Best soundbars for Samsung TVs 2023: super audio for any Samsung TV

Pick up one of the best soundbars for Samsung TVs, and you're going to seriously enhance the setup you already have. While Samsung offers some of the best TVs on the market, which are usually fitted with decent speakers of their own, TVs are only getting slimmer – and that means the integrated audio can suffer.

The soundbars we’ve selected in this comprehensive round-up offer a range of features and benefits, including Dolby Atmos surround sound, Samsung Symphony Q support (which we think beats LG WOW Orchestra equivalent), support for eARC, and much more besides

Most of the soundbars in this list, while they work brilliantly with Samsung, will also work with other makes and models too, so we also have a guide to the best soundbars in general. It's worth checking out both lists to get a fuller understanding of what sits where, before you make a purchase.

Mike Lowe

I've been testing the best TVs for many years, but even the greatest Samsung TVs need added audio power – which is where the best soundbars come in! If you can buy for less when shopping then all the better, which is why I'm also monitoring the best deals. 

The two big events upcoming are the best Amazon Prime Day 2 deals (AKA Big Deal Days), from 10 to 11 October, followed by the best Black Friday deals on the long weekend of 24 November. The T3 team will be working flat out to find you the best deals across the board, so bookmark those key pages for the best buys!

T3 top 3

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Best for most people

The 2023 flagship and T3 Award Winner for Best Soundbar delivers over 600W of power from 22 different speakers, so really brings the cinema experience home. The system comprises a soundbar that's the right size for TVs of 55 inches and up, a subwoofer, and two small rear speaker units, all of which communicate wirelessly in an 11.1.4 channel configuration.

Our HW-Q990C review said: "This feature-packed and genuinely immersive soundbar powerhouse delivers Dolby Atmos and DTS:X object-based surround with enough cinematic scale to please even the most demanding movie fan. The subwoofer digs deep and is well-integrated thanks to sophisticated room correction, while the rest of the multichannel system seamlessly puts you in the middle of the action – you won’t find a better-sounding surround sound package from a modern soundbar."

You might find cheaper ones, though, as the previous Q990B model is very similar, but available for less cash, so certainly an alternative option. 

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Best budget

As you can tell from our Denon DHT-S316 review, this is a budget soundbar with a lot to give: it's going to do the primary job of a soundbar, which is to push out audio of a significantly superior quality than your TV's built-in speakers can manage, even if it does leave out several more advanced features in order to keep the overall price down.

Besides very decent sound quality, you also know you're getting a good fit and finish from your soundbar when the Denon name is attached, and that's certainly true when it comes to the DHT-S316. Its aesthetics are very easy on the eye as well, and has the sort of subtle and stylish looks that mean it can fit comfortably under just about any Samsung TV.

What really makes this a great buy, though, is the price. Considering you get both a main soundbar and a subwoofer included in the package, you really are making sure you get the most from your money. Your bass, your mids, and your highs are all catered for in a single system, and the speakers are able to get up to a substantial level of volume as well.

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Best for high-end features

If you want something compact that still has a big sound and wide dynamic range, the Samsung HW-Q800B is what you need. This is a 5.1.2-channel soundbar, meaning that it aims to add lots of width, Dolby Atmos height, and big impact from its wireless subwoofer. 

With Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, this soundbar has actual upward-firing tweeters, so you get a real wall of sound from it, with impressive positional audio – there's a strong sense of things coming from a particular point, and a kinetic feel to moving sounds. And it's capable of audio that's big and punchy but is plenty refined too.

It works with Samsung Q Symphony, so if you have a compatible TV, its audio can get even bigger and more impressive. And Samsung sells separate wireless rear speakers, so you can turn it into a genuine surround system later, if you want.

It has an HDMI input, as well as an HDMI connection to your TV, so if you have an Atmos-enabled external box – such as a Blu-ray player or Apple TV box – you can plug that straight into the soundbar and you'll get real Dolby Atmos sound even though your TV doesn't support it.

It also has an optical connection you can use instead of HDMI for older TVs, and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth music streaming, plus it has Alexa built-in, so it acts as a smart speaker. It's just an excellent all-rounder, and does this without being ridiculously massive – it's the right size for TVs of 49 inches and up. Read our full Samsung Q800B review for more.

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Best for immersive sound

Largely similar to the chart-topping HW-Q990C follow-up, this earlier 'B' model is now a much more affordable option and, therefore, may be the go-to purchase option if you're looking to save some cash yet still want true immersion for your Samsung TV. 

It also has 600W of power from 22 different speakers, arranged through 11.1.4 channels, using four boxes - soundbar, twin rears, subwoofer - and various clever speaker positioning and reflection to present a proper surround sound package that's great paired with a Samsung Q-Symphony TV with Dolby Atmos or DTS:X content. 

