Attention TV viewers, this is the best soundbar: ‘Fills your room with a wide and attractive sound’ | Tech

With a soundbar you can improve the sound quality of your television. Because TVs are often flat, there is little room for good speakers. As a result, the sound from the television often does not sound very good. This gets better if you connect a soundbar. And in many cases even much better.

A soundbar is an elongated speaker bar (bar is English for bar) that you can place in front of your TV. You can also mount it on the wall, for which wall brackets are often included. You connect that ‘bar’ to your television via an HDMI cable, an optical audio cable. You can often also stream from your smartphone or tablet via WiFi or Bluetooth.

Although a soundbar greatly improves the sound of your TV, it does not provide the real ‘surround experience’ like in the cinema. If you want that, you’d better look for a good home cinema set.

The Consumers’ Association tested 60 soundbars. In terms of sound quality, ease of use and energy consumption, among other things. 3 came out as Best in the Test. We describe the cheapest of the 3, a device from Samsung. The best buy is an LG soundbar.

The sound that this Samsung soundbar produces is perfectly fine. It sounds full and is well balanced. It fills your room, as it were, with a wide and attractive sound. The surround effect gives depth. This is very nice when you watch a movie or, for example, stream a concert by your favorite artist.

Even if you turn up the volume knob, the sound remains fine. The included subwoofer produces nice bass. The low tones are prominent, but not dominant. The stereo sound is also excellent and this Samsung HW-Q800C has many ways to play music wirelessly.

There are also some negatives to mention. This device consumes quite a bit of power, just like many other larger soundbars. If you want to use the associated app, you are required to create an account.

This soundbar from LG is 100 euros cheaper than the Best in the Test. It scores slightly less, but the price-quality ratio is still excellent. The sound quality is good. Even at a higher volume, the sound remains excellent.

You can connect this soundbar to the internet via WiFi. You can play music via your smartphone with Airplay and Chromecast. You can also connect to Spotify Connect directly via the Spotify app.

Actually, this device isn’t bad at anything. At the same time, it doesn’t excel in anything. The power consumption is not too bad for a large soundbar.

In this section we write weekly about household and technological appliances that have been tested by the Consumers’ Association. This is a collaboration between the independent editors of this site and the Consumers’ Association.

The Consumers’ Association tests thousands of products every year, together with qualified technicians in specialized laboratories at home and abroad. The products being tested are store-bought, so they are not pre-manipulated by manufacturers.

New models are tested as soon as possible after introduction. How fast that is varies per product. The Best in Test is the product with the best test rating. This could also be an older model, because a newer model is not always better. The Best Buy is the product with the best price-quality ratio.

The stated price of a product is the lowest current retail price as far as known to the Consumers’ Association. But prices may vary per day. If no recent retail price is known, the target price is mentioned.

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