PanasonicSC-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!

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.

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.