Samsung HW-QS700F review: Uniquely flexible soundbar rocks any room

Not content with extending its dominance of the full surround sound soundbar world with its flagship HW-Q990F, Samsung has also turned its expertise to something different: the QS700F; a soundbar designed with a reconfigurable driver array so that it can sit flat on a tabletop or hang flat on a wall while still delivering the same potent and immersive sound quality.

The HW-QS700F isn’t the first soundbar to offer genuine wall/desktop positioning flexibility, but it joins a pretty small and exclusive club. A club whose members typically cost way more than its asking price.

So is this exactly the affordable jack of all trades solution the soundbar world is crying out for right now – and one of the best soundbar for Samsung TVs specifically? Or has Samsung’s quest for flexibility and convenience caused it to lose its usually firm grip on the soundbar sound quality ball?

Price & Availability

The QS700F’s £749 UK price ($649, AU$999) feels about right for a powerful soundbar-plus-subwoofer two-hander, boasting lots of power and a 3.1.2 channel count.

Except that this isn’t where the QS700F’s story ends, of course. Those six channels it boasts can also be set by Samsung’s clever soundbar to be delivered from different speakers depending on whether you’ve mounted the soundbar vertically flat on the wall or horizontally flat on a desktop.

Such true placement flexibility typically only comes with a much higher price attached. Devialet’s Dione, for instance, with its rotating centre channel ‘ball’, will set you back almost three times as much by comparison.

Design & Features

The Samsung HW-QS700F ships as a two-piece package, comprising the main soundbar and an external wireless subwoofer. The bar measures in at 1160(W) x 51(H) x 120(D)mm if set on a desktop, or swap height and depth accordingly if hung on a wall. The subwoofer, meanwhile, is an impressively compact (by Samsung subwoofer standards) 249 x 252 x 249mm.

The main bar is slender enough in its two ‘convertible fit’ configurations to: a) not protrude into your TV’s pictures if sat on a desktop, or; b) stick out too much from the wall if hung up. A built-in gyroscope can feed back to the soundbar which orientation it's being used in, too, and adjust the sound output accordingly.

The subwoofer’s cubic shape, rounded edges, sleek finish and compact size make it arguably Samsung’s most attractive soundbar subwoofer yet – but it also looks promisingly potent with its 6.5-inch active driver and 8-inch passive radiator.

The 3.1.2 channel count delivered by the QS700F’s two components comprises front centre, left and right channels; two up-firing channels; and the central sub bass.

The great thing about this, though, is that different speakers deliver the channels depending on the soundbar’s orientation. So the large circular drivers that sit on the soundbar’s top edge deliver up-firing effects when the bar is desk-mounted then become front left and right drivers when it’s wall-mounted.

Unlike Samsung’s Q990F flagship soundbar, the QS700F doesn’t ship as standard with any rear speakers. It does allow you to add optional ones, though, in the shape of either a pair of Samsung’s Music Frame speakers or a pair of SWA-9500S speakers that add two more up-firing channels as well as the regular stereo rear ones. So it's future-upgradeable, which may suit you best.

The QS700F’s connections are a bit of a downgrade on those of the Q990F. The HDMI passthrough drops to just one input and one output, versus two inputs and one output on the Q990F, and it loses the flagship model’s support for 4K/120Hz gaming signals.

Therefore gamers with such high-speed gaming devices will have to attach them directly to a TV equipped with HDMI’s eARC system if they want to enjoy Dolby Atmos or DTS:X sound without sacrificing frame rates.

As with Samsung’s top-end soundbars, the HW-QS700F can receive Dolby Atmos wirelessly from Samsung TVs that support the feature – though it’s important to note that this isn’t a lossless transmission system, and so won’t deliver quite the same sound quality that a physical eARC HDMI connection can.

The HDMI passthrough is pleasingly completist with its high dynamic range (HDR) video formats, though, supporting the premium Dolby Vision and HDR10+, as well as the more basic HDR10 and HLG systems.

The QS700F has already done more than enough on the featurew front to justify its price, but it still has a few other tricks up its sleeve. Adaptive Sound, for instance, is an AI-driven feature that seeks to constantly optimise how the soundbar responds to whatever sound it’s receiving, while a Game Mode Pro works to enhance the sense of directionality in a game soundtrack to help game worlds feel more immersive and immediate, as well as making it easier to pinpoint sound origins in a virtual world.

Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature is on hand to enable the QS700F’s speakers to join forces with those in compatible Samsung TVs to create a bigger-sounding front sound stage, rather than the soundbar just taking over all the sound duties and silencing the speakers in the TV.

Finally, Samsung’s Space Fit Pro system provides essentially a constantly working auto calibration system – though you can manually calibrate the balance of all the speakers too, if you prefer.

Sound & Performance

Trying the QS700F first in its most ‘standard’ horizontal setup, it instantly appears to be a chip off the old Samsung block when it comes to feeding an abundance of power and dynamic range into creating an exceptionally large and detailed soundstage.

This soundstage really does spread forth in all directions, including upwards, to deliver Dolby Atmos height/overhead effects – yet it does so without sounding fragile at the edges, or revealing gaps anywhere in the three-dimensional space it so powerfully but carefully crafts.

