Samsung HW-Q900A Review: A cinematic symphony
Verdict
Blending ability, naturalism, and a feel for 3D sound, the HW-Q900A is a cinematic soundbar with a big, powerful presence. With added connectivity options and room calibration tech (though with a few caveats), it's another stiff immersive bar from Samsung.
Pros
- Large, spacious audio
- AirPlay 2 support
- Alexa integration
- Large bass performance
Cons
- Front heavy presentation for "immersive" soundbar
- Confusing display placement
- Room calibration feature only possible with Samsung QLEDs
Availability
- UK RRP: £1099
- The states RRP: $1299
- Europe RRP: €999
- Canada RRP: CA$1699
- Australia RRP: AU$1599
Fundamental Features
- SpaceFit sound 10 Auto EQ Room scale tech for the soundbar and subwoofer
- Q-Symphony Compatible with selected QLED models in producing a bigger, taller soundstage
- 7.1.two-channels Features sixteen drivers including dedicated eye, upfiring and side-firing speakers
Introduction
Samsung's step downwards soundbar, the 7.1.2-aqueduct HW-Q900A, has arrived to partner your Boob tube with cinematic, room-filling sound.
The HW-Q900A looks identical to 2020's HW-Q900T, with the same ridiculous number of speakers. So, what has inverse?
On the surface, non much. The tweaks lie inside with room scale and more ways to feed the bar with sound. So, for those in the market place for a soundbar that tin do justice to their 4K Blu-ray collection or streaming library, the HW-Q900A's performance may have yous immigration out space for this colossus of a soundbar.
Blueprint
- Same design equally HW-Q900T
- The placement of brandish notwithstanding irks
The similarity in appearance to the previous model presents an issue as the design wasn't perfect. The issue centres – pun intended – on the placement of the display.
The HW-Q900A has two: i on meridian and a front-facing endeavour. The latter is a series of iii blink-and-yous'll-miss them LEDs, like the one seen on the HW-S61A. The superlative surface features the more useful brandish, which lists the audio format that's playing, the electric current input and the settings for the speaker levels, among other details. And again, Samsung's placement means you can't see it from a sitting down position.
If Samsung'southward SmartThings app offered the same level of control as the remote, perhaps this wouldn't be every bit much of an issue. But it doesn't, as the app doesn't go into the minutiae of avant-garde settings. That means you lot must become up and walk over each time you want to adjust, say, a specific speaker level. This is not a soundbar for couch potatoes.
If y'all brand the trip, the top surface is habitation to the aforementioned coterie of buttons as before, which includes a multi-function button, book controls and a privacy button. There's no alter to the remote, which is the aforementioned easy-to-hold ergonomically shaped zapper.
Dimensions are identical to its predecessor (1232 x 69.5 ten 138mm, WHD); and then is the weight – 7.1kg and ix.8kg for bar and sub respectively. The number of speakers is rather ridiculous at 16, with a heart, side-firing and upfiring speakers making the numbers.
It's draped in the same Kvadrat fabric that, perhaps deliberately, looks both smart and nondescript. Out to the sides are the side-firing speakers with a silver grille that reminds me of Jaws from the Bond serial.
It's big, well-built and looks similar it ways business; just nearly fitting on a TV stand up designed for 65-inch TVs. Wall-brackets and screws are supplied, while in a recessed surface area lies an HDMI out (eARC), ii HDMI inputs that tin can pass through 4K HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, plus a digital sound optical input.
I encountered HDMI handshake issues with the soundbar when used with a QN900A 8K QLED and Panasonic DP-UB820 4K role player. Turns out the Panasonic was causing the issue, so for those with a Pana actor as part of their fix-upward, connect the Samsung TV and soundbar kickoff and then add the Panasonic player.
Features
- Room scale… of sorts
- Adds AirPlay 2
- Alexa vocalisation assistance
- Alexa plays music from Amazon Music, non Spotify
It's in the features where the HW-Q900A diverges – a lilliputian – from its predecessor. AirPlay 2 is included; great news for iOS users who can now stream audio without resorting to Bluetooth.
The second feature is SpaceFit Sound+ applied science and Auto EQ. The latter uses a congenital-in microphone and exam tones to optimise and calibrate the subwoofer's low frequency operation. Y'all tin run this at whatever time from the SmartThings app or via the remote.
