Q990D 11.1.4ch Soundbar w/Wireless Dolby Atmos Audio, Rear Speaker Included, Q-Symphony, SpaceFit Sound Pro, Adaptive Sound, Game Mode Pro with Alexa Built-in, HW-Q990D/ZA

The SAMSUNG Q990D has completely transformed my home entertainment setup. The sound quality is phenomenal, rich, immersive, and crystal clear. The 11.1.4 channel system delivers deep, powerful bass and incredibly detailed surround sound that makes movies, music, and games feel like a full theater experience. FYI: I turned off automatic updates on my Samsung Smart Things App. The Q990D is perfect out of the box, the past firmware was flawed. If you update you use a usb thumb drive and you’ll have no problems! Setup was surprisingly easy, and the wireless connections work flawlessly. The rear speakers and subwoofer sync perfectly without any lag or drop outs. I also love how well it integrates with my Samsung TV; the Q-Symphony feature really enhances the audio even more. The dialogue clarity is exceptional, Dolby Atmos performance is impressive, and the overall build quality feels premium. Whether I’m watching action movies or just streaming music, the audio fills the room beautifully. If you’re looking for a top-tier soundbar system that’s worth every penny, the Q990D is a winner. Highly recommended!

After over two decades of owning and using a large, tower speaker-based 5.1 surround sound system as my primary home theater setup, I’ve replaced all that imposing gear with this Samsung Q990F soundbar system. The “old” 5.1 system consisted of Paradigm Studio 100 v.4 tower speakers, a matching Paradigm Studio CC690 center channel (HUGE center channel), Paradigm surrounds, and an SVS 12” sealed subwoofer, a few years newer than the Paradigm system. That system was simply fantastic for movies, concert Blu-rays, and two-channel music. However, a key difference between my Paradigm system and the Q990F lies in two-channel sound staging and imaging. The Paradigm system excelled in this regard when properly set up in the room, projecting a large, deep, and detailed soundstage that the Q990F simply cannot match. This is to be expected, given the different objectives of the respective speaker designs and types, as well as the overall size of the speakers. The two separate towers separated by about 9 feet between them provided enough space to recreate a convincing soundstage. A one-panel speaker of any type simply won’t keep up in that regard due to physics. All that said, the Q990F does sound good with music, but it’s not “great” compared to my Paradigm system, especially in the areas mentioned above. Now, let’s talk about movies in TrueHD and Atmos… WOW! I’m impressed! It’s loud, clear, thumpy but not lumpy, slow or tubby, and in this arena, I didn’t miss my Paradigm system at all. For such a small subwoofer, there’s a very good amount of LFE thunder. While it doesn’t punch as hard and isn’t quite as nimble as the SVS 12” sub it replaced, I’m surprised as to how good it is. For its compact size, the Q990F delivers a punchy and immersive audio experience that truly enhances the theater atmosphere. However, as with any audio system, proper placement in the room is crucial. Since I’ve already optimized the placement of my speakers during the installation of the Paradigm system, I knew the ideal spot for the subwoofer in my theater room. This setup undoubtedly allows the Q990F to deliver its best performance, and it does. Installing the Q990F yesterday was a breeze. The setup and installation process were straightforward and hassle-free. While you’ll need to download the SmartThings app and add the Q990F to it, this step was a breeze, and there were no issues. My experience was truly “plug and play.” I simply placed the components in their designated locations, connected everything, downloaded the SmartThings app, added the Q990F, the speakers, and the subwoofer to the soundbar through the app, and I was up and running in a relatively short amount of time. Thankfully, I didn’t encounter any issues, and everything has been working flawlessly so far. On a side note, I’m growing increasingly tired of constantly signing up for apps and websites to use products I’ve handed my money over for. I’ve bought and paid for these products, and I simply want to use them without being forced to sign up for additional apps or devices that I don’t need or want. I don’t use Google products and don’t have any other SmartThings devices and would rather have a dedicated Samsung/Q990F app to utilize all this speakers functions and features. After setting up the Q990F and making a few minor adjustments to the settings to optimize the sound for my room, I played some test movie clips to enjoy the audio experience. I began by watching a Mission Impossible clip from “Ghost Protocol” in TrueHD (not ATMOS) on Netflix. The desert sandstorm scene was particularly impressive. The sound was great and not far off from what I vaguely remember the experience being like on my much larger Paradigm system. The room filling sound with grains of sand sounds swirled around the room. While it wasn’t a 360 sound bubble since it wasn’t ATMOS, the sound did move around the room well and to the sides of me. I was impressed and probably the biggest compliment I can give the Q990F is that I just wanted to keep watching the movie because it sounded so good. Next, I tried a couple of scenes from ‘Transformers Rise Of the Beasts’ in ATMOS via Netflix. Again, I was impressed with the overall size of the sound, but for some reason, it wasn’t as immersive as I had expected. It wasn’t even as immersive as the TrueHD