SC-HTB01 SoundSlayer Gaming Speaker with Built-in Subwoofer (Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, Bluetooth, High-Resolution Audio, HDMI) - Black [Exclusive to Amazon]

Most games today are played in really bad sound today - whether this be cheap stereo speaker sets that came with a PC, tiny laptop speakers or thin TV speakers, all of them drain the life from the audio of the game as well as any movies that are played on them. This is a crying shame - a lot of effort goes into the sound of modern games and movies, but most of it is lost to bad sound solutions that lose most of the detail in the soundtrack. Panasonic's Soundslayer/SC-HTB01 speaker is a great solution to that. They've produced a compact soundbar that manages to offer great sound that also supports the modern high-quality formats that modern games output, which is somewhat rare at this end of the market. So first to the most important part, the sound. If you're used to the lifeless sound from laptop or flat screen TV speakers, the Soundslayer will massively improve your experience. The Soundslayer supports the two main modern sound formats Dolby Atmos and DTS X, as well as the legacy Dolby Digital/DTS and standard uncompressed LPCM sound, and it uses all of these details to bring the sound of your game to life. What I do need to say here is that while Atmos/DTS X are surround formats, I wouldn't say that the Soundslayer is going to give you a world-beating performance with things coming from all around you - that is the preserve of ~£1000 soundbars that often have dedicated rear speakers. What it will do is use the information in these to give you a much larger and detailed sound than crappy TV/laptop speakers will, and you'll notice all of the sound the game has to offer being used in a wider soundscape. The bass is great too - although it doesn't have a separate subwoofer the thump and crunch you'll get from this is very noticeable. There are moments in games where you'll experience something sneaking up on you from the side and spin around to see it or duck out of the way from incoming fire from the other side, and in movies you'll appreciate this too with the Atmos effects from things like Disney+ contributing to the involvement you feel in the movie with things like the Avengers charging Thanos in Endgame having much more life and detail to them than you could ever get from a small TV. The extra detail from an Atmos output is truly superior to the stereo downmix that you'll usually get. Speaking of small, that's the other valuable thing about this. It really is the smallest soundbar ever, and so portable! When I hear "soundbar" I think of something that's large and takes up most of an AV unit, but as you can see from the photo from my back bedroom, it fits on small TV stands too. If you want to move it somewhere else, you can just unplug it and stick it under your arm to carry elsewhere. Most soundbars are large and not that moveable, but this does offer that convenience. If you're going to be having friends over and want a great speaker to stream music from your phone, this is ideal - you can unplug it from your TV and then just bring it over to the table and match it to your phone on Bluetooth. Not many soundbars offer this! Given that it supports and decodes all of the modern surround sound formats and uses them to give you upgraded sound, and that it's one of the most portable soundbars around as well, this comes highly recommended. It's a great deal!

Extremely solid / well built and fantastic sounding sound bar. Can go LOUD if you want it to. The "Clear Voice" mode, which boosts the volume of speech without boosting the volume of other sounds works perfectly and is not a gimmick. It makes it a pleasure to watch films without being deafened by explosions etc as you have to have the volume high enough to hear the speech at all. Some observations: Negative comments about the remote control are a bit disingenous. It does exactly what it's supposed to, perfectly well. Easy to operate - clearly labelled buttons - perhaps a bit dated in appearance compared to some of the "sexy" remote controls you get with some tech these days, for example the Apple TV. Basically I think there's no actual cause for complaint as regards the remote. I had two issues with the sound bar (RESOLVED) that don't spoil my enjoyment of it NOW but were a pain in the bum until I resolved them; 1. Set up with a PC isn't particularly well explained in the brief manual supplied. In a nut-shell it seemed like the logical thing to do would be to connect the sound bar via a HDMI lead to the motherboard's own HDMI connector as the sound chipset is built into the motherboard. This approach doesn't work. It's not clear WHY it doesn't work. The only way I could get sound output from the PC via HDMI was via connection to a HDMI socket on my graphics card. This was annoying as it meant I had to go without my second monitor for nearly a week while I waited for a displayport cable to arrive - second monitor originally used the only HDMI connector I had on the graphics card. If I daisy-chained the second monitor through the sound bar as the manual suggests then for some reason my primary monitor, connected via displayport, wouldn't operate at it's maximum refresh rate of 165 HZ - it capped at 60. Having both monitors connected via displayport cables and the sound bar connected via HDMI resolved this issue but then created issue #2. 2. If connected via HDMI the soundbar causes an issue wherein any monitors connected to the PC periodically go blank for a few seconds (~5 seconds). All monitors will do this at the same time. Sound continues to output from the soundbar when this occurs. This can occur several times an hour, or not occur at all for several hours. It's infuriating when you're playing a competitive game and you lose / die / whatever because your screen went blank on you for several seconds. So I eventually resolved both issues, permanently, by abandoning the idea of connecting to the PC via HDMI and purchasing an SPDIF Optical cable - This is obviously only a solution for YOU if your PC has an optical-out connector on the motherboard or soundcard. I suspect some budget motherboards may not have one. I have an Asus Prime Pro X470 and it does. The optical cable cost < £10 via Amazon. I can't comment if these issues affect other setups such as game consoles - while I do actually have a PS4, Switch and Xbox One X I have no intention of going to the effort of testing the soundbar with them. If hypothetically speaking I was going to use the soundbar with them I would just use the optical cable from the beginning and avoid the headaches. In conclusion - Would I recommend it? Wholeheartedly, YES, with the caveat that it can take some messing about to get it to do what it's supposed to do, properly. I feel like an optical cable could have been included in the box (and a HDMI cable as well for that matter - I ordered the initial HDMI cable at the same time as the soundbar). Once you have it actually working properly the sound quality is staggeringly good in comparison to typical PC / "Gaming" speakers. Could I get better sound quality from 2.0 speakers? Probably - If I was prepared to spend more money than this cost.