As our Samsung HW-Q990B review says: "[this soundbar] continues Samsung’s domination of the premium home cinema soundbar market, delivering a combination of power, detail, dynamics and full surround sound cohesion with movie soundtracks that no rival we’ve seen to date can match." The newer model can, of course, but there's not much in it - which is why this soundbar still sits high up our best-of list.

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Best sound with adaptability

The Harman Kardon Citation Multibeam 1100 is only a single unit, but it's able to produce a sensational sound nevertheless: the name is a nod to the 11 separate drivers fitted inside this unit, which all combine in an intelligent way to produce a soundscape that's genuinely powerful. What's more, the mid-range price of the system isn't prohibitively expensive.

it's a good enough soundbar for Samsung televisions that we can forgive the rather clumsy name that's been used here. In our time testing the soundbar, we found it was extremely capable across all different styles of audio and all different volume levels. It's particularly good when it comes to music, but it also does great with all the other tasks you give it too.

Sure, you make some sacrifices to get to that mid-range price – you can't loop consoles through the bar with 120Hz, 4K, and HDR all enabled, for example – but really there's very little to put in the negatives column here. You even get comprehensive wireless streaming support too, which includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay, and Google Chromecast.

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Best for small screens

The Yamaha SR-C20A sits near the bottom of Yamaha's rather expansive soundbar lineup, but that doesn't mean it's not capable of great things. Given its rather affordable price, it's a hugely impressive performer, even if it is more limited on specs, out of necessity.

There's only 100W of power available to the three drivers (two front-facing, one upward-pointing), for example. There's no spare HDMI ports whatsoever, with TV connectivity handled either by its single HDMI eARC socket or one of two digital optical inputs.

But if there's one thing Yamaha knows, it's getting superb sound out of very little. This is small but it has definite width (and even a little height). It's compact, but you get maximum detail at each end of the frequency range. It looks understated, but packs a punch when it needs to.

In our full Yamaha SR-C20A review, we say 'it looks like a scale model of a soundbar', and indeed this is ideal with small Samsung TVs, including down to 32 inches. It does what a soundbar is supposed to do: add more oomph to soundtracks while making dialogue and detail clearer, and nothing does it better for this price.

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Best sounding compact one-box

The Sonos Beam 2 looks identical to its predecessor, and the core of the soundbar hasn't changed: it's the same setup as before with a single tweeter, four mid/bass drivers and three passive radiators for low-end thump, all driven by five class D amplifiers of unspecified power. But the addition of eARC and Dolby Atmos support makes a great soundbar better.

The Beam is particularly good for smaller TVs such as 32-inch TVs, 43-inch TVs or 50-inch TVs and it comes in black or white with a new grille that's easier to dust than before.  Find out more about the second-generation Sonos Beam in our in-depth Sonos Beam 2 review. 

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Best older soundbar for value

The Samsung HW-Q800A has been replaced by the Samsung HW-Q800B mentioned above, which means that it's no longer quite at the cutting edge of the market – and at the same time, that you're going to be able to pick it up for a very respectable price. For a two-unit soundbar set, there are some great value deals around for this product at the moment.

For a start, buying a Samsung soundbar to sit under a Samsung TV makes a lot of sense, as you know they're going to play very nicely with each other. What's more, Samsung has fitted the HW-Q800A with some really clever engineering, to give a good impersonation of a surround sound system – even though this isn't actually giving you any rear speakers.

While we were reviewing the Samsung HW-Q800A, we were impressed with its bass performance, and the volume levels it could reach – without any distortion, by the way. Don't neglect this Samsung soundbar just because it's getting on in age a little bit, because it has the performance that's going to raise your TV audio performance up several notches.

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Best 3.1.2 two-box setup

This is actually a newer Samsung entry than the Q800A that features further up in this list. So why not a higher place, surely 'newer is better'? Well, it is, thanks to a new wide-band tweeter. However, as we pointed out in our HW-Q700B review: "if you can find yesteryear's Q800A for much less cash then that bar-and-sub combo is mighty similar." That's the rub of it really: the older model is just better value. 

But that's not to dumb down the Q700B's impressiveness: Samsung has piled the features high on this upper-budget Dolby Atmos soundbar, and boosted audio clarity. Sold with a punchy, compact subwoofer, we reckon this 3.1.2 system is difficult to resist, particularly for Samsung TV owners as it also features Q Symphony directional sound.

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Best one-box for streaming

The Sonos Arc is a Dolby Atmos soundbar with eleven drivers at various angles, for projecting sound upwards as well as out to your left and right. As a single-box soundbar, it's not able to fake sound truly coming from all around you, but instead it creates a clear sense of the sound filling the space in front of you, which is just as good, in its own way.

