Customer Ratings & Reviews

Who knew a skinny bar could produce theater quality surround sound? I do now!

Samsung curved Sound System's versatility has exceeded my expectations.

This is a great speaker with a great sound quality and sound effect.

Researched item before buying and am very happy with my purchase

Works like it should. Loads fast. The remote is a little small

Went into Best Buy to purchase a sonus sound bar but left with the Samsung curved sound bar. Sound good but compared to the Sonus there's no comperison. Having buyers remorse. Reason for 3 stars.

I never write reviews but this soundbar deserves one. I initially bought a Sonos Playbar without the sub-woofer and was happy with the sound but not very impressed. I saw the J8500 65% off for a short window and decided to buy it and give it a shot. OMG! day and night difference when it comes to watching movies or listening to music (the included sub-woofer is awesome)! My TV is also a Samsung UN65KS9000 (great TV!) and they paired without having to do anything (other than plug the HDMI ARC). Whenever I turn on or off the TV the soundbar follows and it is super quick to turn on. I like to be able to stream music via WiFi (I prefer this better over Bluetooth because I don't want to leave my phone close to the sound bar at all times for BT to sound uninterrupted). The app (samsung multiroom) works fine. It automatically connects the soundbar with the phone after selecting the wifi network. You then need to sign in to your streaming services and done. Bluetooth also works just fine after selecting the BT source with the soundbar controller. There are several sound effects that can be changed via the sound setting on Samsung TVs or using the remote control. Use the standard or movie modes. I really like the movie mode when watching anything but music but standard is just as good. You can also adjust the bass' sound and power (same as treble) using the control remote. And (this was big for me) if you have a Samsung TV (2016 models for sure) you can use that TV remote control to control the volume. Don't complain if you have bad wifi and try to play music via wifi. Either plug an ethernet cable or place the router/extender/satellite (if you have a mesh network) near the soundbar. I highly recommend this soundbar. The regular price is a bit high but still worth it. If you find it on sale like I did, don't even hesitate to buy it. It looks awesome too being curved and having a good width to complement a 65' TV. Box is huge! 10/10 soundbar.

Sound output is very poor... no surround sound st all.

Well I purchased this soundbar over Christmas and am finally setting it up and running it though several devices. I'll just start the review with the negatives that caused me to want to write this. The sound bar is currently connected to my Samsung tv via hdmi. What I am disappointed in the the volume of the soundbar itself. The volume fluctuates so bad between devices. If I'm watching A movie on Netflix on an app on the tv or a tv show on Hulu they sometimes come out at different volumes. I can definitely notice a difference if I'm playing a game on my PS4 or watching a movie on the Samsung 4K player. The one big gripe that I have it the Bluetooth volume level. I just recently connected my phone to the soundbar for some tunes and it was so quite. I turned the soundbar all the way up to max volume and my little UE Boom speaker could out perform it. It was embarrassing. A $1000 speaker setup it quieter than a $150 portable speaker? Not at all impressed. I also don't like if I pause a movie and walk away for a bit that the speaker turns off. My Samsung remote runs the TV and Bluray player and it also controls the soundbar bar when it's on but if it shuts off I have to look for the soundbar remote. Not usually a problem because it turns on when I turn the tv on but that is an issue. On a good note it does put out good sound while watching a movie on my bluray player. The bass isn't overpowering and actually it's a little lacking. All in all I wouldn't recommend the setup to someone for this price. If you are looking at this for a mild volume increase and just to look nice with the TV then it's for you. But have fun cracking open that wallet for it.

I love this product and every one who listens to it says it is pretty awesome. The 9.1 is the reason i purchased this item to go with my curved samsung 4K tv. I only wish they could make the REAR speakers do a better job. you don't need rear as this has 5.1 already but you can add any of the R series i added R1's. but it's not a great sound. The Surround is not perfect when adding rear speakers and the BASS is just not quite there yet. Too much BASS over powers the sound Samsung needs to work on the BASS aspect of it. A lot of BASS is not going to give you a better movie experience. The right amount of BASS is critical to the surround sound being perfect.

I researched several options including the high end Bose and Sonos. This bar and its capability will blew you away. It brought our home audio to life and provided the ultimate surround sound. Its easy setup with a Samsung Tv. Have the 8500 series tv so its curve is perfect with our setup. You can not go wrong!

I am running this Samsung 2016 HW-J8500R soundbar with a Samsung 2016 UN65KS8500 curved 65" TV. You'd think these two devices would interact with each other to perfection, they do not. For the best quality audio and least amount of trouble controlling everything, I found the optical connection along with a Logitech Harmony remote to be the best solution. Even with the help of a Logitech Harmony remote, there is an annoying bug that I hope a firmware upgrade will fix: if I pause whatever I am watching, the soundbar will automatically turn off after 15 minutes. Once I resume, the soundbar will stay off, even though I have enabled "Auto Power Link". Auto Power Link is supposed to turn the soundbar on when an optical signal is present. While that feature works when I initially turn the TV on, for some reason it does not work if the 15-minute auto power off kicks in. A workaround for this would be to disable the 15-minute auto-shutdown feature, but you can't! It can only be disabled for the analog connection, not the optical connection. Samsung's AnyNet+ HDMI with ARC connection has loads of problems. Whenever I turn on the TV, the soundbar will not turn on. The TV defaults to TV Speaker output, so I have to manually turn on the soundbar and then change the audio output to the Soundbar in the menus. After reading forum complaints going back years, AnyNet+ does not turn Samsung soundbars on. I believe it also suffered from the same 15-minute auto shutoff problem as I had with the optical connection, but HDMI was too troublesome for me to work with any further. The wireless connection modes had the same issues as HDMI - my TV liked to default back to TV speakers. I'd rather stick with the higher quality optical connection anyway. Also worth mentioning is a strange electrical sensation on the top metal surface of the soundbar. You can feel it if you brush your hand across the top surface. Apparently this is normal if you are only using the optical connection. I tried floor models at nearby stores and they did the same thing. If you connect a device to the soundbar with an HDMI cable, this effect goes away. Hopefully things will change before my return period is over. I would gladly change my rating depending on future firmware upgrades. If I could go back in time, I would have chosen Vizio's 5.1 sound bar such as the SB4051-C0, which I currently use in a different room. Vizio's sound bar has a significantly lower price, great sound quality, rear speakers and has been trouble free.

Nice bar, the sound quality is great and the look of it too!! It is very easy to install. Matches perfectly with my curved TV

Worst sound bar I ever own, too expensive , sound is not the greatest for the price oh by the way went bad after 3 months and is been a headache with the Samsung customer support.