Verdict

Pros

• So cheap it's almost unbelievable
• Nice looking unit
• NFC and Bluetooth support are welcome

Cons

• Bass handling isn't great
• Compressed digital music sounds, well, like compressed digital music
• No HDMI inputs

What is the Sandstrøm S47S13?

The Sandstrøm S47S13 is a 2.0 soundbar that at the time of writing is exclusively on sale at Currys for the grand sum of just £80. Despite this remarkably cheap price, the S47S13 comes with built-in Bluetooth and NFC support, and a claimed output of 60W. It sounds like an impressive deal and a very good value of giving your TV’s sound a serious boost. But how does it compare to the best soundbars? Let’s find out.

Sandstrøm S47S13: Design

Considering how incredibly cheap it is, the ‘Brushed Metal’ Sandstrøm S47S13 is surprisingly good looking. It’s a reasonably long-form design (as its name suggests, it’s been designed to go with TVs with 47-inch or larger screens), with three exposed speakers at each end comprising two gleaming metallic mid-range speakers sitting either side of a black tweeter. In the bar’s central section, meanwhile, there’s a cute circular area containing speaker status lights.

The Sandstrøm S47S13 is chunky enough to raise at least hope of some real audio power, yet slim enough to still look stylish and not jut out too far if fixed beneath a flat TV. There’s an understandably rather plasticky feel to the Sandstrøm S47S13’s build quality, but this isn’t obvious from a distance, meaning your over-riding first impression is that you’re getting a heck of a lot of product for your £80.

Sandstrøm S47S13: Connections

Tucked away under a simple clip-off panel on the Sandstrøm S47S13’s rear is a rather disappointing collection of connections. All you get here are the mains power inlet, an optical audio input, and a 3.5mm audio input. Fortunately there is one further socket tucked down the right hand side, though: an MP3 link socket.

The main omission here, of course, is an HDMI input. In fact, the dearth of AV-centric connections generally suggests that the Sandstrøm S47S13 has really been designed to connect to your TV’s audio outputs; it’s not one of those soundbars designed to have multiple external AV sources attached to it so it can essentially be used as an AV switchbox.

It can, though, just about be considered a multimedia switchbox. For surprisingly for its money it’s able to pair to Bluetooth-enabled devices – there’s a Pair button on the remote to enable this – while its central section contains an NFC sensor so you can wirelessly connect NFC-enabled devices for music playback simply by touching them to the soundbar’s fascia.

This sort of connectivity has the potential to make the Sandstrøm S47S13 a firm favourite in multimedia-savvy households – so long, of course, as the Sandstrøm S47S13 has enough audio quality to make the music it produces from these multimedia sources sound good.