The audio quality is just fantastic, no matter whether you're watching movies or listening to music (this is a full multi-room speaker, with streaming via the Sonos app or Apple AirPlay 2) – everything is finely balanced (including totally clear dialogue even without the Speech Enhancer option) and beautifully smooth.

However: it has only a single HDMI port, with no passthrough at all, so you'll lose an HDMI port from your TV when connecting it, and if your TV doesn't decode or passthrough Dolby Atmos itself, then you won't actually be able to make full use of what it can do anyway. This is incredibly frustrating, and feels bizarrely cheap for a premium soundbar. It's a good thing the audio quality is so good that our full Sonos Arc review review still rates it as one of the best soundbar buys, provided it's a good fit with your TV.

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How to choose

There are a few things that are worth considering when it comes to picking a soundbar to go with your Samsung TV. 

First and foremost, you should think about how much money you’d ideally like to spend on your new soundbar. These days, soundbars can be bought for under £100, but the really high-end models can cost well over £1,000 – we’ve included a range of prices in this guide, but if you’ve got your eye on a pricier soundbar than your budget allows for, don’t forget that cheap soundbar deals pop up all the time, particularly between November and January.

Something else to consider is the design of your new soundbar. Samsung TVs are known for their sleek builds, so it's definitely worth looking for a soundbar that complements your TV. Samsung's own bars are made for this, of course, and more soundbars are designed to disappear anyway. Most can be wall-mounted, if that's where your TV will go.

If you choose to place your soundbar in front of your TV, make sure it isn't so tall that it obscures the infrared light from your remote control, or even that it edges into the picture – some TVs stand higher from the surface than others!

Consider the size of your set and the size of the soundbar – you don't want a bar that's sticking out beyond the edges of your TV (or your TV table). And think about whether you're happy with a soundbar alone (the most compact option), or whether you want one with a subwoofer for extra impact with the bass sounds (but that also takes up more physical space).

Be sure to look into the type of wired connections your soundbar offers, too. HDMI is the easiest way to hook your soundbar up to your Samsung TV, and can handle Hi-Res Audio formats; for this, your TV needs to support HDMI-ARC, which means the audio can travel in both directions along the cable. Pretty much all modern TVs have had this for several years – though they usually only have one HDMI port that supports it.

On some older TVs it's a pain to lose an HDMI port, because it might be one of your only 4K-capable ports. However, many soundbars will have HDMI passthrough inputs themselves, meaning you can plug something into your soundbar, connect the soundbar to your TV, and the video will still make it to your TV, so you don't lose any connectivity.

This is also where Dolby Atmos support comes in. Samsung TVs don't include support for this next-generation, 3D audio format. If you're watching something Atmos-capable on your TV's built-in streaming apps, the TV will send the audio out over HDMI to a soundbar, but this isn't the case for anything else connected over HDMI, such as a Blu-ray player. However, if your soundbar has one or more HDMI inputs and is Atmos-capable, then you can plug things into the soundbar instead of the TV, and you'll get the full benefit of the Atmos audio still.

Another benefit of HDMI-ARC connections is that you can use your regular Samsung TV remote to control the soundbar, instead of adding yet another control to your collection, because all control is passed over the HDMI cable.

If you can't or don't want to use HDMI-ARC, you can connect it to your Samsung TV using an optical digital cable or coaxial cable – again, check the back of your TV to see which is supported. Optical is the most common.

Another connectivity feature to consider is whether your new soundbar supports Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for wireless music streaming from your phone or tablet, and whether you’re interested in having that anyway. Support for additional wireless standards, like Apple AirPlay and Google Chromecast, can be useful – as can on-board digital assistants such as Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.

Finally, there's Q Symphony support. When you connect certain Samsung TVs (from the top-end of the 2020 range onwards) to compatible Samsung soundbars, the two devices will work together to create on big seamless speaker system, using the TV's higher and central speakers to add useful positional sound, and allowing the soundbar to add the extra meat it's designed for.

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How we test

Our dedicated How We Test page tells you everything you need to know about how we weigh up the products that we come across – but in summary, we're comprehensive in everything that we do. Whether it's noting down physical dimensions or studying brightness levels, we're always thorough in what we do.

When it comes to soundbars, there's a lot to cover, from the audio performance to the available port connections. As you'll see in the reviews and summaries higher up on this page, everything you might need to know is included, helping you make the most informed decision possible.

We'll also try our best to put the consumer gadgets that we review into a wider context, whether that's in terms of their current pricing, or how they match up against other similar products. That can really make the difference in certain categories, where there are lots of similar products available.

Mike Lowe

I've been testing the best TVs for many years, but even the greatest Samsung TVs often need added audio power – which is where the best soundbars come in! I've been reviewing soundbars and curating content from industry experts for years – and its these expert voices, those who test the selections in this very guide, that can assure these are the very best soundbars for Samsung TVs