Dolby Atmos Soundbar for TV with Built-in Down-firing Subwoofers DHT-S218 Dialog Enhancer, 4K HDMI eARC, and Bluetooth

I bought this soundbar to replace an old Sony amplifier feeding Dolby surround sound to five speakers. It is easy to set up and provides a neat alternative to speaker wires heading in all directions. With the built-in sub-woofers the soundbar gives a fuller sound range than the old set-up for which I never added a separate sub-woofer. The soundbar however gives a less obvious spread of sound to left and right. I had not researched the significance of Dolby Atmos and it seems that movies or music that provide this type of sound signal are not that freely available. As a result, I have only used it with 6.1 Dolby sound from DVDs. I do not have a Blue Ray player. Maybe in time Dolby Atmos will become more freely available on streamed services. Having said that, the sound output is good. The remote has settings for Movie, Music and Night. A major attraction for my wife and me is the Dialogue Enhancer. This can be set to Low, Medium or High. We certainly find that we are less often saying to each other, "What was that he said?" We are both 80-ish. Another plus is the facility for linking the soundbar with a TV using HDMI eARC/ARC. This makes the DVD/Soundbar/TV connection much easier. It also means that the TV remote will adjust the volume level on the Soundbar. There is also the option to connect to the soundbar via an Optical cable or via Bluetooth. There is a USB port but I think this is only usable for servicing, not for input. At an offer price of £160, this soundbar is good value and Denon has a good reputation.

Really good sounding soundbar. Looks great with the fabric front. Feels really well built and the size is good too. It fits neatly in font if our TV and is HUGE step up from TV speaker with decent bass levels. Not only do movies and music sound better but it’s great for all the TV we watch. HDMI arc works seamlessly but we’ve got it through an optical cable which is great too with no latency issues. The remote is responsive and simple to use. Nice to have Bluetooth functionality for music as well. Bargain!

Amazing sound even at low levels, movies, night and music presets. Low, med and high presets to fine tuning your listening. Hdmi, optical, Bluetooth and aux inputs. I connected my old phone by Bluetooth, instantly, on my other newer phone it needs a Denon app to work, search for the right one. The Pure sound is more neutral if you don't want the bass. Also you can tweak the bass to your preference. No wifi on this unit so i don't know whether it will work with other platforms. Exceptional product, i can't believe it is only 40 watts, 2 tweeters, 2 midrange speakers, 2 built in (sub) woofers , oh yes you can add a sub if you want but I don't think is needed. Arc, eArc work straightaway, CEC allows you to seamlessly control the volume from either the tv remote or from the Denon one, even switch on or off. Very very pleased with my purchase, high quality at this price. Joe

I’ve spent weeks down the rabbit hole of soundbars and home audio, reading everything I could and even talking to people in places like Richer Sounds. It’s a complete minefield, especially if, like me, half the terminology feels like a foreign language. My home setup is a Hisense TV running a Virgin box, Fire Stick and PS5, and until recently I was using a budget soundbar that was just about passable. I made the mistake of “upgrading” to the Hisense AX3120G, assuming it would work seamlessly with my TV. It was a disaster. The sound was inconsistent, tinny for sports, the subwoofer easily overpowered everything, and switching between sources constantly caused quality issues. After returning it and going through far too much research again, I finally picked up this Denon soundbar and I’m genuinely blown away by how good it is. The sound is rich, detailed and far more powerful than a single unit has any right to be. Dialogue is crystal clear and action scenes have real depth without the rumbling chaos I was dealing with before. Setup couldn’t have been simpler. Plug it in, connect it via the eARC to hdmi1, ps5 into the soundbar, then virgin box and fire stick in hdmi 2 & 3 and you’re done. It all works perfectly, automatically switching between inputs seamlessly, it’s even turns its self on and off with the TV. The presets actually matter too. Movie Mode opens everything up beautifully without turning it muddy. Night Mode is outstanding, stripping out the heavy bass while keeping all the clarity, perfect for late-night TV when I don’t want to wake the house or annoy the neighbours. The dialogue enhancement is equally impressive, fixing the terrible audio mixes you often get from streaming apps. Overall I’m honestly shocked a soundbar at this price can perform like this. After weeks of trial and error, this is everything I hoped for and it’s brilliant!. Add all that, the fact you can buy additional speakers/subwoofer should you wish at a later time, which I’ll be doing once I move house. If you’re unsure what to get, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Just buy it!!

Sounds great - our LG TV suffers from poor sound (as do most modern TVs) and this is so much better for the price. Plug and play - connected to TV via HDMI eARC. Automatically allowed Virgin Media remote and TV remote to control volume on the sound bar. Switches on/off when the TV is switched on. The Denon remote is a bit shoddy but I am using the TV remote for volume.

