JVC Compact Sound Bar

A recently acquired Panasonic 39in LED TV had me realising how poor the sound was - tinny and often quite difficult to decipher. Audio connectivity was not great and it was a faff to connect the tv to my hifi. Researched soundbars to death, taking in to account a number of factors;1) the wife2) the wife3) price4) size and appearance5) quality6) the wifeIt became apparent that "normal" soundbars are usually about a meter long. Under considerations 1,2 and 6, that meant that was too big and the thought of a separate sub woofer would have meant her being taken into hospital!!! I am not an avid film viewer so I don't need to experience the wall shaking force of the demise of the Death Star.The spec of the JVC TH-D227B soundbar was exactly what I wanted - small, but a quality brand and well reviewed. At five pence under £60 its cost was relative to what I wanted it for - an enhancement to the existing TV sound. So, is it any good?In my opinion this is one of the best buys I have ever made - there is noticeable sound improvement and by combining the TV sound with that of the soundbar (via optical connector) I get a much more rich sound with noticeably more depth, particularly with narrations/dialogue. Using the bluetooth connectivity with my mobile, the sound quality is good enough for me not to feel obliged to fire up the adjacent £1000 hifi, when all I want is some background music. It is a seamless fit with the telly resting naturally on the tv's built in stand - I honestly do not think my wife noticed it for the first day!!!It was a cinch to install, the remote is basic but very functional - I pretty much only use On/Off and Vol+ and Vol-. It switches itself off after 15mins if no input, which is handy.Inputs are optical, coaxial, 3.5mm jack and bluetoothEven better, two Christmas Amazon vouchers and a £20 offer to sign up to the Amazon Mastercard meant that the total cost to me was......minus £0.05. Result!!Bottom line...highly recommended. It will NOT replicate a cinema so don't expect it to, but for me it did exactly as I wanted and more.

So far, so good. This was bought to use with a small-ish bedroom TV so that an elderly person could hear speech better. Most soundbars are much too long for this situation and many of the compact ones that are available are just cheap trash. So this JVC model looked just the job on paper and I'm pleased to say that it seems to live up to expectations. The unit feels solid and weighty, and looks quite stylish imho. I connected to the TV using the supplied audio cable with 3.5mm jacks, plugging in to the TV's headphone socket. This had the advantage of muting the TVs appalling built-in speakers and worked well, providing good quality sound that responded to the volume control and mute button on the TV remote control. Volume is plentiful - it will go as loud as you could reasonably need to. (However, this may vary with the TV you are plugging into. I tried the unit with my own (Panasonic) TV and volume through the headphone socket was very poor. ) I haven't tried the optical or RCA interfaces. I did experiment with the Bluetooth and it worked well, pairing quickly with my phone. Music quality isn't great, but that's to be expected given the size of the speakers; volume was quite good. You could listen to music if you wanted to, but it wouldn't be the obvious choice of device. There is a small but adequate remote. The plus points of this unit are the multiple connection methods, the good speech reproduction and the overall build quality for the price. The only niggles were that the interface cables supplied were quite short and felt very cheap and lightweight - but replacements would be easy to source if you needed to. All in all, it's a recommendation.

I’m very pleasantly surprised with this soundbar. Generally speaking, it’s quite hard to provide good sound from a small single unit, but this does very well - assuming you set it up correctly and operate it properly. If you want big immersive sound than a soundbar without a subwoofer or satellite speakers isn’t going to satisfy you, but if you want good sound for a smallish room then I think this is ideal.If you connect the sound bar to your television via an auxiliary cable through the headphone jack then you’re going to get the lowest quality sound and probably some background hissing as well - the only upside being the ability to operate the sound bar using the television’s remote control. This soundbar doesn’t have HDMI so I would recommend purchasing an optical cable (not provided).Switch your TV’s speakers off (if you can’t switch them off, then turn them down to zero) and control the sound using the soundbar’s remote control. There are two preset sound settings, movie and music. The movie setting is a brighter higher sound which makes voices clearer, the music setting has more bass and a more rounded tone. Personally I prefer to set a custom setting where you can control the bass and treble yourself. Pressing the Custom button gives you a completely flat base profile which you need to adjust to suit your tastes. Be aware that if you then switch to one of the other sound settings (or if you switch the device off) your custom settings will be lost. For that reason I simply memorise the number of clicks that I do on the bass and the clicks I apply on the treble (in my case +12 bass and +6 treble) so I can quickly reapply them when necessary.Bluetooth connects very quickly and reliably.Initially I didn't get along with the remote - finding I was pressing and getting no response. Once I discovered the correct angle for the press, there were no problems at all.Being satisfied with the sound of something is often down to personal taste - I sometimes run my television through my Bose wave radio which is a nice piece of kit, very detailed highs but quite weak on the mids. This soundbar has a very different tone which I prefer for female vocals and higher tracks which can sound a little screechy on the Bose wave radio. I also have the Bose TV Speaker - nice item but larger than this and again the sound is 'different' rather than substantially better. Build quality on the JVC soundbar is very nice indeed - it's great value overall.