The room scale applied science is referred to as SpacetFit Sound+, but essentially, it'southward the Adaptive Audio+ way seen in the settings of compatible Samsung TVs. It adjusts and tunes the soundbar by analysing its environment, taking into consideration soft effects, walls, and curtains. Room calibration has been asked for in previous years only there's a caveat to its implementation. Information technology only works in tandem with selected 2021 Samsung QLED TVs (Q70 and above).
Y'all tin can bring the bar online in the SmartThings app or skip that process entirely if you choose. With SmartThings, you lot can place the soundbar in a 'room' and link to uniform products; add Alexa and Spotify Connect, alter equaliser settings, volume, woofer settings and sound modes from your smartphone or tablet. You tin enquire Alexa to play music, but she'll just play music from Amazon Music and not through Spotify,
Samsung is sticking with its Tap Sound feature whereby Samsung Galaxy smartphone owners can transfer sound to the soundbar with a tap.
Dolby Atmos and DTS:Ten immersive formats are delivered via Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Digital Plus and DTS Master Audio respectively; with Dolby Digital and DTS legacy soundtracks likewise supported. For music there'due south AAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, ALAC and AIFF, and the HW-Q900A can decode Hi-Res audio formats.
Audio modes cover Standard, Surround, Game Mode Pro and Adaptive Sound. Adaptive uses bogus intelligence to optimise sound, while Game Mode Pro advertises itself as a more immersive gaming experience. Q-Symphony synchronizes the soundbar with a uniform Object Tracking Audio-toting QLED to rails audio effects and dialogue across the screen.
Sound quality
- Slightly bourgeois operation out of the box
- A realistic, natural approach
- Adept performer with music
With Blade Runner 2049 up first, as Ryan Gosling's M heads to Sapper Morton's farm the HW-Q900A brings a big and powerful sense of bass to proceedings. The high frequency tones of Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch's score are free from distortion; the surface area of the soundstage well beyond that of any Telly.
As One thousand's Spinner comes into land, the tiptop channels are handled rather conservatively. Maybe testing in a different room with the soundbar placed lower than I'm used to may have made a difference.
But a tweak of the upfiring speaker settings wrings out more definition, although compared to the HT-A7000, the Q900A'south height performance lacks the Sony'south clarity and detail.
Bass gets a weighty and powerful audition in V for Vendetta equally the Old Bailey gets blown up. There's no distortion to the low end, or sense that bass overly dominates proceedings by obscuring dialogue or Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Darren Aronofsky'due south mother!, is some other impressive showcase, you tin feel the sub-bass as Jennifer Lawrence's titular character loses control.
Playing the original Blade Runner, and the new model isn't as boisterous as the quondam one, taking a more measured approach. As Spinners fly across the fiery Los Angeles landscape, effects aren't projected into the room with the aforementioned strength.
And the loss of the Q950A's rear channels hampers the Q900A'south '3D' ambitions, but equally the opening race of Ready Actor Ane shows, the Q900A has a knack for skilfully steering furnishings across the soundstage. The advent of T-Male monarch and King Kong adds a vertical aspect, while multiple car crashes create width that's comfortably wider than the bar itself.
But the Q900A'due south appeal is not just rooted in crash, bang-wallop sonics. It kept my interest during quieter scenes. Scenes similar when Scarlett Johannsson'southward Lucy (in Lucy) commandeers a medical theatre and the small background details of the oxygen pump and the EKG automobile place you right at that place with the character. Or where Himesh Patel's Malik recovers after being hit past a bus in Yesterday and in that location'southward a lovely sense of detail and naturalism to the way the HW-Q900A handles the scene, an nigh effortless experience for the rhythms of the scenes that feel realistic.
With DTS:X soundtracks the bar is once more a little conservative with both Get Out and E.T: the extra-terrestrial. Nudge the volume up and Q900A finds its groove. When ET gets lost and the spacecraft takes off without him, in that location's an exciting sense of size, weight and motion every bit the ship flies above the Idiot box towards the seating position.
Elsewhere, when Eliot first discovers Eastward.T., you can hear the scuttle of the little alien's feet as he scampers across the soundstage that extends the width of the scene in a clever but natural way.
