Picking one of the best soundbars can solve many of your audio issues. Can’t hear the dialogue in your favourite movie or series? A soundbar can help. Do big-budget blockbusters sound thin and weak? A soundbar will change that.
The issue is that as TVs get thinner, the built-in speakers often have to shrink to fit inside the tiniest of cabinet spaces, and the sound lacks the kind of impact to match today’s big screens. There’s plenty of sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP) tech onboard to help get the best TV sound output possible, but even the best TVs aren’t exempt from sounding thin and weedy.
If you’re serious about upgrading your home entertainment system, then investing in a good-quality soundbar is a no-brainer. But finding the best price on soundbars that will suit your needs can be overwhelming. So, we’ve rounded up our picks for the 3 best soundbars available in South Africa in 2022.
Sonos Ray:
Upgrade your TV, music, and gaming experiences with this impressively compact and easy-to-use soundbar. The Sonos Ray soundbar offers consumers a more compact and affordable option from the Sonos range when upgrading their home theatre system. The Ray joins the Sonos soundbar collection alongside the premium Arc soundbar and the compact, Beam (Gen 2), the Ray will be an even more affordable option.
Despite its compact size, the Ray can deliver room-filling sound. With the Ray, Sonos aims to bring great sound for TV, movies, and more to a wider audience by expanding its home theatre range with a more accessible price point. The Ray offers fantastic voice clarity and crisp sound, for an easy listening experience.
Beosound Theatre
This high-end soundbar delivers the power of a multi-product home cinema, all in one singular product. With its powerful sound, advanced technology platform and modular design, the soundbar brings the immersion of a multi-speaker setup into one soundbar that slots seamlessly into any home entertainment system.
Said to be an entire cinema in one soundbar, the Beosound Theatre boasts 12 speaker drivers, including two custom-made long stroke 6.5” woofers and 800 watts of amplification power, providing up to 112dB sound pressure level. Speech clarity is managed by the custom-made center channel, where the tweeter is mounted directly in front of the midrange. The Beosound Theatre introduces a new three-dimensional sound directivity with the combination of direct, side- and up-firing speakers. This means that all loudspeaker drivers are working together not only to produce sound, but to control its beam width and direction.
The Beosound Theatre will be available in South African stores from mid-October 2022.
Sony HT-A3000 soundbar
Sony’s HT-A3000 soundbar, delivers a 360 Spatial Sound experience, putting you at the heart of your favourite movies and music. The HT-A3000 features 3.1 channels, three front speakers including a dedicated centre speaker for clear dialogue and a built-in dual subwoofer for deep bass. Coupled with Vertical Surround Engine and S-Force PRO Front Surround, the A3000 creates virtual surround sound that comes from multiple dimensions so you can fully enjoy the thrill of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.
The soundbar works with Google-assistant with Chromecast built-in or Amazon Alexa-enabled devices. Just add the A3000 to your speaker group using the Google Home app to start playing music, change the volume or many other functions using just your voice.
The A3000 is almost ready to go straight out of the box. Simply connect to your TV using the HDMI eARC connection and power on. With USB, optical in, as well as HDMI out (eARC) and S-CENTER OUT for compatible BRAVIA TVs, you have all the connections you need to enjoy a breath-taking surround sound experience.
