Samsung HW-Q990B Soundbar Review - They've Done It Again??

hey everyone Jonah Mathis here and man does it feel good to be back this is the Samsung HW q990b the successor to last year's 950a this system is similar yet very different and aside from some of the usual specs we saw last year there have been some significant changes all around if you remember my past review of the q950a or you haven't seen that review I was so bold to call it the king of sound bars despite some of the negative aspects that the system held as always I aim to deliver the most realistic reviews I can for you and with that being said I'll try to pick apart everything that I can that's right even the negatives and I'd appreciate it if you press the like button right now too so let's see what they've done with the new q990b that makes it so much better than its previous model the general shape and look of the system is not a whole lot different from the pass model but they did make two fantastic changes the first is that there's no more cloth like thank God the sound bar and Surround speakers were almost entirely covered in cloth and the sub had a cloth covering over the woofer and by the way I'm still not a big fan of the subwoofer facing to the right I prefer it to face forward so that it's easier to position it regardless of your room layout anyways it was just extremely difficult to keep all the components of the old system clean especially if you had furry animals running around in your home but this new material without any cloth just adds a layer of durability and makes all the components in the system just look much much better another great decision Samsung made was to put the display on the front of the sound bar it's a very interesting design choice I have absolutely no clue how a massive company like Samsung who spends an obscene amount of money on designing the systems could even think about putting a display on the top of a sound bar two years in a row mind you it was truly one of the dumbest things I think I've seen featured on a sound bar and as a person who doesn't want to get up every time I want to make an adjustment with the remote control I'm not going to praise them for fixing something really stupid but enough with bashing them in reality Samsung has taken actual feedback from their customers and produce real changes that I'm happy with especially because these were things that I've said over and over again so good job Samsung on the back slash bottom of the sound bar you'd say is where we have the HDMI out earc Port two HDMI inputs and one digital optical input Samsung has slowly been doing away with outdated ports it's becoming very minimal in terms of connectivity options I won't be surprised if we see digital optical go away in the next few years as well before we jump into the setup process I want to thank the sponsor of this video established titles established titles is based on the historic Scottish custom where landowners are referred to as Lords and Ladies in English each title pack includes at least one square foot of dedicated land with a unique pot number on a private estate in edelston Scotland you'll also receive an official certificate with a Crest as well established titles plants a tree with every order and works with global Charities like one tree planted and trees for the future to help support Global reforestation efforts this is one of those fun little gifts you could get for a friend or family a member or really any of the difficult to shop for people in your life and it also helps support a good cause so it's basically a win-win and what's really cool is that you can officially include the title Lord or lady on your credit card plane tickets or really any documents that allow for prefixes established titles is actually running a massive Black Friday sale right now plus if you use the code Jonah you'll get an additional 10 off go to establishtitles.com Jonah to get your gifts now and help support the channel the first 200 people purchasing a title pack using MyLink will almost be right next to my plot with enough of us we could have our own little audiophile kingdom all the way in Scotland thanks again to established titles for sponsoring this video this system is extremely easy to set up like basically every other Soundbar system that's on the market now plug everything into power and all the components should automatically pair up if they don't automatically pair there's a simple process to follow in order to do so then you need to open the SmartThings app on your phone first you'll have to connect the q990b to your Wi-Fi network and set it up in a room the app does a very good job of taking you through these different steps the apps functions have changed a little bit since we've last talked about them and there's some pretty substantial improvements that have been made I'll dive into those here in a minute you'll definitely want to run the auto EQ process this uses the built-in microphones to calibrate the audio for your room it shows the progress on the soundbar's display and takes a couple of minutes to run fully it seems to have made a notably good difference and felt like the sound expanded out a bit more improving the 3D audio bubble in general like all the other apps it allows you to change the input adjust the volume switch between four different sound modes change the EQ and even dive into some more advanced sound settings this is where you can toggle The Voice enhancement base enhancement and night mode features I honestly didn't really use these because I never found it necessary to do so everything sounded fine for me and turning any of them on made it sound worse for me but everyone in every room is different all in all the adjustments are pretty easy to find and use except for one and in my opinion it's the biggest one strangely enough if you hit the three dots on the upper right hand corner you can go into the device settings here is where you can do a few different things but first and most importantly the individual Channel level adjustments it's here where you can adjust the center Channel Side wide front top rear rear top and rear side channels this is easily one of the most underrated features that few sound systems have don't really know why they hide it in the device settings up in the menu it should just be on the front page with everything else but at least it's there the other features in the device settings worth mentioning are you know Bluetooth pairing audio sync and the rear speaker mode this allows you to move your surround speakers to the front of the room now I didn't actually try this out because I'm not sure how many people would do this but it seems like an interesting feature nonetheless now I got confirmation from Samsung that it doesn't change the system configuration the system stays 11.1.4 channels you'll move this around less speaker to the front right and the surround right speaker to the front left so that the side speakers are pointing outwards when when using the front surround mode the system changes the surround left and Surround right audio signal and adds a bit of sound field processing again I'm very happy to see Samsung adding in features requested by their customers the app works very well and gives you a lot that you can control a lot more than other apps do since most of us are getting a sound system to enjoy our favorite movies TV shows and video games I made sure to go pretty in depth on the Surround Sound Performance from dialogue heavy scenes to action and bass heavy scenes this system is overall extremely impressive for all the regulars on my channel