Pretty much every TV’s sound quality could be improved with a soundbar, so if you’re finding your current TV lacking in the audio department, eBay’s latest deal could remedy your audio woes.
eBay are offering 33% – that’s £100 – off the asking price for the Philips TAB8405/10, bringing its price down to a more affordable £199.
The Philips TAB8405/10 is a 2.1 channel system – two speakers in the main unit, the .1 referring to the wireless subwoofer – that supports Dolby Atmos.
As there’s no mention of upfiring Atmos speakers, we imagine the Philips achieves the height effect where sounds are placed above the listener through digital processing. It’s an effect that should provide a soundstage that’s wider and taller than what you’d get from a more conventional soundbar.
There’s multi-room support through DTS Play-Fi compatibility. With Play-Fi, the Philips soundbar can be grouped with other compatible audio products to play music, or if you want a more cinematic experience with films, you could connect two speakers to act as rear channels through the Phillips Sound app or DTS Play-Fi app.
There are smarts with Alexa, as well as Google Assistant and Siri. They’re not built-in so the soundbar will need to communicate with another Alexa/Google capable device in the home to get instructions from the user. Siri is possible through Apple AirPlay 2, which opens up another avenue for connecting to products and performing multi-room through iOS.
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mean other devices can be connected straight to the soundbar to play music, while the Wi-Fi option opens up Spotify Connect for listening to your favourite tracks. Surprisingly in this day and age, the Philips TAB8405/10 features two HDMI inputs for plugging sources directly in to the soundbar, and those inputs are capable of carrying a 4K HDR signal to the TV, helpful if you’ve run out of inputs on the TV itself.
That’s a pretty solid list of features at a very agreeable price. While we can’t comment on sound, the 200W of power the soundbar easily outmatches what a TV can do, so you can at least feel confident that it’ll sound more powerful than your flatscreen TV. £199 is a pretty great price for a Dolby Atmos soundbar, too, and one of the cheapest we’ve come across yet.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.