Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was actually quite disappointed with the speaker. I thought for the money and the brand it was going to sound a lot better than it does. The built in subwoofer is almost a waste and I feel like I got better sound out of my 10 year old LG sound bar than this.

I like that you have options. It’s not just one sound. Stereo, Standard, Movie and Game. Each has a unique sound. You also can add more bass, see the Ext Bass button. It does add a bass undertone during dialogues but you can turn down the subwoofer so it’s not as heavy, see pic. For me, Stereo is my best option and with the bass ext off, because you can hear the voices better while still getting that subwoofer sound. Movie sound is my next option after Stereo. Connection: I use the HDMI, doesn’t come with one, however it comes with a opt out audio cord. With the hdmi, it works good with powering on/off with my TV so 1 remote is used. I use the Yamaha remote only for the sound adjustment and Bluetooth. Bluetooth: YES! There is an on/off switch for that. It’s not just constantly on. I say yes because nobody can just prank you and connect into your sound bar and play their phone music!, so that is a huge PLUS with this sound bar and why I recommend! Great all around sound bar with the subwoofer built-in which leaves for plenty of space.

I am enjoying this sound bar. It was very easy to set up. This sound bar did not come with a hdmi cord, which delayed my initial set up. It will work without it, but then you have two different volume controls. The sound quality makes movies and games come to life. Blends well with my furniture nicely. You can’t go wrong with this device. Very pleased.

I have the sound bar connected to my PC, which I consume most of my media from, via optical cable. When I’m not gaming or watching a movie or video, I Bluetooth music to the soundbar from my phone while doing things around the house. The sound coming from the sound bar is loud and clear when you have clear voice and 3d sound turned on. I found that the Bass extension was a little distorted and not really necessary. For me the best setting for the subwoofer was at 2. Music and action scenes become immersive, and for me, are miles above any built in speaker in a modern tv. The accompanying app allows you to adjust input, turn on or off sound settings, select preset sound profiles, as well as adjust subwoofer and device volume. One of the neat things I didn’t expect is the app works while connected to via optic cable. Once you connect your phone via Bluetooth and use the app, the app still works even if you’re not using audio through your phone. This eliminates annoying back and forward pairing. This is a great sounding sound bar. It will enhance any home setup and if you never thought about getting a sound bar for your computer or gaming setup, I would recommend it as it changes from a “computer setup” to more of a media center.

