The best Samsung soundbars to buy
Our pick of the best Samsung soundbars to buy regardless of whether or not you own one of the company's TVs
More and more people seem to be waking up to the fact that sound quality is as important as picture quality when it comes to creating a truly immersive cinematic experience at home. From premium to budget soundbars, Samsung has a something for most budgets.
Households across the globe are turning to soundbars in their droves and this surge in popularity has been enthusiastically embraced by manufacturers across the AV and Hi-Fi world, with models of all shapes and sizes now available catering to a broad range of budgets.
No single brand has pushed the soundbar boat out as far as Samsung. Its current soundbar range is the biggest available today and mirrors its policy of trying to offer a TV for everyone at every price point. While this policy is laudable for both consumers and Samsung on paper, it does leave some potentially tricky decisions for people to make once they’ve decided that Samsung is the soundbar brand for them.
To try and make the process a bit easier, we’ve picked out the five best Samsung soundbars based across criteria that should cover the most common consumer needs. Before we get to those, though, we’ve also put together a few tips to help you work out exactly what your particular need is.
Best Samsung soundbar: At a glance
- Best Dolby Atmos movie performer: Samsung HW-Q990B
- Best for design: Samsung HW-S800B
- Best single-bar soundbar: Samsung HW-S60B
How to choose the best Samsung soundbar for you
To give you an idea of the scale of the issues involved in trying to home in on the best Samsung soundbar for you, the brand’s current soundbar range takes in everything from simple one-bar, two-channel solutions to ground-breaking multi-speaker, 11.1.4-channel solutions, across prices that range from £129 to £1,599. With this latter fact in mind, our first tip is…
Pick a price
The easiest, and in many cases most important, way to quickly narrow down your soundbar search is to figure out how much you can afford to spend on one. It’s true with soundbars as with pretty much everything in life that the more you spend, the more you typically get. When it comes to soundbars, a bigger spend generally means more power, more channels, more features and better audio quality.
Decide if surround sound or tidy design is most important to you
Soundbars were originally designed as simple, single-bar products intended to sit underneath your TV screen, providing a way of greatly improving your home entertainment system’s audio performance without filling your living room with boxes.
These days, it’s now common for soundbars to ship with other physical components such as subwoofers and rear channel speakers. Adding external subwoofers tends to greatly enhance bass performance, while adding rear speakers will turn what would otherwise be a front soundstage only into a full surround sound experience.
So, you need to make a decision as to what your priority with a soundbar is. If it’s chiefly sound quality, especially with films, you should look at a system with sub and rear speakers included. If your budget can’t stretch to a system with rears, at least look for a relatively meaty soundbar and subwoofer combination. If your priority is minimising the impact of your sound system on room decor, you’ll probably want to focus on a single soundbar solution.
Take the size of your room into account
Simply put, big rooms need relatively powerful soundbars to ensure that the sound pushes forwards and out from the soundbar enough to generate an immersive soundstage. By the same token, Samsung’s most premium soundbars could be a bit overwhelming for relatively small rooms. Or, at any rate, you could end up paying extra for power you don’t really need.
What inputs do you need?
Different models in Samsung’s range support different levels of connectivity – so make sure the model you go for can cater for all the connections your particular home entertainment setup needs. These can include HDMI ports, optical digital audio inputs, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Ideally you’ll want HDMI ports with ARC (Audio Return Channel) or eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel) support. These allow digital audio data to be transferred between your TV and soundbar using just one HDMI cable, with eARC supporting higher bandwidth audio formats than ARC. This then enables you to hook up other devices to your TV via HDMI and play audio from them through your soundbar.
Additional HDMI inputs are very useful too, as they let you pass audio from other sources through your soundbar. Such HDMI passthrough doesn’t always support all the video features you may want, however. Some soundbars won’t pass through Dolby Vision HDR or HDR10+ HDR signals, or the 4K/120Hz feeds now output by the latest games consoles and premium PCs.