sound from M.I. Ghost Protocol. Am I expecting too much from ATMOS? I adjusted some of the speaker levels in the SmartThings app, which helped a small degree, but I’m still not getting satisfying height effects like I thought I would. I’ll make further adjustments to see if I can boost the top firing speakers to assist in getting better height effects from ATMOS soundtracks. Even so, the movie did sound good, especially Optimus Prime and other bassy-voiced Transformers voices. They never became unintelligible and were always clear and easy to hear. I listened between the 30-55 volume settings, and 55 was good and loud in my room. Loud in a good way, like in a theater. Enjoyable. I also noticed that the contrast between the loud and quiet sections of the movies was very well handled. The quiet scenes were appropriately hushed but still had atmosphere and clarity, while the loud scenes contained appropriately sized and clear bombast. The remote control is clean and user-friendly. I use a Logitech Harmony Elite Universal Remote to control my devices, which helps me reduce the number of clickers I need to watch movies, YouTube videos, or other content. Once I set up the Harmony remote to control the Q990F, it functions perfectly. Although Harmony doesn’t currently have the Q990F in its database, it did have the previous model, Q990D, so I used that profile during set up, and it works. I haven’t encountered any compatibility issues either. I only have a TV (a 65-inch Panasonic Plasma via ARC, not eARC), an Apple TV 4K gen 4, and an Oppo BDP-95 Blu-ray player connected. Everything works as expected without any hiccups so far. It’s only been one day. I followed up the above-mentioned movie clips with some James Bond Blu-ray action, particularly the helicopter scene near the end of Skyfall. HOLY WOW! Yes! Prepare for IMPACT! I’m surprised my house is still standing. Bullets whizzing around my theater room, helicopter blades whooping about, CRASH! BANG! BOOM! with clarity, no less! The sound didn’t become a jumbled mess of noise, which can happen with smaller, less capable soundbars. What a ride! Well done, Samsung. I understand that there might be soundbars that offer slightly better performance in specific areas compared to this bar. However, it would require listening to them side by side to notice any significant differences. Even if there were a superior overall soundbar, it might be more expensive or excel in only a few areas, while the Q990F may excel in others. I acquired this soundbar at a great discount because the outer box had been damaged during handling. Fortunately, there was no damage to the internal hardware or the inner protective foam. Considering the price I paid, I can’t imagine any other soundbar at that cost coming close. Perhaps at twice the cost or more. Perhaps. I also considered the Sennheiser Ambeo Max and Plus, but I was hesitant due to the lack of rear surrounds and, to a certain extent, the price, even though they were on sale at the time. I visited Best Buy and listened to the Sonos Arc Ultra, but I wasn’t impressed. It sounded ordinary. Perhaps it was the setup or the way it was placed, but I wasn’t satisfied. I know that the Sonos Arc Ultra bar receives great reviews, especially when combined with Sonos Era 300s as surrounds and the Sonos Sub. However, this setup would significantly increase the overall price, potentially reaching or exceeding $2000.00. Considering the price I paid for the Q990F, I would have only gotten the Arc Ultra and would have had to spend extra for the surrounds and the sub. I’m confident that properly set up, the Arc Ultra is a great system, but I’ll never know for sure. For now, I’m quite satisfied with the Q990F. Considering its overall performance in my room so far, I believe it’s a good value for the money. I do wish Samsung would allow the addition of a second, or even up to four total subs to be connected to enhance the overall amount and linearity of the bass, however. Maybe down the line with a firmware update. I’m sure getting both subs to place nice together wirelessly wouldn’t be easy. Or maybe it would. Who knows? Speaking of firmware updates, of course there was one available for the Q990F once I got the SmartThings app up and running. I clicked “download and install” or whatever it actually said, the update process began and there were no problems during, nor after the update completed. I know there was a disastrous update issue in the past with a previous Q990 iteration that bricked some sound bars out there but I had no issues at all. So, I think the Q990F is definitely worth the current $1499 or so price and if you can get it even cheaper, all the better.

So far I have zero complaints! Plug everything in and immediately all speakers auto syncing with each other. I’m currently playing Blind from Korn at half volume and it’s pretty loud. Subwoofer comes thru just fine, my original system I replaced because I hate all the Wires. The sub I have on old system is a floor firing 15” 680 watt self amplified speaker and this one I’m playing now can almost compete with the 15”. Im play 100% Bluetooth and zero issues. I like that you can set up sound pressure levels on the channels, plus a simple eq with bass and treble only. It comes with built in surround sound stages. My living room is quite small so it fits perfect for the sound it puts out. I’ve yet to hook it up via Bluetooth on my OLED UHD Dolby Atmos tv. I’m sure that’ll be a whole new experience where I’ll get to hear all the drivers via Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision.

