Choosing the Best Soundbar

 Here’s an important note for CR members, who can access all our ratings. In our ratings, a soundbar speaker is held to a higher standard than a TV for audio quality. We judge them more like speakers designed for listening to music. That means a soundbar with a Good rating for sound will sound better than a TV with a Good rating. Note that many less expensive sound bars have less power and fewer features than a component audio system, so they’re not the best choice for a very large room, nor for audiophiles craving a theaterlike experience.

Many inexpensive soundbars can be great if you have a small or medium space and want a simple way to enhance your TV’s sound. But there are also some newer, pricier models that have enough power to fill even a larger room.

 

One other thing to consider: Do you want the ability to use your voice to control the speaker? Many soundbars are now smart speakers that can respond to voice commands to raise the volume, change inputs, and sometimes control a TV or other smart devices in your home. Some come with popular voice systems, such as Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit (with Siri), or Google Assistant built in, and others require the use of another voice-enabled smart speaker to respond to voice commands.

 

What is a soundbar?

A soundbar is a rectangular-shaped speaker accessory that’s specifically designed to complement the TV in your home theater setup. The accessory has come into prominence as a popular solution to an often overlooked problem. Most of the time, the speakers that come built into modern TV  sets suck. Sometimes they’re  stuck on the back of the display and forced to bounce sound off the walls behind or around the screen. Almost-always, they’re competing with other components for space. Much like the multi-lens camera systems found on the back of modern smartphones, most speakers are only as good as the space they have to work with. Having to work within the limitations of a flat-screen form-factor makes it harder for TV speakers to sound good.

 

So much of why speakers sound the way they do is due to their shape. More than just looks, the design of a speaker informs and enables different kinds of spatial acoustics. Soundbars get around this problem by dedicating themselves to it. They’re not integrated into the TV. Instead, they sit in front of it and independently work to achieve the high-quality surround sound experience that most TVs can’t deliver.

 

Why should I want one?

Once you’ve gotten used to it, it’s pretty easy to live with the audio experience that a TV alone can produce. However, investing in a soundbar can make for a much more cinematic and enjoyable home entertainment experience.

Since a soundbar is a dedicated speaker, it’s a lot better at handling both ends of the volume spectrum. You’re less likely to miss out on things like softly spoken dialogue and you’re more likely to get the full breadth of the more dynamic soundscapes found in modern blockbusters. While the speakers in your TV are doing the best they can with what they have, most soundbars are engineered to do better from the get-go.