TV Speakers Suck Get This Instead

I've been upgrading my home theater situation lately and it's been awesome, but it's about time I address the elephant in the room, the audio. I've been out here showing you guys $500, $700 and even $1,000 TVs and a lot of them look fantastic, but at a certain point you really start to wonder, what's the point of spending all that money on an amazing TV if it still sounds like it's coming out of a $5 Bluetooth speaker from 2014? So it's high time I finally stop neglecting the forgotten stepchild of home theater setups and find a quality soundbar. I want sounds to hit me in the chest like in the movie theater. Betty, let me in. Betty, Betty. You need to understand soundbars are like objectively inferior. If you want real audio quality, you need to get a... Get out of here. Look, I know soundbars aren't the perfectly optimal absolute peak of home theater audio. Nothing can ever beat spending a hefty chunk of money buying a proper 5.1 speaker setup, but ultimately there are just a lot of people out there who for one reason or another would prefer a soundbar. Maybe you're trying to save money or maybe running wires across your whole living room isn't doable. I know I'm not bothering with that. My living room's small. Those things don't even fit. Now those are all valid situations and importantly, basically anything is better than your built-in TV speakers. So today we're looking for a quality soundbar to upgrade our setup, but I also want to see how much or little money we really need to spend. Is a cheapo $60 soundbar plenty for most people or is it worth it to splurge for something nicer? $200 or maybe somewhere in between? I'm always interested in where the point of diminishing returns is, so that's exactly what we're gonna find out today. Step one was figuring out what a budget soundbar even is. How much are people paying for these things? Honestly, I never kept up super well with these, so I was at a loss for where to start. Fear not though, I came up with an excellent solution. I headed to everyone's favorite techie review website, Ratings, and checked their listicles for mid-range soundbars. From there, I worked out that the bottom price is in the $200 to $300 range. So I simply set that as our maximum budget. Budget soundbars are now officially $200. As such, the team and I did some more research and we bought three soundbars to test. One at our full $200 price point, one at a more affordable $120 and finally the ultra budget one at a teensy $60. There's a lot of options in those ranges from pretty much every brand name you've ever heard. Samsung, Sony, LG, but I just wanted to get a general sense for these price ranges, so I simply dove in and picked two well-received options for the expensive and middle ones. As for the cheapest option, I picked the one that looked decent on Amazon. So looking at their product pages and prices, I was definitely going into this with some sort of expectation. For $200, I was pretty doubtful a soundbar would be worth the money and at only $60, I honestly wasn't even confident it'd be better than the TV speakers themselves. My money was on the middle option, but would I be right or proven horribly wrong? While testing out all of these soundbars, I got a little lost trying to properly test them and fit in all my other work. Luckily, the creator of my favorite wrist rest, Delta Hub, came up with the perfect solution. You might know them from their Carbio 2.0, the ingenious wrist rest that was designed to move with your hands instead of being static and hard like all the other ones, but now they're back with a new product, the reusable to-do list. It's a device that sits on your desk and reminds you of your upcoming deadlines and helps keep you on track for achieving your goals. Now, who doesn't love that? What makes this product special is that it's made just like a whiteboard. So after a long day of to-do's, all you have to do is wipe it down and it's ready for your next day of to-do's. Nothing feels better than wiping away a day's worth of work that you finished. It's also nice not worrying about running out of paper, like my other to-do list. I also like how the design blends in well with your desk setup. It has a nice cork bottom material along with a textured 3D printed PLA top that the cards slide into perfectly. The cards, when set down, will have the slightest tilt, so it's angled up at you, making it easier to read and write on. Now, depending on what your vibe is, you can pick one up today in either black or white. So if you're looking for another way to upgrade your desk setup alongside the Delta Hub Carpio 2.0s, check out the reusable to-do list using the link in the description below. Soon enough, the moment of truth arrived as all three soundbars were at the office awaiting masterful setup. Let's start with the cheapest one first because it's secretly the one I want to do well because it's a lot easier to tell my friends to spend $60 to upgrade their crappy TV setups than $200. And that's the real end game here, right folks? This $60 soundbar I chose has something interesting I've never seen before. If you twist it here in the middle and then put them on their respectable stands, they can now become two vertical speakers. This is honestly pretty clever. One of the biggest potential downsides of a soundbar is that all the sound is coming from one place. That means there's no separation of what's on the left and what's on the right in stereo. How wide and distinct that separation is, is apparently called soundstage. I'm sure you've heard of it before. So allowing these two