Event Coverage

HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2012: Editor's Choice - Part 1

By Team HardwareZone - 29 Feb 2012

Best Sound Bar System

Best Sound Bar System

Great visuals deserve great audio, which can be easily accomplished by procuring a sound bar to go along with your TV. These speaker systems provide a different quality of experience due to their superior hardware and feature set as opposed to what your TV could handle on its own. For the this year's roundup, we searched for the best mid-level sound bars comprising of a standalone subwoofer and a horizontal speaker bar around the S$1000 price point. While the provision of a Blu-ray player in the package was a bonus, it was not a necessary feature for inclusion in this year's race. Just to disclaim, there were a few other possible contenders besides the listed nominees, but the vendors were unable to secure sets for our evaluation despite giving them a long lead time.

Nominees:

  • Pioneer HTZ-HW919BD
  • Philips HTS7140
  • Yamaha YHT-S401

And the Winner Is...

The Yamaha YHT-S401 is our best sound bar system from shining out in our exhaustive testing.

The Yamaha YHT-S401easily delivered the best performance. The sound bar had great fidelity of audio and its natural, neutral tone was a joy to listen to. With slight tweaking of the EQ settings, you can actually get the YHT-S401 to sound as close to perfect as is possible with a product of this kind and class. Though the package lacks a Blu-ray player, its price at S$999 reflects the omission, making it the most value for money from our line-up. Furthermore, multiple HDMI ports allow this sound bar to be paired with a host of devices, while extra connectors leave the option open for adding in more physical speakers to your sound setup at a later time. Simply put, the Yamaha delivered on every front , including being the most versatile option of the bunch and was the clear winner this year.

Scoring Breakdown
Criteria/Model Yamaha YHT-S401 Philips HTS7140 Pioneer HTZ-HW919BD
Design 8.0 7.5 7.0
Features 8.5 7.0 9.0
Performance 9.5 7.5 8.0
Value 9.0 6.5 8.0
Overall 9.0 7.0 8.0
Price S$999 S$1,149 S$1,149

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

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