The soundbar works great once installed and hooked up. In that regard, here's a few learned lessons 1) The remote is mostly useless especially since the scrolling display on the soundbar is small, hard to view, and limited in what it displays. Download the Samsung Smart app as that provides more controls that are more descriptive, easier to read and adjust. 2) The instructions in the included Quick Startup manual and the more detailed PDF manual download for bluetooth connection using the remote are hard to make work. Spent quite some time trying to follow the instructions from the downloaded PDF Bluetooth Pair button on the remote puts soundbar into the Bluetooth pairing mode. When you press the button, “BT PAIRING” will appear on the display and you can connect a new Bluetooth device. Then directs reader to page 9 with some more instructions on the id set buttons on the remote speakers, and using the up/down/left/right buttons on the remote. All in all very non intuitive process and instructions. WHAT DOES WORK IS THE APP, in the app there is a bluetooth connection button to the upper right (round button), press it and the instructions for steps to follow are easy. All in all I've tossed the remote to the side and just use the app in my iPad. So much better! 2) Connecting a turntable. The Q990F does not have a headphone jack for direct audio input (I believe earlier models did). So I took the turntable RCA cables (and ground) and connected them to a preamp (I recommend the Pyle Mini Phono Turntable Preamp on Amazon, small, decent performance) then a pair of these (RCA Male to Male Adapter 2Pack, Gold Plated Dual RCA Coupler Connector for Audio Video Extension Brand: Togconn on Amazon) for a short connection to to a VPFET Analog to Digital Audio Converter RCA to Optical with Cable 3.5mm AUX Jack Toslink and Coaxial Adapter for Soundbar also from Amazon) and plug its optical output into the optical input of the soundbar. Works fine, good sound quality and AFFORDABLE :-) 3) The soundbar has only 3 HDMI sockets, The HDMI to TV, an HDMI 1 and an HDMI 2 . Well, HDMI 1 goes to my cable box, so my Samsung blue ray DVD, Apple TV, and a Toshiba DVD/VCR can't all fit into HDMI 2 at the same time. I needed a HDMI switcher -- 3 HDMI inputs to 1 HDMI output with a remote with the LEAST NUMBER OF BUTTONS ON IT. This one fits my need. OREI HDMI Switcher with 4K@120Hz 4:4:4 / 8K@60Hz 4:2:0 - HDR10+, VRR, ALLM, QFT - 48Gbps Bandwidth - HDMI Switch with Remote also on Amazon. Works fine and dare I say, affordable :-) All in all after investing a long afternoon, identifying the other "items" I needed to put it all together and adding them as they came in from Amazon, I am quite happy with the soundbar and its performance and give it a 5 star rating :-D

Pairs well with Sony TV (through HDMI ARC/eARC, ports on both devices - no comment on BT or WiFi connection) - but lose use of TV as "center speaker" unless paired with Samsung TV. Not a great loss, as far as I can tell. Not much sound from the subwoofer, but I haven't really cranked the volume on an action movie.

I’ve had this sound bar for a little over 1.5 years and have been very impressed. These days, audio mixes on your shows/movies are not optimized for the wimpy built in speakers in modern flat panel TVs, so I found myself reading subtitles more often than not. You really start missing out on the small cinematic details when you’re so focused on figuring out what the actor has to say. It takes the joy out of watching TV. Look, my wife is never going to let me get a true 7.1 setup strewn around the living room, and running cables through the walls to cut out in wall speaker holes is out of the question. You’ll be hard pressed to find any sound bar better than this especially when you can get it for less than $1000. The only real competition is the Sonos Arc Ultra and Sony Quad, but you have to buy the subs separately for those. The Nakamichi Dragon is also not living room approved per the wife. The sound bar looks sleek on top of my media console with the 65” TV mounted on the wall above it, and the subwoofer and satellite speakers are easy to tuck into a corner or set on some end tables/lamp stands to give you that immersion you need. If you want something slimmer and have the ultimate aesthetic that will still vastly improve the dialogue and sound quality, I recommend the Samsung HW S800D ultra slim sound bar. Set up is a breeze with the HDMI eARC port on your TV highly recommended. Using the Samsung app makes changing settings easier since the display on the sound bar is Spartan. I like the surround or adaptive presets with SpaceFit Sound on. You’ll probably need to tinker with the sound delay setting in your TV for the AV/lip sync. I found 120 ms delay to be perfect for my QN95B Samsung TV. You can also adjust it in the sound bar settings but only at 25 ms intervals while my TV can fine tune a little better at 10 ms intervals. Don’t waste your time researching anymore. If you’re reading this, just buy it. $900 is a steal.