to split up is clever. Problem solved. Setup for these was super easy, I'm glad to report. Actually, that held true for all the speakers. You literally just power them on, send one single HDMI cord their way, and you're pretty much good to go. But how about the sound? Well, first, we need a baseline. TV speakers only with two tests, one for music and one for movies. Now, as is often the case, you're going to be experiencing this on YouTube through the lens of a singular microphone, so it won't quite be the same as being in the room. But hopefully you get the idea. On the music front, everything sounded, well, not great. Every corner of the sound spectrum is lacking. You got poor highs, which means higher pitch sounds like hi-hats or metallic sounds are bad or even tingy or aggressive. You got poor mids, which means vocals and instruments and basically anything in the middle range there is muddied and it has poor bass. Not enough oomph. Sure enough, we whipped out our old channel friend, Avatar HDR for the second baseline. Yeah, it was pretty much the same. The TV speakers don't go very loud and when they do, it lacks a punch. It lacks distinction. So it was time to put the assist truss through its paces. Well, the good news is my earliest guess was wrong. This is definitely better than the TV speakers by a surprising amount. Now, all of a sudden, the song has the actual low end. The highs are crispier and the mids no longer sound like a swamp. You can distinguish things. Now, given the TV I'm testing on costs about $800, it's crazy how much an upgrade like this $60 purchase can make. But what about the movie experience? Can it transport me to the magical headspace of the cinema? So results here are mixed. Obviously, it's better than the built-in TV speakers, but it leaves a lot still. If I were to put this experience into words, it's like going from watching a movie on your phone speakers to watching it through a decent Bluetooth speaker. It's better, but it's still not exactly fantastic and definitely not the cinema. In case you were wondering, we did in fact test all of today's speakers way more than once. We watched all sorts of content on them from Prestige TV to YouTube content, bunch of music and everything in between, but we can only show so many audio clips in one video. So we're sticking with these two tests. Anyhow, with all that taken care of, it was time to crack open the mid-range option, the $20 TCL. This one doesn't let you split it up in two, but it's okay because it's wide enough that that's not too big of a problem. The first upgrade we get for extra $60 are the ports. It's connected via eARC instead of ARC. Back in my day, we had to worry about running separate, super fragile optical cables to get the sound going, but now in the year of our lord eARC, those worries have been solved. eARC allows audio data to travel through specific HDMI cables straight to your speaker, which gives you two big benefits. One is that it allows you to control your speaker with your regular TV remote, no different control here. The other is more nerdy, but still really cool. Higher data throughput. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, come back, come back, I swear this is cool. More data coming through the cable means higher quality audio, support for better, less compressed audio formats like Dolby Atmos, better quality. This is definitely one step up, but the real star of the show is this. You get a dedicated subwoofer and before I even tested it, I knew it would make a world of difference. One of the biggest jump ups from TV speakers to the $60 soundbars was the bass. Now, if you've been exclusively living in the built-in speaker world, you may not realize it, but the bass is where a lot of the oomph comes from in anything you watch or listen to. Whether you're listening to music, watching TV or especially a movie, big meaty sounds like explosions just sound limp or disappointing without a dedicated subwoofer. I was definitely curious to hear how much of a difference it makes. Would it really be twice as good? It has to be to justify twice the price. So we plugged her up and booted up our two trusty tests. So I hope it comes through in the video as well as it did in real life because it was a stark improvement even over the previous soundbar. Obviously, a dedicated subwoofer means better bass, but even outside of that, everything was cleaner and crisper. It's like you turned up the audio quality from 720p to 1080p, if that makes sense. That's not the real star of the show though. That title is reserved for the movie test. I think the most interesting part of this test is that it retroactively made me realize that there are flaws on this $60 soundbar. It's fascinating how when something is the only thing you know, you're blind to its flaws. Before I started exploring the world of TVs, I thought my TV at home was fine. Ah, spoiler, it's not. And five minutes before this test, I thought the $60 soundbar was fine. It also was not. Naturally then, I found myself very conflicted. On the one hand, I just have an extremely hard time imagining that it's worth yet another $80 upgrade for the final speaker, but at the same time, what might I be missing now with this middle option that I don't know until I try? So I violently removed the TCL from our living room and set up the final option, the $200 VIZIO 5.1. So what actual features do I get for the extra money? And does the upgrade make a meaningful difference without doing a side-by-side test? So all you have to do is unbox the VIZIO to figure out the answer to the first question. This is a 5.1 