you may have noticed I'm testing equipment in a completely new space which I'm still getting used to this room is a completely different shape and size than my previous living room so it took me a while to get a baseline for how things should sound and while comparing other popular systems and retesting the system repeatedly I have a good idea of what I truly am listening to in here overall the system does really well to match with its previous model with one big exception and that's that the base has gotten even better of course I'm still a fan of the Sonos sub and the Sony sw5 sub but for your money that you're spending Samsung gives you a pretty good bang for your buck here the entire system does a very good job of producing small details throughout the entire room unlike a number of other systems you can hear all the detail all around the room this especially does a great job of enveloping you in movie fight scenes race scenes or any other action that takes place and the dialogue is far from a disappointment it is extremely clear I've seen it in the past where dialogue can get washed out by basically everything else going on in the room and that's just not the case here I can't say the same for all other systems so great job Samsung one of the movies I've used often for my surround sound testing is Avengers endgame which I haven't seen in quite a while it really just sucked me in with how immersive and great the audio sounded it's actually been a while since I've watched any movies with how busy I've been with other things going on but this system really made me sit down and really enjoy the the entire experience you know my first impression was that the bass wasn't much better but after listening to it with more and different movies different TV shows I thought it does a much better job than the previous one it's not the most punchier boomy sub in the world but it does a great job with the background low end frequencies and can ramp up pretty well too overall I'm much more impressed with the low end with this Samsung system than the previous one I just recommend downloading the app and adjusting some of the individual Channel adjustments to find the sweet spot that you enjoy the most the one complaint I will make is that I still want to see a design change a side firing sub just isn't my favorite and this could be a next level system if we saw a different sub release that's one thing I love about Sony with their most recent release they came out with the sw3 sub which is more comparable to this Samsung sub and a much higher quality sw5 sub that just blows this one out of the water now the surrounds provide the perfect amount of sound to be heard and appreciated but they're not overpowering or distracting they were a little quiet for me at first but I upped levels a bit to around plus four or plus five and they sounded perfect to me this can totally depend on how close they are to where your seating area is now this seems to be a common trend for me where I try to turn up the surrounds quite a bit but maybe that's just because I enjoy hearing the 360 degree bubble a bit more I don't know could just be my personal preference after all if you buy a full system you might as well put it to work including all of the surround speakers the sound quality when watching movies TV shows or gaming is just overall Stellar I couldn't be much more satisfied with the audio quality that this entire system provides it's been really cool to see how Samsung has improved upon their highest end Soundbar year over year and I think they really nailed it with this one and I know not everyone's going to be using the system specifically for music as much but for those that do I want you to be sure to tune in here this is one of my favorite systems when it comes to listening to music it really helped invigorate like a love for you know diving into different albums listening to new songs new genres it was very very enjoyable to listen to when you put the system in adaptive sound mode it does a 10 times better job than any of the other modes and just takes the audio to a whole nother level there's this wonderful balance between the sound bar subwoofer and Surround speakers and the subwoofer boy it actually shines here much better I really really liked it and would even say it's on par with the Sonos Arc in my opinion minus the software features of course however I did notice that the system was very slow to respond when using AirPlay or Spotify connect I don't think it has anything to do with my Wi-Fi network as I've never really had issues like this before and of course I tested a wide variety of music to make sure I didn't encounter any major issues and of course I did not I definitely don't have anything else negative to say about the system overall the music sounds really great from it in my opinion you know I'm sure some audio files would disagree here but hey I don't think most people are audiophiles nowadays the average person I think is going to love it so I've reviewed a lot of different sound bars and it's really nice and refreshing to see Samsung doing exactly what their customers are are asking for with their higher end Soundbar systems a lot of the time that's totally not the case with the other Audio Giants and it's unfortunately sad to see when I began looking back at my 950a review I had four main things I didn't like about the q950a first the cloth covering the sound bar surrounds and the sub was cheap looking and overall not very appealing second the base was pretty inconsistent third they had the display on top of the Soundbar rather than on the front fourth and finally you couldn't adjust the channel levels inside of the app it's amazing that Samsung has managed to address all four of these major gripes with this new system and it's only a hundred dollars more expensive than last year's model coming out to Seventeen hundred dollars for this entire system so in my opinion fantastic job Samsung and just to make it super clear they're not paying me to say any of this as much as I've praised the system there are a few things I'd like to see though I'd love to see the option to add an additional subwoofer or to have a higher quality option to pair with the sound bar and surround rounds I like this sub a lot more but it's definitely not my favorite now secondly I'd love to see a max volume setting for this system at about 25 this sound bar is loud like any louder than 30 is highly highly uncomfortable the crazy thing is this thing goes all the way up to a hundred God forbid someone accidentally max out the volume and plays something I'm afraid it would blow every single speaker in the system simultaneously as well as your eardrums like it's way too loud but aside from those two things I'm excited to see what Samsung's next move is but for now I'd absolutely recommend this system to anyone that's interested in improving their audio experience tremendously if you have any questions about anything I may or may not have mentioned in this video just leave a comment down below and let me know also if you'd be interested in seeing some new types of videos on maybe Wi-Fi or Smart Home Tech also let me know down below I want to do everything I can to make sure you guys are happy with the content I publish and if that's branching out to new styles of content I'd love to do just that until next time bye

Channel: Jonah Matthes

Views: 137,532

Keywords: soundbar, sound bar, tv, receiver, a/v receiver, projector, speakers, projector screen, HDMI, samsung, HW-Q990B, Q990B

Id: XGUJIGSoKDY

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 05 2022