Samsung HT-E8200 Blu-ray Sound Bar System - Where's The Bass?
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Conclusion
Final Thoughts
Samsung dominates quite a few market segments. It has established a solid stranglehold on the Android smartphone market and its LED televisions have come out favorably from their contest with their Japanese counterparts. But if you have read through our performance analysis of the Samsung HT-E8200 sound bar in the previous pages, you will realize that they have missed the mark in the audio territory.
Test Type | Score |
---|---|
Blu-ray Testing (movie effects) | 6.5 |
Blu-ray Testing (music and soundtrack) | 7.0 |
MP3 Audio Tracks Testing | 6.5 |
Overall Audio Performance | 6.5 |
With respect to design, the Samsung sound bar seems to be equipped with all the relevant components to succeed. It has the standard number of ports and has a built in Blu-ray player. A wireless sub-woofer design gives it a unique selling point among its contenders and makes it easier to cope with cable management. But looking impressive on paper does not always translate to real world excellence.
Our major problem with the audio output from the HT-E8200 was the absence of the low registers. This is a cardinal sin for a home entertainment system. The core functionality of any home theater system is to provide cinema level sound - to a certain extent constrained by the cost and quality. With its anemic bass performance, this wasn't quite achievable. The HT-E8200 was unable to accurately render sound effects which detracted severely from our viewing of Superman Returns. In the same vein, while the soundstage was adequately wide, we felt it lacked verticality and was another shortcoming of the sound bar.
Moving on to music, the Samsung HT-E8200 had strong mid-range frequencies with good presence. But muted trebles and weak bass meant that it was hard to fully enjoy most songs from our testing suite. Subpar transient response also meant that the subtle nuances, color and timbre of the instruments were missing. On the whole, the sound bar was just able to achieve a passing grade for this portion of our testing.
Its ancillary features actually help bump up the overall score after the disappointing audio. The HT-E8200 sound bar provides access to Samsung’s Smart Hub which includes a full web browser as well as web content. Snappy operations and an intuitive user interface add to the usability of the Smart Hub, which in our experience is easily the best smart feature suite on the market at present. You can read more about our experience with Smart Hub, here and here.
If your TV does not have smart features, you can perhaps just consider the HT-E8200 on the basis of its Smart Hub alone. Additionally, it can provide you with much better audio output than what your TV is capable of (even though we're not quite content of its audio quality within its playing field). Of course, do note that there are other products, such as a dedicated Samsung Blu-ray player which can get you access to the same services. And that seems to be the unfortunate case with the HT-E8200. We loved the Smart Hub. We loved the ease of setting up the wireless subwoofer and convenient placement. But we did not love the audio, which is unfortunately the main job of a sound bar.
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