Regarding soundbar options to go with your OLED TV.
If you have an LG OLED TV, you might want to consider getting one of LG’s latest soundbars, as these provide extra features when used in conjunction with LG TVs.
Given that you mention that you want a surround sound effect, we’re pretty much limited to looking at LG options that ship with included rear speakers, as no single-bar soundbar I’ve heard from any brand has ever created a convincing rear sound stage.
This leaves us with the £1,699 LG S95QR flagship, or the £1,100 LG S80QR. Both sound very good, though the S80QR is less convenient, as its rear channels use an (included) separate wireless receiver that the speakers then connect to via cables, and doesn’t create such an immersive soundstage as the S95QR as it doesn’t have as many channels in its rears.
The S80QR is £600 cheaper though!
The absolute best sounding full-surround soundbar at the moment is the Samsung HW-Q990B. This is fantastically powerful and uses rears with three channels in each speaker to deliver the most fully immersive Dolby Atmos sound I’ve heard from any soundbar.
It’s recently had a price cut to £1,299 on some sites too, making it better value than the LGs. Samsung also does an excellent step-down option this year, the Q930B, that loses a couple of drivers in the rear channels, reduces the power output and deploys a smaller main soundbar, but still delivers a hugely impressive immersive sound stage. It’s £999 at the time of writing, but hasn’t yet received a price cut like the Q990B has.
So the Q990B is arguably the better value even though it costs more.
Surprisingly few other brands offer soundbars that ship with rear speakers included - which I repeat that I consider necessary for anyone who wants a true surround sound experience.
Perhaps the most interesting option from a tech perspective is the Philips Fidelo B97, which has detachable ‘wings’ at either end of its main soundbar that can be removed and used as wireless rears when you want them to. These rears aren’t nearly as powerful as those of the LG and Samsung options though, which makes it feel a bit overpriced at more than £1000.
Your only other options to get a proper surround experience would be to get models that offer surround speakers as optional extras. The best of these would be the Sonos Arc (though this doesn’t carry an HDMI loop through, leaving you dependent on HDMI eARC technology to get Dolby Atmos into it via your TV); and Sony’s HT-A7000 and HT-A5000 soundbars. Adding rears to these soundbars pushes their prices up quite a bit (well over £1,000), but the results in all three cases in terms of sound quality are very good.
Though for me personally, I’d probably go for one of the integrated Samsung options over these more complicated Sony and Sonos surround upgrade systems.
