LG S95TR 9.1.5 Soundbar System Review: Perfect Audio for Your OLED

Plugging successful the soundbar done HDMI (it features eARC) to immoderate modern TV means that you tin instantly usage the TV distant to power audio volume, but you volition privation to usage the distant connected the soundbar itself (unless you ain an LG TV), to alteration settings. It does besides enactment things similar Tidal Connect Dolby Vision pass-through, which makes it a large barroom to watercourse euphony to, oregon plug your disc subordinate successful for full-bitrate video (and audio).

Pressing Play

I had the pleasance of reviewing this strategy alongside LG’s caller C4 OLED, which tin adhd adjacent much channels to the mix, contributing its ain TV speakers to boost the halfway transmission and marque it dependable a spot much similar the voices are coming straight from the image.

The immense array of speakers and the measurement they tin nutrient means you truly get a consciousness of standard erstwhile scenes change, oregon erstwhile you spell from 1 benignant of happening to another. When playing modern classics similar Dune and Mad Max: Fury Road, you consciousness the immensity of the scenes successful the audio illustration that the bar, subwoofer, and outer speakers convey. When my woman switches backmost implicit to RuPaul’s Drag Race, I’m instantly sucked backmost into what’s happening onscreen, with much accepted three-channel TV audio that’s absorbing and dynamic, but overmuch smaller-feeling successful your space.

You tin set dependable modes connected the bar, but I thin to err connected the broadside of modular settings but erstwhile watching a film, wherever I experimented (and occasionally settled on) the Cinema mode, which passes a spot much dependable to the situation and tallness channels, adjacent arsenic I tin tell.

Standard mode fundamentally listens to immoderate the TV is telling it to do, which makes it play ace bully with LG’s AI processing wrong late-model TVs. With this and the C4, it’s fundamentally a “turn connected and hide it’s there” vibe, which is what I similar successful my location theatre systems. There is thing worse than having to unfastened cabinets and deed buttons and hold for things to crook connected and spot each other. It truly can’t beryllium overstated however good it worked (and however uncommon an acquisition this is, oddly, successful A/V land).

The nonstop rival to this exemplary is Samsung’s Q990D ($1,700), which, I person to admit, I similar successful immoderate ways. The audio illustration of the LG tin beryllium a spot thinner and much agleam than Samsung’s, and I find that Samsung’s exemplary bounces dependable disconnected the walls a spot amended for a wider soundstage. That said, fixed however good the S95TR integrates with late-model LG TVs, I’d astir apt take this implicit the Samsung barroom if I was buying the LG TV, and likewise bargain the Samsung barroom if I was buying a Samsung TV.

As acold arsenic elemental (and, let’s beryllium honest, not heinously expensive) ways to outfit a country with a beauteous coagulated approximation of what they’d acquisition successful an A/V nerd’s cave, I deliberation LG has truly nailed it here. If I was buying a C4 and didn’t person a due dependable strategy to brace it with, I’d truly beryllium looking astatine this.