This is a fairly budget model soundbar, but it certainly provides some pop compared to basic tv audio. In some ways, it is even a bit overpowering (the bass/subwoofer is much more powerful than I expected). It may, however, be worth it to spend a little more to get more functionality/adjustability. While I think this unit works fine, and is way nicer than the normal tv audio, I would probably spend $50 more for a slightly fancier model if I could get more adjustability. But, it does a lot. The good: 1) Fairly easy setup (though not without a hiccup or two). 2) A lot of sound in a small package. 3) Subwoofer that is quite powerful and will sound fairly thunderous when the soundbar is on the movie or gaming setup. Also, adjustable so that its somewhat overpowering presence can be lessened for normal viewing. 4) Will pair with your tv so that you can adjust the sound level with the tv remote (HDMI control), however, the dedicated remote and/or the app allow more adjustment. 5) Sound is large and pretty rich for films. A few extra settings, like the 3-d surround sound and the clear-voice can really enhance the quality and make the dialogue stand out over background sound and music. The overall experience can be a bit muddled in a rich soundscape (like a film) without some of these enhancements. 6) It is impressive given that this is a pretty small unit. It can put out a TON of sound. Watching *Rise of Skywalker* at first was absolutely overwhelming, even without being pumped up to 11. The Less Good (though I would not say bad) 1) The setup was just a little odd the first time we hooked the system up. For some reason it seemed to come on, then turn itself off, then not respond, and perhaps just needed to sync with the smart TV or the HDMI controller. I'm not quite sure what happened, but we were briefly afraid that the item had power surged upon being plugged in. But, it just apparently needed a few moments, and then everything turned on properly. 2) As well, the setup, which I'm sure is similar for most soundbars, but this is the only one I've dealt with--is a little tricky if you don't have a ton of HDMI ports on the TV. The manual recommends plugging the ARC HDMI out into the soundbar. But, I only have one other HDMI port on the back of the tv (it's a 50" 4k, by a top maker, so it's not a bad tv, just a a bit port-poor I guess) and that means I'll need to get a switch or something as I can't have a cable box and a 4k player both plugged in at the same time. There is also the option of using a digital optical audio cable with standard HDMI. More on that below. 3) While the manual recommends using the ARC HDMI cable as the main connection, we found that using the digital optical audio cable instead provided a better experience with the 4k player. Namely, this was because we had lag issues watching the 4k player and using the soundbar with the standard ARC HDMI setup. (I.e. the sound was slightly behind the video, just enough to be annoying). However, switching to the dedicated digital audio cable actual gave us a better match. I don't know why or if this would be the case for everyone, or if it's an HDMI cable issue, but it's important to be aware of, because there is no way to adjust for any delay. In higher end receivers and sound systems, you can program this into the setup. But the adjustability of settings with this soundbar is fairly minor. Simplicity is nice, but a few more options might be good. 4) Adjustability First, know that Yamaha provides an app that you can download onto a phone or smart device, which allows the device to act as a remote. From the phone, I can adjust the volume, the subwoofer, the mode (movie, game, stereo, standard), the special features (bass extension, Clear Voice, Surround Sound), the input (tv, bluetooth, wired connection). However, that's it. There's no equalizer for music, there's no easy way to program latency or anything like that. There are ways to adjust the lag and get the sync right, but you might have to try a few different hookups to keep everything together, particularly figuring out what cables should go directly into the soundbar or what cables to use. We could not hook up our (yes, quite old) gaming unit in a way that didn't have impossible lag between audio and video. That's partly our really old game system. I am sure it provided sound that would rumble any game system adequately. 5) While I like the clear voice feature, it sometimes seems to lose track of what to isolate on occasion. 6) The subwoofer is a bit too much on standard settings. The bass settings at 0 are more than I want, most of the time. I usually end up bringing the subwoofer down to -2 or so. (It goes down to -4 and up to 4). The basic movie setting amps the bass to begin with, as does the gaming setting. You can adjust the subwoofer separately, and I generally have needed to do this when watching a film or listening to music. The first thing we watched with the sounder on was "Hot Fuzz," which has a very loud, bass-driven ending, and the bass just drowned out much of the other texture until I adjusted the subwoofer level. 5) I have not been able to easily connect this with my smart speaker in the other room. I can send a signal out through bluetooth from a device (like a phone, tablet, or computer) to the sounder and my smart speaker, and that so far is the only way I've figured out to link them up. There may be some other way, but *I* can't get Alexa to see the Soundbar. I was hoping to make this work with the smart speaker (not an echo, a third party compatible speaker) and get uniform sound easily throughout the main floor of my home. Alas, the bluetooth method is the only way I've figure out.

This is a great compact, low profile option for upgrading your sound system/tv in any viewing area. I got it specifically for my "man cave" area. I have a rec room/gym/ sports watching type room that has a big screen projection viewer but with stock box sound. This system fit my needs perfectly. Its not a huge room, so the compact size works great and fills the space with sound. It is blue tooth and multi use capable, so i can listen to music from my phone, watch tv, movies, sports etc. all with the click of a button. It also has custom sound settings for movies, sports, music etc. which changes the levels and depth of sound to fit what is coming through it. I really like this thing. It has completed my system.

Knowing that new TVs have horrible speakers we decided to get this Yamaha - SR-B20A Sound Bar for our recently purchased 4k Roku TV in our bedroom. The first thing I noticed out of the box was the sleek design and low profile of the Yamaha sound bar. I also noticed when I picked it up that the mesh felt-like covering was very loose. I felt if it was to slip out of my hands the covering would just rip off. Set up was very easy. Yamaha supplies an optical audio cable with the unit so you will have to buy or use your own HDMI cable if you want to use the ARC port on your TV. It also comes with a mounting template for attaching to a wall under your TV which even though I didn't do I would recommend because of the speaker configuration. That bring me to the sound performance. When I first turned it on I thought I must have hooked it up wrong. I was standing 5 feet in front of the TV and sound bar and the sound was not much better then my TV. It felt as though the sound was coming from under my TV where the TV speakers are. Turns out when you don't wall mount the Yamaha - SR-B20A the 4 best speakers ( 2 bass and 2 midrange on each end) are facing upward and not towards you. The sound seemed to get lost. There are 2 small tweeters in the front but they are almost unrecognizable. I guess they do this to get that 3D surround feeling but in no way do I feel any immersive sound that Yamaha is shooting for. I tried turning the speaker upright to change the orientation but it is very unstable and blocks the bottom of the TV that way. Once I turned the volume way I up I was able to get a good quality sound out of the sound bar. Because the speakers face upward in the non mounted orientation, it feels as if the whole room needs to fill up with sound before the quality starts to get decent which meant that I had to turn my TV volume up into the 30's level to get good sound. Without this sound bar even though the TV speakers weren't good I only had to turn the TV to the low 20's to get understandable sound. The last thing I want when watching TV in the bedroom is to have the whole room filled with sound. The EQ presets are fine. There's 4 choices to choose from but I found out just choosing stereo output worked the best. There is also a port to hook up a powered subwoofer which I would recommend due to the lack of punch in bass from the included sub's. We will continue to use this but I'm sure with some exploring you can find just as good or better sound bar for less.