Samsung’s soundbars with HDMI passthrough typically support HDR10+ though, and most also support Dolby Vision. At the time of writing, no Samsung soundbars support 4K/120Hz passthrough.
READ NEXT: The best HDMI cables
The best Samsung soundbars to buy in 2023
1. Samsung HW-Q990B: The best Samsung soundbar for immersion
Price: £1,599 | Buy now from Amazon
The HW-Q990B is Samsung’s flagship soundbar and delivers the most immersive sound performance of any soundbar we’ve heard. It immaculately envelops you in a hemisphere of sound, and delivers a three-dimensional sense of space that includes sounds above you, behind you and down your sides. This is essential to a true Dolby Atmos experience, and the 11.1.4-channel setup delivers this in a uniquely effective way.
The wide main soundbar delivers audio with a fantastic amount of detail, power and dynamic range, the latter of which helps it blend in superbly with the monumental bass output by the subwoofer. A subwoofer which, by the way, features a so-called acoustic lens over its driver to help its bass sound smoother and less directional.
Add in HDMI passthrough and Bluetooth/Wi-Fi support, and the Q990B gives you the features and performance of a very decent speaker/AV receiver system for a fraction of the price and inconvenience.
Read our Samsung HW-Q990B review for more details
Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer, two rear speakers; Channel configuration: 11.1.4; Stated power: 656W; Connections: 2 x HDMI inputs, 1 x HDMI output, optical digital audio input, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; HDMI passthrough support: Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 4K at 60Hz, HDR10+; HDMI ARC/eARC support: eARC; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar – 1232 x 138 x 70mm, subwoofer – 220 x 410 X 413mm, rears – 1230 x 140 x 201mm each; Weight: Soundbar – 7.7kg, subwoofer – 11.7kg, rears – 3.4kg each
2. Samsung HW-S800B: The best Samsung soundbar for design
Price: £749 | Buy now from John Lewis 
The HW-S800B stands out from Samsung’s typically somewhat chunky soundbar range by delivering a beautifully elegant, slimline design without sacrificing sound quality nearly as much as you might expect.
There are four key elements to the S800B’s design that help it slot tastefully into even the most fashionable living spaces. First, while wide, the main soundbar is remarkably slim in both height and depth terms for something equipped with nine speakers and 330W of power. It also looks gorgeous, and its left and right ends are elegantly rounded off. Finally, it compensates for the potential bass-limiting slenderness of the main soundbar by shipping with a relatively hefty subwoofer.
Not only does it look the part, but it sounds the part, too. The impact, power, detail and positional accuracy the S800B manages to deliver is hard to reconcile with its ultra-trim form, with two up-firing drivers even ensuring that Dolby Atmos mixes enjoy a sense of height as well as width and room-filling forward impact. The specially designed subwoofer, meanwhile, expertly prevents the S800B from sounding thin or flimsy, ensuring it ends up a near perfect combination of form and function.
Read our Samsung HW-S800B review for more details
Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer; Channel configuration: 3.1.2; Stated power: 330W; Connections: 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; HDMI passthrough support: N/A; HDMI ARC support: eARC; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar – 1160 x 40 x 38mm, subwoofer – 238 x 238 x 241mm; Weight: Soundbar – 1.4kg, subwoofer – 6.4kg
3. Samsung HW-S60B: Best single-bar Samsung soundbar
Price: £449 | Buy now from John Lewis
Despite sitting in the ‘lifestyle’ section of Samsung’s current soundbar range, the HW-S60B’s attractive and simple design plays host to a surprisingly uncompromising sound system.
It’s a single bar, so you don’t need to find a spot for a subwoofer or rear speakers to enjoy its home entertainment goodies, while attractively rounded ends and a relatively compact form further minimise its impact on your decor. While its single bar approach inevitably means the S60B can’t give you the sort of bass depths or surround sound experiences Samsung’s multi-component soundbars can, it still belts out movies across an engagingly wide soundstage at volume rarely heard at the sub-£500 soundbar level.