I say hidden because this is marketed at the gamer. However it is a very capable soundbar. made more remarkable by its size and sound clarity. and is ideal for bedroom or small living room. Theres plenty of base for me, and there is a surround sound feature, which is very effective in widening the soundstage, without sounding overprocessed and echoey, like other soundbars I've heard. What I wasn't expecting, is the quality of the bluetooth mode, playing my Mp3 files. If you use the 3d surround mode, you get an amazing stereo soundstage, far wider than the units size. I have heard similar modes on many different speakers, and they have not sounded very good, but Panasonic have somehow managed to make this work, without any wierd artifacts added. I should also mention the clear dialogue feature. This is a key feature of this unit, and I leave it on all the time. It rescues the unit from a dull midrange, and makes a huge difference to voice, dialogue in movies, and vocals in music and overal clarity of sound. All these features are on the excellently featured remote , so are easy to experiment with. (no finiky apps to install here) As always keep an eye on the price, as it often goes below the present £199.

Bought it to link my sons LG OLED G2 65 inch tv with his Xbox series x. Sound is good when used in the 5x3mt garden room we had built for him. Building is built from Sips panels so almost soundproof, so even at just 80watts, ideal for the job. £200 is not too expensive compared to the £400 Lg Soundbar he has attached to his Oled Tv in his bedroom. The built in various gaming systems are ideal as is the ability to connect everything via eARC HDMI 2 cables. Size is good and can easy fit on a small shelf under TV as it’s light and compact in size. Remote is very cheap and flimsy with few worthwhile features and surprised that Pioneer built such a cheap and nasty remote, let alone sent it with this Soundbar.

The sound quality is great (using bluetooth). It's a shame that it doesn't actually work with my setup. According to Panasonic support, it's optimized for "a direct connection when using a PC" and for "the use of an ARC-capable TV in the case of consoles". Effectively, it doesn't extract the audio itself, but instead relies on the TV sending it back to it. This means it likely won't work if you're using a 4k monitor like I am. Which would be "fine", except that I'd expect in that case just to not get audio. However, it instead does something to the signal causing the console to not get a picture at all, and a chromecast ultra to downgrade to 1080p, so it's certainly not passing the signal through unadulterated.

Your monitor speakers will be relieved because the sound is Infinitely better than they could dream of, as it should be, since it probably costs more than the monitor whose speakers it is replacing - but it's not to be compared with the top league of audio ... DTS X, DTS Virtual X & Dolby Atmos formats are supported, which is great at this price and usage scenario, in fact, it's pretty exceptional. Note that I say the "formats are supported", i.e. you will have the benefits of the sound seperation, however, that is wholly dependent on your setup, I have the sound bar mounted at the bottom of my monitor and partially out of sight, I didn't want the Led's in my eyeline. Consequently, the direction the sound will travel to me will be partially affected by the frame of the monitor, not a problem for the bass frequencies. Wave interference is there for the Left and Right channels, but in such a compact frame, it would be there anyway. The sound quality is good enough. The bass is punchy and can be adjusted. The higher frequencies do not have that tinniness, however, they can be screechy, especially with violin notes. I got a "like new", which was definitely worth the sizeable reduction in price, at full retail of ~£250, I think that is higher than it's price point should be. Since it is aimed at the gaming community, some mounting holes would have been appreciated. Having said that, gamers will find a workaround for their mounting options. Overall, it's very, very good if you get it at an attractive price. At ~£250, and especially if you have ample desk space, you have some serious contenders where length/width/depth and weight aren't limiting factors. You can opt for a JVC, Denon or other brands. For me, the dimensions and weight were key factors - my monitor mounting arm manages to hold both the screen and the soundbar without sinking. A Von Hauss mounting kit connects to the vesa mount, so it's all good. Being Panasonic, I can expect many years of hassle free service, so it's a winner for me!

Previous to this I had some Logitech speakers that died after 6 months and cost £50. I needed something new and decided to invest in some good speakers this time. I wanted something that: a) could give me better sound b) something that took up less space and was a lot let messy. Day 1 of having these and I'm so impressed. Sound quality is amazing, that bass isn't unbelievably powerful but it's just as powerful as I need it to be. This thing is LOUD - but it's also tiny. I'm fascinated. Ussually when something promises digital surround sound, it's ussually BS but this really gives you a satisfying experience. Is it perfect surround sound? No of course not - but for a tiny little singly speaker it's amazing. Connecting this thing was really easy, I ran a hdmi from my GPU to it and worked straight away. Some people have complained about the remote control but I don't get it, it has volume up and down buttons, it allows you to change sound modes and it allows you to increase/decrease the bass - what more would you want a remote to do? First impression, easily the best purchase I've made all year - completely revolutionised my set up and is a complete upgrade on anything I've had before. If anything changes I'll be sure to update this review but for now I'm very satisfied.

Bought the Final Fantasy XIV branded version of this product as am a huge fan of the game. Moving from cheaper standalone speakers to the soundbar has been incredible - the 3D audio capabilities despite all sound only coming from in front of you is incredible, so long as the game itself has good sign design. For Call of Duty I found it better to turn 3D audio off, but the Battlefield titles make full use of it, as does Final Fantasy XIV and XV. Am hearing things I never heard before, was easy to setup, and works perfectly with my PlayStation 5. The branded one is more expensive, but for a huge fan and collector it has definitely been a very worthwhile purchase.