(movie dialogue)
- Watchin' "Jaws," watchin' "Jaws".
- I... I can't hear anything.
- Oh oh. I forgot to plug in my soundbar.
- Plug in your what?
- [Adam] Soundbar. It makes the TV, like, louder and sound better.
- Were the speakers not good enough?
Why do you have a separate device for speakers?
- Well, TV's have gotten so thin
that the speakers are super small. They don't sound great.
So you need something bigger to get, like, a cinematic experience.
(smooth jazz)
- Okay, so what kind of sound bar is this?
- [Adam] This is the Samsung TV Mate. It's pretty compact,
has the basic features you'd want from a soundbar.
It's one piece. It will play all the audio
that your TV will play, and it's also pretty cheap.
You want to be able to hear you TV, right?
I guess. Let's listen to this one.
(movie audio)
- Does it do anything else?
- No, not really. It pretty much just makes it louder.
- [Sidney] Alright, how much is it?
- [Adam] 200 bucks.
- [Sydney] 200 bucks for more of what the TV already does?
- We talked about this. The TV makes really bad sound.
So, you get a soundbar. Tou get bigger speakers
and better sound.
- Alright, well I know you to be the soundbar guy.
Do you have any that can do a little bit more?
- Yeah, sure! Let me check.
(music)
- [Adam] This is the Polk Command Bar.
You're gonna get more sound from it.
It comes with an Amazon Echo Dot
just stuffed in the middle of it.
You can use your voice to turn up the volume of the tv.
- Let's here it.
(movie dialog)
- [Sydney] Not bad, not bad,
but it's basically the same as the last one, right?
It's the same thing as The TV but just louder.
- Actually, no.
(smooth jazz)
- [Sydney] What?
- [Adam] It comes with a subwoofer.
- [Sydney] What? Okay.
- [Adam] Let me plug it in. You'll hear that bass.
(movie audio)
- You're, like, feeling the shark now.
With a wider soundbar
you're gonna have a bigger sound stage,
which means that you're not just gonna hear the sound
coming out of a little speaker in the middle of the TV.
It's gonna be as wide as the room.
And on top of that, you've got the Alexa features.
Alexa, turn the volume down.
(movie audio)
- It went down!
- Well done. Cool.
- If you love to scream at your TV,
this is the perfect thing for you.
Alexa, pause the movie.
- [Alexa] Sorry, I'm not sure about that.
- Okay, so what does Alexa do?
- Alexa, mute.
She can mute the tv.
It's really like volume up, volume down.
- Pretty simple for now.
Alexa's always getting smarter.
(laughs)
Alexa, turn the volume up to 50.
(loud music)
- [Sydney] Oh, wow.
Alright, I'm a little bit impressed. How expensive is this?
- [Adam] This one's $300.
- Say I'm not gonna... 300 bucks for something this hideous.
I don't know.
(smooth jazz)
- [Sydney] I mean, overall it seems pretty cool.
It's just ugly.
We can do a little bit better than that.
- I've got one more. Let's check it out.
- [Adam] This is the Sonos Beam.
It's a sound bar. It's also a Sonos speaker
that works with other Sonos speakers.
It works not only with Alexa but also Siri,
and later this year, it'll work with Google Assistant.
The sound quality is probably the best out of
all three that we've looked at.
- [Sydney] Alright, let's hear it.
- Okay
(movie audio)
- That was awesome!
- This one sounds pretty good.
- I'm impressed. How much is it?
- [Adam] It's $400.
But the way I would think about is that
you're getting a great sound bar,
but you're also getting a Sonos speaker,
so that if you have Sonos speakers,
if you wanna buy more Sonos speakers, then you can have
a whole wireless audio system in your house.
So, what do you think?
- I mean, as someone who didn't know what these were
before 3 minutes ago,
I don't think I could justify probably spending $400 on it,
but of the three, I think the $300 one
was probably the most affordable, the most reasonable.
- [Sydney] I like it that it's a lot bigger,
takes up a lot of space, and honestly I like the idea
of just bringing out a subwoofer
when I have friends over to watch a movie.
- Nice, that's a cool trick.
- Me, I still really like the Sonos, so while we're here,
let's enjoy it with some sweet shark hunting.
(smooth jazz)