With a dedicated centre channel, voices have grapheme. Whether it's Bane's distorted reverb in The Night Knight Rises or Chris' 'session' with Missy in Leave, there's clarity to dialogue. In more than frenetic scenes, similar in Fury where tanks face off in a field confronting German troops, intelligibility tin be lost in the mayhem of tracer bullets and ricocheting missiles, but a tweak of the centre channel carves out more space for all those elements to co-exist. Dialogue matches its placement on and off screen, and no lip-sync issues were noted.
With Q-Symphony and a copy of Doc Sleep on 4K, the QLED and soundbar combination feels like your own private cinema. The opening scene that introduces Rebecca Ferguson's slippery Rose the Lid produces a sense of space and scale; the ambience of the forest handled past the TV's height speakers, with more specific effects coming off the screen while the soundbar handles bass and farms sounds out wide (like the twigs existence stepped on). It's an immersive, detailed sound.
Musically it's a solid performer. La La Land's Another Day of Sun is total of sunny bombast and excitement, and the HW-Q900A keeps up with the pace, but scales down to convey the quieter moments when it needs to.
As a music system there'southward Bluetooth, AirPlay ii and Spotify Connect available Music playback over Bluetooth is fine, spacious with reasonable levels of detail and definition, though at that place's more bespeak racket to pick upwardly on and its feel for highs and lows can sound unrefined when the book is turned up.
Spotify Connect is much more measured in every sense and offers more fidelity. Retrieving more detail and less noise for a cleaner, clearer and sharper presentation. Bass is very powerful when the subwoofer is engaged, too.
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Should you purchase it?
If you want a powerful merely natural presentation The HW-Q900A entertains with its large soundstage, powerful bass and natural presentation. It's less bombastic in some means than its predecessor, its out-of-box settings on the conservative side
You want actual 3D sound £1000 will be a lot to spend for some on an Atmos soundbar that doesn't come with the immersion of rear speakers. The HW-Q950A launched at £1599, but at the time of this review (ahead of Black Friday), it's less than £1000
Final Thoughts
The HW-Q900A's front-heavy approach means you don't get the aforementioned level of immersion than you would from a organisation with rear channels. But if you don't have the room for that then getting up close to this soundbar might exist the ameliorate pick.
The HW-Q900A creates a sense of infinite and scale, firing effects in every direction but without over-egging it. It consistently delivers enjoyable sound whether it's playing action films, suspenseful horrors, or dramatic Tv set series. The HW-Q900a comes very much recommended.
How nosotros test
Nosotros test every soundbar we review thoroughly over an extended menstruation of time. We use manufacture standard tests to compare features properly. We'll always tell you what we notice. We never, ever, accept money to review a production.
Find out more than about how nosotros test in our ethics policy.
Tested over several weeks
Tested with real world utilize
Tested with streaming services and 4K Blu-rays
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FAQs
Does the HW-Q900A support Chromecast?
Y'all cannot cast to the soundbar via Chromecast.
Tin can the Samsung HW-Q900A pass-through Dolby Vision HDR?
Yes it can, although you'll demand a Dolby Vision-enabled TV to run into the benefit.
Can I ask Alexa to play music from Spotify on this soundbar?
No, Alexa/Spotify functionality does non work on the HW-Q900A, merely she can play music from the Amazon Music streaming service.
Total specs
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Subwoofer?
Power Consumption
Audio Formats
Voice Assistant
Rear Speaker
Multiroom
Connectivity
ARC/eARC
Colours
ASIN
Release Appointment
Model Number
Weight
Size (Dimensions)
Manufacturer
AUD RRP
CA RRP
USA RRP
UK RRP
Eu RRP
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Jargon buster
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Atmos is an object-based audio format. It expands on v.1 and 7.i soundtracks by adding overhead channels. Sounds are referred to as "sound objects", of which in that location can exist upwardly to 128 audio channels, and these 'objects' tin be accurately positioned inside a 3D soundscape. This allows soundtracks that support the technology to identify sounds above and around the listener with compatible kit.
DTS:X
DTS:X is an object-based audio format created in 2015 for the home. The premise is like to Dolby Atmos in that it creates a hemisphere of sound that'southward more lifelike and natural in its presentation.
Q-Symphony
Q-Symphony combines a Television set and soundbar speakers to play sound at the same time. They work in concert to track objects across the screen and produce a bigger soundstage. This is only supported by specific Samsung soundbars and premium QLED TVs.
Source: https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/samsung-hw-q900a
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