Hands down best system i have purchased for home theater. The Q-Symphony is amazing. You plug them up, start the setup from the Samsung app, if you have other devices it automatically configures the network, super simple and connects to the TV. It happened so quick and easy i actually thought i had done it wrong and went over the setup again. I purchased this as an open box, its was brand new as far as i could tell, its was nearly 50% of the cost new, excellent value because even at retail, for me I would have purchased it after watching other people review it. Overall, i could not be happier, but lets cover some things. The bar and bass box are heavy, there is a lot stuffed into them and you can hear the quality as you listen to them. The remote option is awesome and really easy to understand, but you wont need it, once paired with a Samsung TV in Q-Symphony mode, it turns on and off by itself with the TV. the volume on the TV remote controls the bar and the TV, oh and i use my phone to configure most things through the app. Super convenient, no wires, no fixed location, can help you space them right in AI mode, and just a ton of features. I try to put negatives in my posts otherwise i feel like am just a corporate parrot, but honestly i dont have any. The only thing i would say, is the D and C series are nearly identical, the D incorporates a few extra features, but you would probably wont miss them unless your an audiophile and stream a lot of music, so if your budget is tight but still want something excellent at a really good price the last generation C series is also a very good buy. This system has been flawless, it sounds amazing, enough loudness that I wonder when the cops will be called on us for our Saturday night movies. Its crystal clear, there is no popping, no coil whine. 10/10 would buy again, even at full retail. Which is possible because i may get one for the bedroom too. Huge fan.

I’ll start off with what I like. First impressions, packaging it came in was generous thankfully. A lot of companies have recently been getting cheaper in that department, but given the price point Samsung delivered. The design is sleek and modern in my opinion, I do hope that in the future companies offer at least a silver and a white option, but you can never go wrong with black. The product feels of high quality construction and doesn’t feel cheaply constructed. The woofer as well feels premium, although it is somewhat small given the other components size, nonetheless it delivers ‘enough punch’ for its size. The surround speakers are fantastic as well, premium and larger than I had expected. As far as sound, I’m no audio engineer, but I am highly critical of sound especially at higher volumes. This q990f delivers exceptionally well from 20-50 on the volume scale. My living room is where this is situated and it has more than enough sound to be immersive and it gets very very loud without any distortion. The content you watch has to be in Dolby Atmos to get the most out of it although I have found that the adaptive audio setting does well even if the content you’re watching isn’t exactly the best quality. Just know that to get the best you have to watch in native Dolby. The remote is decent, I pretty much only used it for the initial setup and that was that. I don’t have a Samsung tv with this so compatibility isn’t the best unfortunately, we’re missing out on the q-symphony feature, bummer. Now for the cons and the reason for leaving 2 stars, for NOW. The connectivity is absolute hit or miss, extremely confusing, altogether massively frustrating and annoying. On initial setup the subwoofer would not sync to the soundbar despite several attempts until it worked. How or why this happened? Your guess is as good as mine. Hold the light on the sub until it blinks then immediately after press and hold the up button on the remote and it should pair. It worked the first time. That was connectivity issue number one, two happened when I tried adding the soundbar through the smart things app to “my devices” the app would not sync to the soundbar until I finally performed a hard factory reset and then followed all the steps to get it to work the second time around. For a sound bar that is supposed to be plug n’play it took almost two hours to get it to work properly. After that initial quirk I did consider returning just for a brief moment but I endured. Now 4 days later, I get home start watching a movie, notice the sound profile is ‘really thin’ I notice the subwoofer blinking red and blue, meaning it’s not paired. So I go through the process of re-pairing and after a minute, more or less, the signal drops again. Repeat and again time after time it fails. Okay. Now a factory reset. Still nothing fixes the issue for the subwoofer signal. So, I ask ChatGPT. Turns out it’s a router configuration interference issue. Yeah. So now fast forward 2 hours and I’m deep into router settings on my computer tweaking channel and frequency configurations and other stuff I have never needed to mess with with in order to hopefully get this thing to work. If it hadn’t been for ChatGPT I have no idea what I would’ve done honestly. But after many failed attempts I finally got it to work. (The whole process was very tedious and unfamiliar, I can’t go through every step as it was too many steps to remember accurately but just now it was not a “simple and obvious fix” by any means). So this is it. I have made up my mind. If I have to re-pair this thing one more time it’s going back. It’s just not worth the hassle and frustration of having to mess with settings and the works every couple of days. Moving forward Samsung should consider adding a physical cable to link the sub and the soundbar just in case wireless connectivity is compromised at minimum. What they should really do is fix this issue. If this problem ceases to exist I’ll reconsider my position and perhaps raise the stars but for now 2 stars is me being generous.