Price: $400 At A Glance: Wireless sub goes any place with a power outlet • Soundbar contains four full-range drivers • Dolby Digital, DPLII, and DTS 5.1 surround processing
One Less Cable
Do you become a different person when you walk into a different room? For many people, the answer is yes. They’ll endure the rigors of component matching and system setup to equip the family room with a big phat flat screen and an AVR-based surround system. But they don’t want to repeat the process in every bedroom. Outside the main system, it might be OK for the screen to be 720p instead of 1080p if it’ll save a few bucks (especially if you don’t wear glasses in bed). And it may be OK to substitute a no-hassle soundbar speaker for a discrete speaker system. But that doesn’t mean you should go without surround—we’re not going to extremes here.
Price: $2,500 At A Glance: Three-channel soundbar with coaxial drivers • Satellite surrounds, also with coaxial drivers • 10-inch wireless sub with distinctive round enclosure
Slim Bar, Wireless Sub
It goes without saying that the soundbar and satellite/subwoofer categories have grown in stature along with the overwhelming popularity of flat-panel displays. As those displays have become rigorously slimmer, their skinny bezels have provided less room for speakers—not just home-theater-worthy speakers, but even something adequate for watching the news. Thus, it’s created a desperate urgency for a flat-panel-friendly audio solution.
PRICE $1,899 (Editor’s note: Between the time the review was conducted and when it was posted on September 22, Klipsch increased the system price from $1,699 to $1,899.)
AT A GLANCE Plus
All-in-one 5.1.4 Atmos system
Stupendous dynamics
Great sound quality with music and movies
Class-leading 12-inch subwoofer
Minus
Ineffective surround processing of stereo music
No mic on remote or bar for Alexa and Google Assistant
No DTS decoding
THE VERDICT
The Klipsch Cinema 1200 is among the least expensive of today's high-end soundbar solutions and over-delivers on both sound quality and value.
Klipsch's new Cinema series soundbars are the latest effort of an iconic, 75-year-old speaker maker to push new performance barriers while delivering a product that is quintessentially, well, Klipsch. There are four systems, each with the real wood cabinetry and the signature Tractrix horn- loaded tweeters that have come to define the brand. These run from the entry-level Cinema 400 ($329), a 40-inch-wide 2.1-channel bar with an 8-inch wireless subwoofer, to the Cinema 1200 ($1,899) reviewed here—a 5.1.4 system with a 54-inch-wide Atmos-enabled bar, a wireless 12-inch sub, and a pair of wireless Atmos- enabled surrounds.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Horn-loaded tweeters
Bluetooth with aptX
Wireless sub
Minus
No HDMI
Membrane remote
THE VERDICT
The Klipsch R-10B is a great-sounding 2.1-channel bar with a good-sounding sub, legacy connectivity, and Bluetooth.
After all this time, it still amazes me, as a speaker and receiver guy, that setup of an audio-for-video product can be as painless as it was with the Klipsch R-10B soundbar. I connected one optical digital cable and two power cables. The bar established diplomatic relations with its wireless subwoofer without any intervention on my part. Bluetooth pairing was just a matter of selecting the Klipsch as playback device in iTunes. This is the setup routine for people who hate setup routines.
Price: $5,385 At A Glance: Ultra-thin bar for skinny flat panel display • Passive sub can fire forward or down • Sub amp offers lots of adjustability
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
There’s one basic truth about home theater that I can never repeat often enough: It is the union of big-screen television and surround sound. They do not operate in isolation from each other. Instead, successive waves of video technology have affected the way people think about audio for video.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Good sound quality with movies and music
3.1.2 Atmos playback
Chromecast built-in for music streaming
Minus
Wireless surround speakers not included
Center channel lacks some clarity on dynamic scenes
THE VERDICT
LG’s 3.1.2 soundbar offers a solid, relatively affordable option for those seeking a dose of immersion minus the heavy hardware investment.
LG has been in the soundbar game for many years, churning out mainly lower-priced bars designed to mate with the company's TVs. The focus on affordable product has likely been a strategic one for LG—the average consumer reeling from the sticker-shock of an OLED TV purchase isn't likely to shell out another grand for a soundbar system, no matter how good it performs. For 2019, however, LG opted to go high-end, releasing a feature-packed trio of soundbars with commensurate price tags.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Good sound quality with movies and music
AI Room Calibration feature
HDMI eARC connectivity
Chromecast built-in and Google Assistant
Minus
Could use an extra HDMI input
THE VERDICT
The Verdict: LG's affordable 3.1.2 soundbar performs well with movies and music and features new room correction processing.
It was around this time last year that I reviewed LG's SL8YG, a 3.1.2 soundbar equipped with upfiring 2.5-inch drivers and both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X processing. What was notable about that model, as well as other soundbars to arrive from LG in 2019, was the company's effort to go upscale via a sleek new design and custom audio processing from England's Meridian Technologies. The new SN8YG reviewed here continues that upward trajectory, mostly through the addition of a few key features.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Line array is audio perfection
Perfect bass
Incredible smart-home features
Minus
Design is a little common
Adds red tint to images
THE VERDICT
The Lirpa Labs MZ1-949r soundbar offers a new level of features and sound that everyone will love.
