Expert explain how to get the best quality in a home with soundbars

Upgrading your TV setup can be daunting with so many options on the market. While TVs on their own have gotten better over time, they still don’t hold a candle to external speakers. The easiest way to enhance sound is to get a soundbar. Soundbars are small but mighty external speakers that provide an immersive sound experience.

John Couling, senior vice president of entertainment at Dolby, suggests that one of the challenges for anyone making a television is to make it big and thin, which makes it difficult to produce great sound. That’s where soundbars come in, taking the responsibility to make sound and putting it into its own device, where that can be the focus of that device.

Couling recognizes that home theater setups with many speakers are impractical for most people, even those looking to get a full cinema experience, and points out that there has been a lot of innovation over the past few years in the soundbar category. Considering that, there are a few factors to remember when finding the soundbar that’s right for you.

First, Couling recommends looking at the formats the soundbar supports. “It needs to support Dolby Digital at the bare minimum in order to give you some type of surround sound, but really you should look for Dolby Atmos,” he tells Decider.

Practical elements matter, too. Couling suggests looking at the various sizes of soundbars available and envisioning how they will look in your specific space.

You should also look at how many speakers make up the soundbar and in which directions they fire. This comes in the form of a “speaker channel” number.

Brands also matter — if you’re buying a soundbar to pair with the TV you already have, there may be a soundbar specifically manufactured to interact with your TV.

The last consideration is ensuring it works for you across different types of entertainment. For gamers, soundbars with low latency are a great option.

Below are eight of the best soundbars you can buy in 2023, listed alphabetically — all of them are recommended by Dolby experts.

• Bose Soundbar 700
• Definitive Technology Studio 3D Mini Soundbar
• Samsung HW-Q950T Soundbar
• Sonos Arc
• Sonos Beam
• Sony HT-Z9F Soundbar
• Vizio M512a-H6 Soundbar
• Yamaha YSP-5600 Soundbar