surround sound setup. That means we're getting a whole extra two speakers out of this baby. Actually, we get three. Obviously two extra speakers around back and then a third extra speaker in the form of a center channel within the soundbar. Now I know what you're thinking because it's the same thing I was thinking. I don't want to run those wires for those rear speakers, but that's where the hidden genius of speakers like this comes in. The subwoofer, much like the TCLs, is wireless, but this sub also has the ports for the rear speakers. So all you have to do is plop the sub behind your couch, then run the rear speakers from there. No crazy cable management required. This is a game changer. Basically every movie or TV show you watch is mixed for 5.1 surround sound. Having anything less means you're missing out on a lot. Usually wiring those speakers in a living room is such a pain, but not with this Giga Brain wireless subwoofer solution. I will say though, this was a speaker that took the longest to set up. Surprisingly, not because of the rear speakers, but actually because the software and settings process is a bit confusing to manage. To change any of the settings, you have to download an app. I don't love that. Neither should you. And once you do, you'll find that some of their default settings are a bit questionable. There's a setting that will pump stereo audio to the rear speakers, which means actual 5.1 surround content isn't 5.1 when you play it. Why is this a default option? You got 5.1. Thankfully, it only took like five minutes of changing settings in both the app and the TV and things were good to go. From there, I'll hopefully never have to open the app again and hopefully just uninstall. That really was the worst of the setup though. Five minutes is a sort of cheap price to pay, all things considered. With that out of the way, what about the sound? What am I missing out on? Is it going to be worth it? First up, music. Testing it out, I was whelmed. I think it's a little better. Maybe, probably. Yeah, it's better, but it's not $80 better. I guess this isn't really where the upgrade is meant to shine though. Music isn't master for 5.1 surround sound. So we're barely using half the full power of this setup to use it all. We need the movie test. If it isn't clear, I sort of went into this doubting the $200 speaker would be worth it. I thought the $120 speaker will be good. The $200 speaker will be basically the same. If you want better than that, just get a traditional speaker setup. As it turned out, I was wrong. For one, you can without a doubt tell the difference between this speaker and the TCL when watching TV and movies. Not in a listen carefully and figure out the difference sort of a way. It's instant. It's like undeniable. Even though the subwoofer is smaller, it packs a bigger punch. The extra speaker in the soundbar itself means better soundstage separation and the rear speakers, despite their hilariously tiny size are audible and really increase immersion. And of course, since it's proper 5.1, you're listening to it as intended rather than down mixing to stereo. And the best part, you could actually understand dialogue without subtitles. So how many people did I hurt just now? Now, if you're like me and you have a hard time understanding what people are saying in movies all the time, it's probably not your brain's fault. It's the movie automatically converting the 5.1 sound to stereo and that's what muddies up the audio. For the first time in many years, I can actually understand what the British people are saying without subtitles. Basically, every part of the sound is better. The bass is bassier, the highs are crispier and the mids are less mid. They're distinguishable. You know that feeling when you're at the cinema and a big explosion happens in the movie and you just feel it in your chest? This was the first soundbar to give me that feeling. Against all odds, I think it is worth the extra $80. And after experiencing all the testing, even after talking up the Vizio, I don't think everyone should go out and buy the Vizio. I think all three speakers have a valid purpose. First, if your living room at home is rocking the built-in speakers, please, for the love of anything that is good, get yourself something. You're doing yourself a disservice. Which one should you get? Well, I think they meet different needs. The $60 speaker is the minimum choice for a casual TV setup. If you're not trying to have a home theater and you're just watching YouTube videos or cooking shows, then these speakers provide a solid upgrade to your setup. And they even have the nifty twist and split feature to up your game. The $120 TCL speakers are perfect for the casual home theater setups. If your setup is just a semi-budget TV, the occasional TV show or movie, or just in general is a step above the previous person, then spending $120 for the TCL is worth it. It's straight up twice as good of an experience and you're rubbing yourself of that otherwise. Then lastly, if you're entertaining any sort of real home theater situation, if you spent more than $600 on a TV, or if you have friends over for movie night, get the $200 Vizio. I didn't believe it at first, but it is worth the money. If you invite friends over for movie night and rob them of that, I feel it in your chest moment, they will make fun of you and you will deserve it. For now though, I'm rocking the Vizio and maybe soon I'll test out some mid-range options. Oh yeah, why is the TCL the only one of these that has a volume percent indicator? We need more volume indicators, guys. I need to know. Bye.