stick with the current 4K TCL and go in the office eventually.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

So, with PS4 or PS5 and a TV with HDR, you'd have to do compressed Dolby 3.1 or 2.1 via optical because I'm guessing no soundbars do HDMI 2.0 or higher? Was thinking about getting one to get by for a couple years with our cheap TCL while we wait for HDMI standards in TVs and receivers to catch up. Already donated all our old receivers because they're kinda useless without HDMI 2.0.

I didn't realize that the HDMI ARC port on the tv does HDMI sound passthrough. Doh! Should have kept my old Yamaha receiver. Ah well.

Malor wrote:

Yeah, I wouldn't buy Sonos... their artificial shutdown of their older products was indefensible. They backed off at least a little, but if they could do that so easily, then it was obviously never necessary in the first place. They were just trying to get you to replace speakers that didn't need replacing.

That isn't what happened. Old (some over 15 years) hardware was and is able to continue to function on the older firmware, it just can't move up to the newer versions. It always sucks to EoL hardware, but it's pretty standard for anything with a computer in it. How long can you realistically continue to support hardware that has 32 megs of memory?

I didn't realize that the HDMI ARC port on the tv does HDMI sound passthrough. Doh! Should have kept my old Yamaha receiver. Ah well.

The older ARC only passes some formats; it's pretty limited. The new eARC will pass pretty much any sound signal, so you can use it with anything.

Chaz wrote:

That isn't what happened. Old (some over 15 years) hardware was and is able to continue to function on the older firmware, it just can't move up to the newer versions. It always sucks to EoL hardware, but it's pretty standard for anything with a computer in it. How long can you realistically continue to support hardware that has 32 megs of memory?

All that said, the whole "no remote, no Bluetooth, only our app" ecosystem still gives me pause. As unlikely as it may be, there are a few scenarios where the app doesn't work with the Arc anymore a few years down the line which immediately makes the functionality inaccessible.

Rtings.com does soundbar reviews though I noticed it seems they are moving to a paywall and only give free access to a handful of reviews.

kuddles wrote:
Chaz wrote:

That isn't what happened. Old (some over 15 years) hardware was and is able to continue to function on the older firmware, it just can't move up to the newer versions. It always sucks to EoL hardware, but it's pretty standard for anything with a computer in it. How long can you realistically continue to support hardware that has 32 megs of memory?

All that said, the whole "no remote, no Bluetooth, only our app" ecosystem still gives me pause. As unlikely as it may be, there are a few scenarios where the app doesn't work with the Arc anymore a few years down the line which immediately makes the functionality inaccessible.

It's totally fine to not be interested in a Sonos soundbar. But just so you know, the soundbars can definitely be configured so your remote changes their volume, either via CEC through the TV or directly via IR, and if you're only using it for TV audio, you basically never need to touch the app if you don't want to after initial setup. It defaults to switch to TV audio when it detects input, and you can set it to either update firmware automatically, or not do that and just sit on a version that's working fine. It's super duper unlikely that there'd come a point where there's no version of the app that works with the Arc. Even in the case of the old models that Malor mentioned, the old version of the app is still available and able to control them fine.

I talked to Chaz for quite a bit before deciding on a soundbar, and I did go with the Sonos. I did purchase a 4K Arcana Box to enable eARC. This allowed me to use my Apple TV 4K with all the bells and whistles.

Could I have gone with a different system? Probably. However, the older I get, the simpler I want things to be. The setup was painless and everything looks and sounds great.

The Sonos is controlled through the Apple TV remote. I can also change the volume with my phone. It's actually super helpful to have that as my wife falls asleep with the TV loud sometimes. From my desk in the other room I can turn down the volume.

As someone who lived in many apartments over the years - please don't get a sub.

I changed my mind and want a sub-woofer in order to spite LeapingGnome.

TheGameguru wrote:

Rtings.com does soundbar reviews though I noticed it seems they are moving to a paywall and only give free access to a handful of reviews.

Just open the site in private mode. They even suggest doing this if you don't want to pay.

Edit: you can view this page of their "bests" without hitting a paywall.

I missed a lot of the back and forth, but our Sonos Playbar is controlled through the Samsung Smart Remote that came with our FrameTV. No big deal at all to get it set up properly.

We love the Playbar. I lust after the Arc (Especially the new one without a microphone), but can't find out a way to justify it just yet.

LeapingGnome wrote:

As someone who lived in many apartments over the years - please don't get a sub.

I believe Sonos allows you to connect 2 subwoofers now

Ended up breaking my own rules and getting the Samsung HW-Q70T setup. It was sharply discounted at Best Buy Canada this week and also had another discount if you bought the optional rear speakers at the same time, putting it down in the $660.00 USD range including taxes.

It supports all the old codecs/inputs but also supports eARC and Dolby Atmos so it's ready for the near future, with online sentiment saying the centre channel and the voices come out real clear and the biggest complaints online are about the sub-woofer being weak which for me works in my favour.

Had the chance to demo the Sonos Arc and it got crossed off my list quite quickly after that.

EDIT: I put this in the wrong thread. Asked and answered here:

https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/comme...

-BEP