A few years ago, we reviewed the Lirpa Labs 1776, a speaker unlike any other, and a true statement in the audio world. Sadly, despite critical acclaim—it was widely considered to be the best speaker of all time—the 1776 was a commercial failure. Lirpa Labs held on briefly, with some, shall we say, “eccentric” headphones, but the company was nearly bankrupt. An ill-advised and poorly implemented app was a step too far.
Here are two words I never thought I’d use together in a sentence: audiophile soundbar. Yet MartinLogan’s new Motion Vision model indisputably qualifies.
Price: $1,500 At A Glance: Three folded-diaphragm tweeters, four woofers • 5.1 Dolby Digital, DTS processing • Wide dispersion, limited dynamics
My system is perpetually a work in progress. The speaker stands are always serving new guests (with martinis). Surround receivers slide in and out of the rack’s guest-receiver berth to bedevil me with the GUI of the week. But once in a while, I can’t resist the temptation to yank every cable out of every back panel, throw them onto the middle of the floor, and marvel as the mountain of copper snakes gets higher and higher. Last year, my system spring cleaning yielded a record haul: More than half the cables I pulled out didn’t go back in.
Here's a tip for home theater newbies: Don't shop for speakers using just your eyes. That advice holds true for any speaker, regardless of size or price; when it comes to what we euphemistically refer to as "lifestyle" speakers, though, please try to listen before you make a purchase, or you'll deserve what you get. Lifestyle-inflicted design compromises too often exact a toll on performance—skinny towers can sound undernourished, wall-mounted speakers can produce pancake-flat imaging, and pint-size satellites can come up short.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Neutral tonal balance
Honest vocal and dialogue presentation
Handsome, understated looks
Minus
Limited volume output
Ergonomic shortcomings
THE VERDICT
Fine vocal and musical balance from an elegant, though not inexpensive, soundbar.
Pity the poor soundbar, the dancing bear of the audio world. (The audience applauds not how well the bear dances, but the fact that he dances at all.) And pity more the poor soundbar reviewer, tasked with saying something cogent about a not-inexpensive product that, while worlds better than any TV’s built-in speakers, is almost always demonstrably inferior to any number of affordable freestanding speaker suites, including the same manufacturer’s. Monitor Audio is a long-established, widely respected maker of just such speaker suites, a firm that presumably can read the handwriting on the wall just as well as the next guy: s-o-u-n-d-b-a-r-s-&-h-e-a-d-p-h-o-n-e-s.
AT A GLANCE Plus
Includes wireless subwoofer and surround speakers
Good clarity with movie dialogue
Low price
Minus
Bright LED display
Cable required for surrounds
Music playback can sound thin
THE VERDICT
Monoprice's SB-500 delivers near-wireless true 5.1 surround at a very affordable price, making it one of the best soundbar options in its class.
Value-priced audio products usually come at a, well, price. A user can typically expect to sacrifice sound quality and/or features, but the Monoprice SB-500 soundbar system breaks that mold by offering true Dolby Digital 5.1 with a wireless subwoofer and surrounds, all for $280.
AT A GLANCE Plus
11 drivers in system, including side tweeters
Separate surround speakers
8-inch wireless sub
Minus
Cabinet resonance in sub and sats
No stereo mode
Odd remote volume-key positioning
THE VERDICT
The Shockwafe Pro 7.1 is a beautifully designed soundbar that delivers solid surround performance, especially with movies.
Founded in 1948, Nakamichi became best known in the 1970s for building the booming audio industry’s highest-end cassette decks, both under the company’s own name and for other brands. Nakamichi pioneered three-head decks, which used the extra head to read and monitor a recording in progress. The company has also dabbled in CD changers, A/V receivers, and even TVs, and they provided audio systems for the Toyota Lexus from 1989 to 2001.
AT A GLANCE Plus
A 55-inch horizontal soundbar that can be installed without modifying the wall studs
Can learn volume and mute IR codes from your TV’s remote
Excellent simulated
surround and music
processing
Minus
Really needs a subwoofer
Only one HDMI input
THE VERDICT
The Niles CSF55A is more expensive than a similarly performing active soundbar, but it’s well worth it for the person who wants the gear to disappear without giving up any sound quality.
It’s either the craziest flippin’ idea ever, or it’s absolutely brilliant. I mean, in-wall speakers are one thing. Soundbars, though, especially active soundbars, are completely different creatures. But somebody at Niles—whether inspired by an offhanded joke, an improbable Frankenstein-like engineering experiment, or an alcohol-infused haze after a tedious sales meeting—decided that what the world needs is an active, in-wall soundbar system to complement wall-mounted flat-panel TVs.