LG LAS355B - 2.1 Channel 120 W Wired Woofer with USB Input

When I first fired up this soundbar i was disappointed because it sounded muddy, particularly in the upper bass and it proved difficult to get a decent bass without rumble in the wrong place. It didn't seem much of an improvement on the TV internal speakers. Then I remembered a trick from my Hi-Fi days and placed the subwoofer on acoustic cones (if you haven't heard of these, ask your local hi-fi dealer) on a hard surface. I use a 3 cone configuration which is the stablest setup. This has the double benefit of stopping the bass from going through the floor to anyone underneath and also of thrusting the full bass into the room. The effect was magical. The sound tightened up across the whole spectrum and even using it to listen to music is very acceptable, although of course no substitute for a true hi-fi system. Screw-in spikes might be another solution but the beauty of the cones is that they don't have to be screwed in. I have been using ribbon speakers for the last couple of decades which don't need these precautions so forgot I had them lying around. Next I noticed the volume fluctuation mentioned in other reviews. In my case it turned out to be the auto volume setting on the remote control which I had no doubt turned on when playing about with it before I found the solution to the bass problem. I connect the speakers to my TV by Bluetooth and have no problem with connection or sound quality. Finally a new speaker system needs to be used for a while before it reaches its optimum and now after a few weeks, I am completely happy with it. As an audiophile, I have rated it 5 stars according to its price and intended use and not as compared to a true hi-fi system, as opposed to just a stereo system with which it can compete very well.

I had this soundbar up and running in minutes. The sound quality is excellent. 120 watts is more than enough! The sound is crystal clear, you can clearly hear everyone's voice and there is a genuine surround effect on cinema setting. Sounds come from the back, sides and front to impressive effect. I played a sitcom from Netflix on cinema setting with bass, woofer level and treble at 0. The sound was very clear and loud with the volume extremely low (12.) The volume on this soundbar goes very, very loud! Above level 56, which is the highest I tried it on. I played Jurassic Park, the woofer was shaking at the back and it was so clear and once again loud! Music sounds incredible via YouTube with the woofer flexing its muscles even at a low sound level. If you play it on standard it sounds like a regular TV, if you play it on cinema setting, the surround is impressive and clear. TV speakers can't compete with this, not even close.

You get a good sound out of these - I have a couple that I use for PC/desktop use. My home cinema setup is a bit more advanced than this but, as a budget home cinema solution, I still think that these would fill a small room adequately. There are some nice features on the remote for different sound effect presets (music, cinema, etc) and a rather nice separate sub-woofer volume button. One thing I saw in some of the reviews was mention of poor and tinny sound... I had the same problem until I quickly realised that I had not inserted the sub-woofer wires correctly (which is surprisingly easy to do when you are trying to connect it up while it's bolted to the wall and you are scrabbling around the back) - so if you have this double check that you haven't put the wires above the snap clips instead of below - both ways feel right and hold the wire if you can't see what you are doing!

Sound on our Samsung 40" tv was kind of rubbish. Not now - all changed with this soundbar & subwoofer - what a difference! We can now hear our tv. Came in a rather large box, but the width of the soundbar (about a metre) and the depth of the woofer mean it's necessary. Buy an optical cable separately - it's not included. Easy to connect - the optical connecting 'socket' is kind of hidden behind a plastic 'plug': just push hard. Connecting the subwoofer is slightly fiddly because the 'push buttons' that clamp onto the wires are on the 'wrong' side [for my fat fingers]. Managed it ok, though, and slim-fingered people should have no problem. Looks good in front of our tv - it has a digital readout so you can see which 'mode', etc you've chosen. The subwoofer fits nicely on the middle shelf of the tv stand. Remote control is quite small, but our tv remote also adjusts the soundbar volume. Sound quality is great - we prefer 'Cinema' setting, but 'Standard' is also pretty good. Treble & Bass EQ can both be adjusted using the weird-looking button between the vol & woofer control buttons. Otherwise, the paper instructions are quite good. There are several different features, like night mode (reduces volume a bit). Overall, we're very pleased with this product. Delivery was quick, too.

There's a big issue with this model and maybe others too. Anyone can connect to this sound bar via Bluetooth even when it's in use or on standby, first you loose sound from the TV and then you see their device name on the display. This is very poor show indeed and I was a fan of LG until this. The sound quality is good but I wouldn't say great, I added a bigger subwoofer along with the suplied mid range woofer and it sounds more like it should great on sci-fi movies you can really feel the rumble of those space craft engines. If you plan on doing some speaker swaps yourself remember to pay attention to speaker impedance, the sound bar requires a 4 ohm load for the woofer. For those who are interested I'm using 2 x 12inch 4 ohm speakers wired in series (2 ohm) with the suplied woofer in parallel to them, this gives a 6 ohm load but it works excellently. It's a real shame that you can't disable the Bluetooth as that would definitely have been a 5 star review.

I chose this soundbar as it is quite slim with the punch of a separate wired sub-woofer. The reason is that the fitted stand to my TV means the space between the TV stand and the screen is quite narrow. This fits perfectly. A couple of things I like: 1. The little stands included that can be positioned anywhere along the length of the soundbar to raise it a little (10mm). This means that the soundbar clears the base of the TV so can be positioned better. 2. The sound. I am sure there are better sounding soundbars than this but for what I paid (£79.99 December 2016) it was a huge improvement to the TV speakers. There is real depth to everything going through it. 3. You can turn the display off so it is not distracting you from what is on the screen 4. It is bluetooth enabled so you can stream your music through it. This works well and I should use it more often The only thing I don't like is the size of remote - It is tiny and frequently finds its way behind the sofa cushions. The cinema effect works to a degree but it doesn't compare to dedicated surround sound speakers.

I am SO disappointed with this. From what people have said about their sound bars, I expected my TV to suddenly sound incredible - no more poor quality sound, muffled speech etc. However the sound from this is awful - I can make it loud, but it's nowhere near the quality of the sound from the TV itself. The TV is LG too, so I assumed they would be 100% compatible. It's not intuitive either - I spent 2 hours googling and trying suggestions to get rid of the annoying display on the front, because it doesn't do what is described in the instructions (or other people's posts). I can't hear any difference with or without the sub woofer, regardless of the volume. The volume changes on its own, and varies so much between channels that you have to be ready to turn it down quickly for the benefit of the neighbours - both of which are problems other people have complained about on online forums (NOW I know). Unfortunately I can't return it because I binned the enormous cumbersome box as soon as I unpacked it on the basis of "what could possibly go wrong", while waiting another 4 days for the optical cable to arrive that I ordered at the same time. As if they couldn't include one with the sound bar :-(

Excellent sound for the money, plenty of volume without distortion and easy to configure. Only a couple of hitches. The first (which I knew about in advance) is that it wont fit under my LG 43UJ630V 43 inch 4K Ultra HD TV. All I did was to make a couple of small wooden blocks so that the front of the TV legs rest on the soundbar with the rear on the blocks, nice n simple. The second little hitch is that very occasionally the sound goes out of sync with the TV although this only seems to happen through an HDMI input. To rectify all I need to do usually is change the source and then back again which has corrected it 99% of the time, only once did I need to switch everything off. Overall I recommend this soundbar and think it is reasonably good value.