Not even the shrillest treble sounds appear thin or trapped, while at the other end of the spectrum the low frequencies never start to sound thumpy or distorted – always exhibiting an uncanny knack for kicking in with and maintaining exactly the appropriate bass weight. Even when a movie’s dynamics push things seriously hard.

There’s no gap between the lowest mid-range sounds of the main 'bar and the surprisingly dynamic range of bass frequencies the subwoofer can deliver. The dynamic reach of the soundbar's mid-range and the face-slapping amount of impact it can imbue in movie staples – like punches and explosions – is outstanding. As is the sheer amount of volume the QS700F can achieve without losing grip on the amount and placement of subtle details in a mix.

The bass from the newly designed subwoofer emanates exceptionally smoothly, filling the room with completely directionless low-frequency sound exactly as it should.

Inevitably, the QS700F sub’s smaller size and less potent driver setup does mean it can’t shift quite as much air or respond quite as dynamically to sudden changes in bass as the dual active driver subwoofer provided with Samsung’s flagship Q990F soundbar. It’s seriously potent, though, and crucially always takes care to stick within its limitations, never succumbing to nasty phuts, buzzes, crackles or dropouts.

Switching to the QS700F’s vertical, wall-hanging setup: it’s immediately obvious that the built-in gyroscope has done its job and rearranged which channels are coming out of which driver. Those big, round speakers that delivered the up-firing sounds before now produce the main left and right channel information fantastically well, delivering a much more effective wall of sound than you get when you wall-mount most soundbars.

The vertical orientation still delivers a potent sense of height and width effects, and the combination of the soundbar’s expansive mid-range and ability to create a full ceiling-to-floor sound means its output still harmonises superbly with that of the subwoofer.

Samsung’s engineers haven’t quite managed to pull off the (possibly impossible) feat of making the QS700F sound exactly the same in both its horizontal and vertical orientations though.

Height effects aren’t delivered across quite as wide a splay or with quite as much authority in vertical mode as in horizontal mode. The centre channel speaker, which is tucked at the apex of the slim front edge in horizontal mode and the apex of the deeper front edge in wall-hanging mode, can lose a little clarity under extreme pressure in horizontal stance, yet while it sounds clearer in vertical mode it can sometimes leave dialogue sounding a little detached from the onscreen action in a way that doesn’t happen in the horizontal setup.

The way the large, round speakers face forward in the vertical configuration helps stereo music sound a little more rounded, natural, open and detailed than it does in horizontal mode too – though if you prefer to listen to music with Samsung’s Surround Sound Mode active (which upmixes stereo music in real time into a surround sound mix), then the horizontal configuration sounds a little more coherent and consistently effective.

For all its cleverness, the QS700F’s charm is that it caters for a wider market – one that incorporates wall-hangers as well as desktop users – than most soundbars, rather than that it can be used in rooms in the same house that happen to have different TV setups.

Looking for other chinks in the QS700F’s armour beyond the vertical and horizontal configurations favouring slightly different music portrayals, while the new subwoofer sounds punchy and smooth, it doesn’t always sound quite as immaculately timed as Samsung’s soundbar subwoofers usually do.

Having only touched on the QS700F’s music playback so far, it’s important to stress that as with Samsung’s flagship soundbars these days, this mid-range model is definitely not just a movie machine.

Straight stereo is portrayed with good but not excessive left and right separation, and vocals hang very effectively just above the main central heart of the mix, without being either dragged down into it, nor left sounding too distinct from it.

Unlike Samsung soundbars in years gone by, the QS700F’s tone for music is less muscular than it is with movies, delivering a more balanced, nuanced and, for want of a better word, 'musical' feel that holds up with really all sorts of musical genres.

Samsung QS700F review: Verdict

Far from leading to the mess of compromise it might have been expected to cause, the genuine placement flexibility opened up by the QS700F’s clever design and re-assignable drivers is for the most part a thumping success by soundbar standards at this price point.

It sounds strong in both desktop and wall-mounted configurations in a way no ‘normal’ soundbar can; it handles music almost as well as it handles movies; and while there are a few moderate differences between how it sounds in its two separate stances, it really delivers quality no matter where you’ve put it.

When the worst that can be said about the QS700F is that a soundbar this good deserves to have its optional rear speakers added as a matter of course, it’s pretty clear that Samsung is onto yet another soundbar winner.

Also consider

While Samsung’s HW-Q990F flagship soundbar warrants a fleeting mention here for delivering the most powerful and fully formed Dolby Atmos sound stage in the soundbar world, its asking price makes it just too expensive to put it in the same category as the QS700F.

A much more useful comparison would be the Sonos Arc Ultra. This is arguably the soundbar world’s ultimate clutter-buster, delivering an outstanding combination of movie and music sound quality, plus Sonos multi-room connectivity from just a single attractive and compact bar.

Also worth considering if you’re quick about it (given it’s a 2024 model and stocks are dwindling) would be yet another Samsung model: the HW-Q800D. This is a more straightforward soundbar-plus-subwoofer combination, which ought to save you some cash.