S95TR
An Excellent Audio Experience
03/07/2024 07:59
This LG S95TR sound bar makes for an incredibly immersive setup for movie viewing, the additional rear speakers provide a much deeper directional surround audio experience that is sorely lacking from lower end models. The area over which the surround audio shaping works well is much larger so you don’t need to be siting dead centre to experience full immersion. The cinema mode works great for movies, and any TV content with more than 2 channels. For everything else the AI mode does a great job. This sound bar is best paired with a modern LG TV to get the full HDMI-CEC interoperability though it also worked fine with my much older LCD. No issues controlling volume with the TV remote and the bar turns on and off automatically with the TV.
The build quality is amazing, much better than most others. The whole bar feels solid and even when not fully supported from underneath there is no sag at all. All components connect wirelessly so you only need to provide power – setup was a breeze and I just had to turn on things in the order the guide stated for it all to come together and work. The app is great for quickly adjusting all speaker levels and I haven’t needed to touch it again since the initial setup. It has some real power to it with my volume control sitting around 15% for regular viewing and it doesn’t seem to lose any quality as you start to increase the volume way past comfortable easy listening levels. This did initially lull me into thinking that it would do very well with music playback but I’ll get to that in a bit.
There seem to be fairly regular software updates with two encountered over the short time I’ve had it with incremental improvements to how it sounds. Thankfully the sound bar continues to function at a reduced level during the update so the interruption isn’t as annoying. The front display is comprised of 3 LED’s which give this a decidedly not premium look, a matrix display behind the grill like most other bars would have been much better
The areas in which it is lacking is music playback, while the rumbley base output of the subwoofer is sufficient for movies it has insufficient punch for music. I believe this sound bar edges out the equivalent from others, particularly when paired with my LG OLED (the interoperability is perfect) for movies and TV viewing and any weakness of the subwoofer are easy to overlook given the price tag.
Yash91
Ferny Grove , Austrálie
Age: 32
Gender: Female