I did a LOT of research into soundbars for my LG C4 65" OLED as, because it's a large and good quality TV, it has fairly decent sound from frontfiring drivers, rear mounted side-tweeters & sub-woofer; it also has Dolby Atmos but I don't like it's 'muffled' effect so I turn it off - without Dolby Atmos working well, I KNOW that, whilst acceptable, it's not producing anywhere near the best sound quality and genuinely hoped that this Denon DHT-S218 Dolby Atmos Soundbar with dual front-firing mid-range drivers plus dual down-firing sub-woofers and dual side tweeters would add some bells and whistles to lift the whole sound quality set-up to the next level. WRONG! From the off, I attached it to my TV via the HDMI e-arc port and it paired instantaneously to give.... well, the same sound quality but with a significant reduction in the room-filling sound produced by the native/onboard TV speakers! I have faffed around with the settings on this soundbar for SIX days and found that the best connection, by far, is via Bluetooth where, due to the LG C4 having 'LG Wowcast', it has the option to make the onboard TV speakers play simultaneously with the Denon S18 soundbar... it even has the ability to pair the TV and Sky remotes to increase the volume of both uniformly and, initially at least, once I'd gotten to this stage of the set-up process circa 3 days after giving up on HDMI-only (Soundbar-only) sound, I genuinely thought it was an improvement since I was only going up to 20/100 on the volume spectrum with the remote whereas before was going to 40/100. However, I am still only hearing the same sound quality that I had before, albeit that it potentially has the scope to go louder than before but when I tried turning it up for a Netflix show last night, the bass started to distort which the TV has NEVER done on it's own. So, today I unplugged the soundbar from the wall as, once it's linked to my TV Bluetooth, it's almost impossible to unpair it even with the soundbar power button off and no lights showing on the bar. To my surprise, and against my previously, self-convinced, view that, as it was creating twice the sound it must be twice as good, I was VERY surprised that, once finally disconnected, the LG TV-only sound is EXACTLY the same as the dual-soundstage of the Denon Soundbar + TV Speakers at 20/100 once the TV volume is whacked back up to 40/100. Moreover, I can crank the TV volume all the way up to 100/100 and don't get any of the distortion I got from the soundbar. Needless to say, I've boxed it up and started the returns process as it adds NOTHING to my LG TV. I guess the TV is better sound due to its size and, for a soundbar to beat it, I'll need something bigger and much more expensive though, to be honest, I don't want booming bad-ass bass so will, for the moment at least, hold off any more soundbar purchases until I can go into a store or showroom to listen to a Bose 900 or Sonos Arc!

Great looking speaker with a real punch of sound. Easily connected and synced to the TV and Sky box for volume control. Connected my Yamaha Subwoofer to switch on some extra bass but most of the time it’s not needed as the quality on soundbar is good enough as a standalone. It’s a good size and sits comfortably under the TV.

Fantastic soundbar. Got at a good deal price of £159.00. Study with a bit of weight to it so looks and feels good quality. It’s deep enough to put bits and bobs on or an ornament or Echo etc. This one had a lot of 5 & 4 star reviews. More than others I looked at…..and I read hundreds of soundbar reviews before taking the plunge on this one. This is fantastic for non-techy people like me, as this literally came out the box as a plug & play. I connected up the HDMI(ARC) lead to the back of cute tv (mines a 85” Samsung TV), plugged it in, switched on the t.v and it all connected. The tv recognised the soundbar straight away. No QR codes, no apps just connected. Brilliant. The sound is brilliant. You’ve got to remember this is a soundbar and not a surround sound system. I didn’t want speakers dotted everywhere with leads trailing etc. Too much of a faff. The sound from this soundbar really makes a huge difference and really enhances the poor quality of my tv internal speakers. No faffing about with tv volume in addition. On my old soundbar I had to turn tv volume down to zero and turn soo ever speaker up. Not with this one. It auto responds to our TV remote too. The only thing it doesn’t now do is display 1-?? On the volume display on the tv, so Jo longer know what volume number it’s on. It just displays an up or down arrow when you’re adjusting the volume. Thus doesn’t make any odds to me. I don’t need to know what volume number I’m on. Another advantage to this soundbar is that it’s Dolby. Brilliant sound clarity and the volume on thus can go way higher in volume than my tv speakers. I can’t get the soundbar to its highest volume, it’s way too deafening. We’re in a semi so not appropriate cuz of having neighbours joined. I now just turn our tv off and leave the soundbar on standby. This way the tv and soundbar come in together every time. It also holds the volume to the last position it was in when you switch it off. You have 3 different tones movie, night & music and adjustment of low, medium and high within each of these options, along with making the bass higher or lower. I’m not that particular to sound quality at all, but this is so good. Terrific improvement to tv watching. I can’t rate it highly enough. Came very well tested in good box with good packaging to protect in transit. Really love this. Highly recommend.