The S60B’s five channels of sound ensure there’s plenty of clarity and detail to go with the power, and the bar gets good value out of ‘virtual’ Dolby Atmos and DTS:X despite the lack of any real rear or upfiring speakers. You can make the soundstage even bigger, too, by partnering the S60B with the speakers built into relatively recent Samsung TVs courtesy of the brand’s Q-Symphony feature. Talk about a little going a long way…
Key specs – Elements: Main soundbar; Channel configuration: 5.0; Stated power: 200W; Connections: 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi; HDMI passthrough support: N/A; HDMI ARC support: ARC; Dimensions (WDH): 670 x 105 x 62mm; Weight: 2.7kg
4. Samsung HW-B650: Best Samsung soundbar for gaming
Price: £299 | Buy now from AO.com
Soundbars aren’t just for film fans – they’re a great option for gamers too. After all, pretty much every game these days benefits from an immersive soundtrack designed to put you at the heart of the action and give you a competitive edge as you track enemy attacks more accurately.
Samsung’s HW-B650 fits the gaming soundbar bill particularly well. It’s seriously powerful, fitting 430W of power from seven built-in speakers into its trim form, while Virtual DTS:X processing helps deliver a wider, higher and more enveloping soundstage around your seating position than most similarly priced bar-plus-sub packages.
The soundbar features a dedicated centre channel speaker to ensure dialogue is always clear, while the potent subwoofer adds a real sense of heft to the huge creatures, explosions and gunfire that are such staples of the gaming world. The B650 even includes a Game Mode that uses cross-talk cancellation technology to remove distracting sounds so that you can focus better on those subtle life and death gameplay elements. Finally, the B650 includes a Night Mode that compresses the soundbar’s dynamic range – especially bass – to reduce the chance of your Call Of Duty grenades waking neighbours or sleeping children.
Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer; Channel configuration: 3.1; Stated power: 430W; Connections: 1 x HDMI input, 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, optical digital audio input; HDMI passthrough support: HD, SDR (no 4K or HDR); HDMI ARC support: Yes; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar: 1030 x 105 x 60mm, subwoofer – 184 x 295 x 346mm; Weight: Soundbar – 3.1kg, subwoofer – 5.1kg
5. Samsung HW-Q930B: Best Samsung soundbar for value
Price: £1,099 | Buy now from Currys
We know what you’re thinking: how can a £1,099 soundbar be our best value pick from Samsung’s current soundbar range? Well, the HW-Q930B is Samsung’s second most highly specified soundbar, sitting one rung below the HW-Q990B featured earlier. Despite being just one step down from the Q990B, it’s a whopping £500 cheaper. Which looks like a surprisingly big price drop once you start exploring the Q930B’s feature sheet.
The Q930B delivers a huge 9.1.4-channel count, courtesy of a 7.2-channel main soundbar, a large wireless subwoofer, and wireless rear speakers equipped with two channels each. It also spreads a healthy 540W across all those channels, while its connections include an HDMI passthrough capable of supporting 4K HDR signals up to 60Hz.
All the smart features of Samsung’s flagship Q990B soundbar model are present too – including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Alexa voice control. On top of all this, the key Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound formats are not just supported but handled brilliantly. In short, the Q930B’s sound gets much closer to the mighty Q990B than you’d expect considering it costs two thirds of the price.
Key specs – Elements: Soundbar, subwoofer, two rear speakers; Channel configuration: 9.1.4; Stated power: 540W; Connections: 1 x HDMI input, 1 x HDMI output, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, optical digital audio input; HDMI passthrough support: 4K/60Hz, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR10+; HDMI ARC/eARC support: Yes/yes; Dimensions (WDH): Soundbar – 1111 x 120 x 60mm, subwoofer – 210 x 403 x 403mm, rears – 201 x 140 x 130mm; Weight: Soundbar – 9.87kg, subwoofer – 9.8kg, rears – 3.1kg each
