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Delivering Dolby Atmos from a small chassis is no mean feat, but the 2023 What Hi-Fi? Award-winning Sonos Beam Gen 2 achieves a convincing, immersive performance without so much as a vertical speaker in sight. Instead, when watching Atmos content, two of the soundbar's five front-facing arrays are dedicated to reproducing overhead and surround sounds. With its hefty processing power, the Sonos Beam Gen 2 uses psychoacoustic HRTF (head-related transfer function) technology to give the impression of height without needing to get vertical. Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer, two rear speakers; Channel configuration: 11.1.4; Stated power: 656W; Connections: 2 x HDMI inputs, 1 x HDMI output, optical digital audio input, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; HDMI passthrough support: Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 4K at 60Hz, HDR10+; HDMI ARC/eARC support: eARC; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar – 1232 x 138 x 70mm, subwoofer – 220 x 410 X 413mm, rears – 1230 x 140 x 201mm each; Weight: Soundbar – 7.7kg, subwoofer – 11.7kg, rears – 3.4kg each Not only does it look the part, but it sounds the part, too. The impact, power, detail and positional accuracy the S800B manages to deliver is hard to reconcile with its ultra-trim form, with two up-firing drivers even ensuring that Dolby Atmos mixes enjoy a sense of height as well as width and room-filling forward impact. The specially designed subwoofer, meanwhile, expertly prevents the S800B from sounding thin or flimsy, ensuring it ends up a near perfect combination of form and function. The Samsung HW-Q800C is a great soundbar and subwoofer system that immediately elevates the sonic performance of your TV. It’s an excellent all-rounder that enhances TV shows, movies, games and music, producing an expansive front soundstage that benefits from a sense of scale. For those who want compelling 3D sound without all the speakers, this is the best soundbar with a premium price tag that we've ever tested, which is why it retained its title once again at the 2023 What Hi-Fi? Awards.
Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer; Channel configuration: 3.1; Stated power: 430W; Connections: 1 x HDMI input, 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, optical digital audio input; HDMI passthrough support: HD, SDR (no 4K or HDR); HDMI ARC support: Yes; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar: 1030 x 105 x 60mm, subwoofer – 184 x 295 x 346mm; Weight: Soundbar – 3.1kg, subwoofer – 5.1kg Although soundbars are typically designed with film and TV in mind, we also put them through their paces with music too, testing out a range of streaming options with a variety of genres, both classic and modern, enduring that we listen in the highest quality that the soundbar is capable of. Soundbars are slim, often rectangular, speaker systems with drivers positioned side by side that are designed to slot underneath your TV or to be fitted neatly to the wall. With front-facing drivers, even basic, budget soundbars typically offer more direct and clear audio than a TV. The wide main soundbar delivers audio with a fantastic amount of detail, power and dynamic range, the latter of which helps it blend in superbly with the monumental bass output by the subwoofer. A subwoofer which, by the way, features a so-called acoustic lens over its driver to help its bass sound smoother and less directional. The Ray has been conceived to slot into cabinets without its sonic dispersion being impacted. However, it doesn’t feature the virtual Dolby Atmos decoding of Sonos’ more premium soundbars – the Beam Gen 2 and Arc (both below). So, pragmatically, Sonos also decided to ditch the HDMI eARC connections of its pricier products in favour of a classic optical input, which almost every TV will have, but monitors and consoles may not.
With its wide range of supported audio formats, the A7000 excels itself and includesDolby Atmos(in both the Digital+ and TrueHD formats),DTS:X, LPCM, hi-res wireless audio and Sony 360 Reality Audio. With TVs getting thinner, especially OLED models with razor-sharp chassis, there is considerably less room for proper sound systems. While this is an inevitability, it doesn't excuse poor sound quality, which is why we always recommend budgeting for some sort of sound system when you buy a new TV.
In our initial review of the Ray, we felt that its bass handling, which resulted in an unusual low-frequency resonant buzz across various movies and music, hampered its overall performance. However, since an update in July 2022, that problem has now been widely alleviated, and as such, we have upped our initial verdict from three to four stars. Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer; Channel configuration: 3.1.2; Stated power: 330W; Connections: 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; HDMI passthrough support: N/A; HDMI ARC support: eARC; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar – 1160 x 40 x 38mm, subwoofer – 238 x 238 x 241mm; Weight: Soundbar – 1.4kg, subwoofer – 6.4kg The Q930B delivers a huge 9.1.4-channel count, courtesy of a 7.2-channel main soundbar, a large wireless subwoofer, and wireless rear speakers equipped with two channels each. It also spreads a healthy 540W across all those channels, while its connections include an HDMI passthrough capable of supporting 4K HDR signals up to 60Hz. The main bar component features a very angular look emphasised by the sharpness of its edges, and the pointed look of each of its ends. Some might have preferred a softer look, but I kind of like the aggressiveness of it. And the angling of the end portions has a practical aspect to it, of course, as it enables the soundbar to optimize the positioning of its side-channel effects.Assuming you’re in the market for a soundbar first and foremost to bring movies and TV shows to life, the Q800C represents excellent value. It undercuts its rivals, despite serving up the most powerful, impactful and accurately presented Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound stage I’ve heard from a two-piece soundbar system. That's even though the bass features some truly epic rumbles from the Q800C’s subwoofer. The 8-inch driver reaches prodigious low frequency depths that provide action scenes with a huge sense of scale and heft. It does so, moreover, without either hanging too loosely off the bottom of the main soundbar’s lowest frequencies, or sounding flattened or compressed when the going gets really tough.
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