The pricea on these soundbars are insane for what you’re actually getting. They’re loaded with extremely cheap, tiny drivers crammed into tiny cheap plastic enclosures, with the addition of a cheap, lightweight, low-quality subwoofer. What you have is a mono front soundstage that sounds awful—tiny speakers in tiny enclosures just don’t work well. There’s no front soundstage separation, and then you have chintzy rear speakers that are also very poor quality. These so-called “flagship” soundbars shouldn’t cost more than $200-$300 for what they offer.
And I’m not even a soundbar hater. There are a few premium soundbars out there that deliver real surround sound and genuinely good audio from a single bar. The Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 1 and 2 were phenomenal, as is the Ambeo (all of these are quite huge and weigh close to 50 lb). In the right room, where the sound can bounce correctly, these bars can create legitimate surround sound. The sound quality is top-notch (all things considered), with bass legitimately down to 30 Hz, so you could easily run them without a subwoofer—or add one via the LFE line if you wanted...But Samsung, LG, and Sony’s soundbars just don’t compare—they flat-out suck, and that’s a fact.
