![]() By boosting dialog and enabling night mode, I can watch TV without having to constantly wrestle with volume levels. Press the remote’s star button to quickly bring up a menu with easy-to-understand audio options.Īs a parent of young children in a house where sound carries pretty easily, the Roku Smart Soundbar is a huge help in this scenario. Those controls are all easily accessible by pressing the remote’s star button, which brings up a control overlay on top of whatever video you’re watching through Roku’s system. While Roku does not offer granular equalization settings-yet another knock for audiophiles-it does offer four levels of bass, two levels of boosted speech clarity, a leveling mode that compresses loud and quiet sounds, and a “night” mode that keeps the volume from getting too loud. ![]() Now that we’ve firmly established that the Roku Smart Soundbar isn’t for audio obsessives, here’s why it might appeal to everyone else: It’s really easy to fine-tune the sound based on what you’re doing. We have not reviewed these Walmart-specific variants. A Walmart-branded subwoofer is also available for $130, but with a much lower maximum power of 150 watts. It costs $50 less, but doesn’t include a voice remote. One other thing to note: Walmart sells its own version of Roku’s soundbar under the retailer’s “onn” brand. You also can’t tap into Chromecast Built-in or AirPlay 2 to launch music from a mobile device over Wi-Fi, and this isn’t a smart speaker-like the Sonos Beam or Polk Command Bar-that has Alexa or Google Assistant built in. Roku doesn’t sell satellite speakers to create a 5.1 surround sound system, nor does it tie into any multi-room audio systems, so you can’t play music in sync with any other speakers in the home. The only notable downside is that at 12 inches in each dimension, you can’t easily fit the woofer behind or underneath a sofa.Įven with the soundbar and subwoofer, you’ll miss some elements that other systems offer. It also sounds great, adding a big punch to action movies and music without sounding muddy. The subwoofer is dead-simple to set up-just hold the Roku remote’s home button for a few seconds to bring up a pairing menu, and then select “subwoofer” from the list. Roku’s wireless subwoofer adds plenty of punch, though it costs as much as the soundbar itself. While watching the nightclub action scene in Black Panther, the sound of gunfire became muddled at high volumes, and I noticed a lack of high-frequency response from the scrapes and slashes of Okoye’s spear. Roku, meanwhile, will not disclose the soundbar’s frequency range, which-along with my listening experience-makes me suspect it’s nothing to boast about. Inside, the soundbar has four 2.5-inch full-range drivers, and Roku says its amplifier produces maximum power of 60 watts (36 watts RMS), which puts it at the lower end of the spectrum for a soundbar. The Roku Smart Soundbar has no HDMI passthrough or 3.5mm analog audio input, but it does have a USB port for local media. There’s no analog 3.5mm input for plugging in an external audio device, such as your phone, but you can connect devices over Bluetooth. (The soundbar itself has a pair of mounting sockets if you’d rather not plunk it on an entertainment center, but you’ll need to buy the mounting brackets separately.)Īround back, the Roku Smart Soundbar has an HDMI port (with ARC support), optical audio input, and a USB port for playing local media files. It’s a bit on the tall side for a soundbar, so you’ll want to measure the height of your TV’s built-in stand (if it’s not wall mounted) to make sure the bottom of the TV clears the soundbar’s top edge. The Roku Smart Soundbar measures 32.2-inches wide, 2.8 inches tall, and 3.9 inches deep, and it comes in a black plastic enclosure with a fabric speaker cover that wraps around the soundbar’s sides. The Roku Smart Soundbar is also a streaming TV player.
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