Featuring the S95QR, a Dolby Atmos/DTS:X sound bar with not two, not four, but five up firing drivers, including one for the center channel, LG raises the standard for immersion. The additional Centre height driver strengthens the dialogue, and LG’s new flagship sound bar for 2022 does a fantastic job of filling the room with surround and height effects, enclosing you in a bubble of exhilaratingly immersive sound. Along with AirPlay 2 and Chromecast connectivity, the LG S95QR also includes a room adjustment feature driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that modifies the sound of the sound bar to match the acoustics of your home theatre. also you will check our article on LG S95QR review.
LG S95QR review: Design
With the S95QR, LG continues its trend of favoring modest, brushed-metal and fabric housings for its sound bars. Even though the primary sound bar is 47 inches broad and only 2.5 inches tall, it maintains a low profile. That will fit under the majority of TVs. Don’t do that, though, unless you’re going to wall-mount the sound bar because it needs room for its three up-firing height drivers to function. The top surface is covered in a series of touch buttons, including ones for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, input selection, volume, and play/pause. Everything you could possible need, in other words, and then some. The hardwired power cord, which made placement and installation of LG’s 2021 SP9YA Dolby Atmos sound bar excessively complex, was one of our main complaints. Thankfully, LG didn’t make the same error twice because the cord on the S95QR is completely detachable. The fabric grille conceals a small alphanumeric display that provides information about your settings, but most of the time it just indicates which input you are using (HDMI 1, ARC, Wi-Fi, and more). Given that it is always in the forefront, it dims automatically after a short period of time but you cannot turn it off, which we found to be occasionally distracting. This will be fixed in a subsequent firmware update, according to LG. You can definitely get creative with the positioning of the wireless subwoofer due to its front-ported, side-firing design, but not too creatively, since you don’t want to block that large circular grille. The sound bar’s accompanying wireless surrounds stand out from the crowd since they not only include two full-range drivers that are oriented away from one another but also their own up-firing height drivers. Since they are larger, more omnidirectional speakers, you can place them behind or behind your viewing chairs, which smaller, more directional speakers couldn’t exactly do as well. However, it also means that they are significantly larger than conventional sound bar surrounds, making it difficult to find a place for them if you don’t plan to wall-mount them.
Usability
Despite having four distinct speaker components, the S95QR is incredibly simple to set up. Each wireless speaker connected to the others almost instantaneously and stably as soon as the system was turned on for the first time. The LG Sound Bar is quite simple to use on a daily basis, although we advise using the app rather than the remote control for anything more complex than simply changing the level or switching between audio inputs.
LG S95QR review: Features
A new FEM amplifier will improve the signal between the system’s wireless circuits and antenna, which is another improvement for the S95QR’s satellite speakers. This means that no matter how big your living room is, the connection to both the wireless subwoofer and surrounds should be more stable, while better signal sensitivity and an extended transmission distance from roughly 19m to an astonishing 30m makes the speakers easier to position. You may experience lossless multi-channel music wirelessly with the new LG WOWCAST audio dongle (sold separately) if you detest ugly cables connecting your TV and sound bar. Priced at £100 (about $135/AU$188), WOWCAST provides bitstream passthrough for Dolby Atmos, Dolby Atmos TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS:X, and DTS-HD Master Audio. The S95QA is LG’s first sound bar to support IMAX Enhanced, which employs a modified version of DTS:X, in addition to handling Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive sound formats. The S95QR uses Meridian Audio’s Horizon technology, which was previously provided to LG by the company, to upmix two-channel audio to 7.1 channels in music mode. Similar to prior years, if you purchase an LG TV and a 2022 sound bar, you can pair the two to use Sound Share, which enables the TV’s more advanced software to take over processing responsibilities. The S95QA has an easy-to-use room calibration system built in, but it also gives customers a tone of options for customizing the sound with channel level controls, EQ, and a choice of seven different sound profiles, including Sports, Game, and Bass Blast. Except for cinema for films and music for music, we’d avoid practically all of these.
