Samsung's latest home theatre offering is the HW-K950 — a Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar that delivers far more immersive sound than I thought possible from this form factor.
With a recommended retail price of $1999, the HW-K950 is priced more like a full home theatre solution than a soundbar. But the sound quality matches anything you can get from a 5.1 speaker configuration. Here, the soundbar design is used for convenience of setup, not as a compromise in quality.
![The Samsung HW-K950 consists of a soundbar, wireless sub-woofer and wireless rear speakers.](/web/20161106025033im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/h/s/t/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gshsqu.png/1478214084710.jpg)
All in all, there's fifteen speakers built into thepackage. The main unit features the standard left, right and centre channels of a traditional soundbar, with an additional four speakers pointing up toward your ceiling, bouncing back overhead sound. There's also a subwoofer, of course, and two wireless rear speakers to complete the home theatre experience.
The upward facing speakers allows the unit to earn Dolby Atmos certification, providing 5.1.4-channel sound. When a character on screen gets to the chopper, you'll feel the chopper flying overhead. It's a neat trick that normally requires dedicated ceiling mounted speakers, which for most casual cinema geeks is too much effort, and completely out of reach for apartment renters.
Connecting the unit out of the box is refreshingly simple. There's no painful pairing process, the wireless woofer and back facing speakers all connect automatically, so I was able to set up out of the box in just a few minutes.
The sound is phenomenal for a dedicated home theatre system, let alone a soundbar. Testing with recent movies gave impressive results. The bear fighting scene of The Revenant was as intense as anything I've seen or heard in a cinema, the opening moments of The Martian, which relies so heavily on audio for its emotional impact, felt suffocating to watch.
Gaming with the speakers is something else again. Star Wars Battlefront supports Dolby Atmos, and is the perfect vehicle to sell the feature, at least to people my age. Running around Hoth — with the sound of lasers behind you, AT-ATs in front, and X-wings overhead — was like some kind of childhood fantasy. It's the kind of immersive experience you can normally only get with a proper gaming headset.
Right now, Dolby Atmos content is limited to a few Ultra HD Blu-ray titles and video games, but the library is growing, and Netflix is supporting Dolby Atmos on many of its titles, too.
Apart from the standard optical audio and hdmi inputs, you can quickly connect to the speakers via Bluetooth to play music from your phone. If you already have one of Samsung's multi-room Wi-Fi speakers, you can connect the HW-K950 via Wi-Fi too, and control the whole system with a Sonos style app.
Overall, this is another home theatre product from Samsung that puts my current loungeroom setup to shame. But unlike their gorgeous SUHD TVs that I desperately want but can't afford, the HW-K950 is a bit of home theatre luxury my budget can stretch to. And unlike TV technology which still seems in flux right now, this soundbar feels like a safer purchase, something that won't likely be superseded any time soon.
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