Connectivity
As a flagship device, you would anticipate having a wide range of connectivity options given how important connections are in today’s world. There is a greater need for HDMI ports because most home theatres incorporate streaming devices, media players, disc players, and even gaming consoles among other things. But in this instance, the S95QR doesn’t seem to differ all that much from the SN11RG, which is two years older. We do receive two HDMI inputs, one HDMI output, one optical digital audio input, and a single USB connection for streaming media from an external storage device. That’s all there is. It is important to note that all HDMI ports are the older HDMI 2.0 variety, which prevents them from supporting 4K@120Hz. This indicates that you are out of luck if you wish to connect your gaming console to the sound bar for high frame rate gaming. Your only solution in this situation is to connect your console to the TV and then the sound bar directly using the eARC. This year, however, is different in that all ports support both VRR and ALLM, so if you enjoy gaming but don’t give a hoot about HFR, connecting your console to the sound bar before the TV will be very advantageous for you. Additionally supported by the HDMI ports are 4K pass-through, Dolby Vision, HDR10, and CEC. If you have more devices to connect but only have two inputs, that could be a problem as well. If this is the case, you must use the HDMI ports on the TV to fix the issue; otherwise, an HDMI switch will be required. Even though a sound bar cannot have as many HDMI ports as AV receivers, having at least one extra would be quite beneficial for home theatre systems with more complicated setups.
LG S95QR review: Controls
The LG Sound Bar control software will likely be used to select sound presets and modify speaker volume to match the currently playing content. Once we were able to get the app to recognize our home network and establish a connection with the wireless sound bar, it was rather simple to use, although it took some time and the unclear instructions made it difficult. At the center of the sound bar itself are touch-capacitive control buttons as well. There is a small display on the front to give visual feedback that the sound bar is decoding an audio signal, but it is rather limited because it only shows a few characters at a time. You must wait for three or four letters to scroll by at a time to see what format is being decoded or what sound preset is chosen. The Apple Music playback app can be controlled with a classic handheld remote control (batteries are included), which we thought was very cool. Our Samsung TV remote also proved useful for making rapid adjustments to the volume level overall.
Sound Quality
It doesn’t take long to determine that the S95QR is easily the best sound bar LG has ever produced. In fact, it’s one of the most enjoyable home theatre sound bars we’ve ever used from any brand, especially for watching movies and playing video games. With a variety of our favorite movie soundtracks, three characteristics stand out in particular: how strong the sound is, how expansive the soundstage is, and how much dynamic range it can generate without distortions or imbalance. Looking at each of these separately, the sound bar’s incredible strength is evident in the impactful soundtrack moments have when they enter your space, blowing your hair back with powerful cinematic intent on the one hand, while deftly defining even the subtlest elements on the other. The sound from every channel is simultaneously pushed to the furthest corners of your living room, all without harshness or thinness. Remarkably, the sound bar can project sound so far from all four of its structural components, successfully enveloping you in a three-dimensional audio environment with Dolby Atmos mixes that you no longer notice the speakers’ presence. That situation is really the ideal one for Dolby Atmos. Regarding dynamic range, the newly created subwoofer pumps out deep bass that supports large action scenes with great presence and heft but is also more willing to participate during more delicate sequences than LG subwoofers from the past, as well as more flexible when it comes to adjusting its weight and depth to keep up with subtle shifts in a scene’s dynamics. On the other hand, strident sounds are conveyed with enough full-bloodedness to prevent them from being masked by the powerful bass without appearing peaky or sibilant. you can read our article on LG S95QR review.
Price
With a whopping 17 drivers arranged in a 9.1.5 configuration, the LG S95QR is LG’s top-tier Dolby Atmos sound bar for 2022. It’s a multi-speaker system that includes a main sound bar, a wireless subwoofer, and two wireless rear speakers. With side-firing drivers on the rears (a feature already used by its rival Samsung) and an upward-firing Centre channel that LG claims is a global first, it improves on the brand’s prior versions. The LG S95QR, which costs £1700/$1800/AU$2000, replaces the 7.1.4 channel SP11RA, which debuted in 2021 and initially cost £1500/$1700/AU$1849 but is now available with about 30% reduction. The Samsung Q990B Dolby Atmos sound bar, which has an even greater channel count as an 11.1.4 package and costs £1600, $1900, or AU$2200, is directly priced to compete with this product.
Conclusion
The LG S95QR sound bar is excellent for a variety of uses. It’s a premium 9.1.5 setup with incredibly adaptable performance, so it sounds amazing with everything from TV shows to music to movies. It has a boomy sound out of the box with a lot of extra emphasis in the bass area, but you can alter that sound with the bass and treble controls. With action-packed movies and bass-heavy music genres, dialogue is audible and present in the mix, and there is an acceptable amount of rumble in the bass. Numerous audio formats, including Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital, are supported, and these may be accessed on many streaming services.