Depending on what you’re looking for, this may fit your requirements, but there are a couple quirks related to this model, so be sure this is exactly what you’re looking for before purchasing. This model is designed to be super compact and functions best when wall mounted under your TV. It has built-in subwoofers to add some low end, but does include a subwoofer output connection if you wish to add an external subwoofer for more impact. Unboxing and setup was very easy but noticed a couple minor cons right off the bat. They didn’t include any wall mounting hardware, which is surprising considering that’s how this is designed to be installed, and they didn’t include an HDMI cable for the ARC hookup method. Not deal breakers, but something to be aware of. Moving onto overall design, the unit was extremely easy to hookup and turn on, but there is a little bit of a lack of feedback from the unit. The LEDs on the front of the unit are fairly basic, and the remote offers no feedback either. It’s pretty easy to tell your making sound, and the sound level can be indicated by how loud it is, but it’s harder to understand which EQ or “mode” you have selected. There are quite a few choices like Clear Voice or 3D Surround, that unless you know exactly which LED it is, you have to get pretty up close and personal with the sound bar to look at the labels for the specific LEDs that are turned on. Sound quality was adequate for this level of sound bar, but nothing I’d personally write home about. It’s an improvement over most built in TV speakers, and will allow for more volume and will fill a room, but it’s just adequate. The sound quality was much better over one of the wired connections that it was over Bluetooth. I tried streaming music from 2 different Bluetooth devices and both times the audio sounded compressed and lacked a huge amount of quality. Comparing the same audio track via HDMI made a very noticeable improvement to the point I’d not recommend using this if you’re planning to connect your TV via Bluetooth. Overall, if you’re looking for a nice compact, wall mountable, AIO type sound bar that you will connect hardwired via HDMI (ARC) or SPDIF, this will serve you great. This sound bar would also serve well in instances where you utilize shared walls like an apartment where you can’t have loud thumping from a dedicated external subwoofer. It has some low end that you can hear but not as much feel which would be great in that scenario.

The clarity of sound is outstanding. It connects easily to bluetooth devices: we don't have bluetooth speakers but we did connect and access the playlist from our cell phones. Some devices make this painful. Yamaha does not. I know a lot of products don't include an HDMI Arc cable (wished this one did) but no mounting screws? Not exactly a high ticket item there, and it would have been nice to have mounting screws included so we don't have to take a template along to a hardware store to match them up. A mounting template is included, which is helpful. It is nice that there is a fiber optic cable. It uses up an HDMI port if you want to use Direct Arc. We were disappointed that Yamaha wants you to install an app to control the sound bar. It took us a bit of work to get the HDMI Arc sound control to work off one remote as opposed to two. You get better sound with the Optical-TV Speaker pairing, but, you have to use both the TV remote and the Sound Bar remote, and the Sound Bar remote is coarse to use and cheaply made. Removing the back to access the battery is difficult, and this is not made of a quality plastic, and we were worried we would break the remote trying to get the back off. There is no easy way to see what your volume levels are, or which setting you are using(Stereo/Movie, etc) Not having had a Sound Bar before, we don't know if this is standard. Clear Voice is awesome, really great when you want to soften the background noise. We do like the variety of options: Clear Voice or 3D Surround, then Stereo/TV/Movie as well. Over all we like the sound bar, and know it will simply take some more use to find out all the features and how to utilize them.

I like the sleek design of the Yamaha SR-B20A but otherwise, don’t find anything else particularly compelling about it. It’s a basic sound bar with few extras, the most noteworthy being Bluetooth connectivity that allows streaming to the bar from Bluetooth enabled devices. Although the sound bar is ARC-capable, only a thin, basic optical cable is included. The exclusion of even a cheap generic HDMI cable is puzzling and forces purchasers of this sound bar who own ARC-equipped televisions or receivers to supply their own HDMI cable. The size and footprint of the bar are just right and the low profile design should fit in front of most non-mounted sets without obstructing the bottom of the screen. Each side of the sound bar has a bass port. Sound quality is average. It doesn’t sound bad but doesn’t sound great either. It’s somewhat generic sounding and lacks the warmth, clarity and richness of some similarly priced competing sound bars. My biggest issue with the sound is that the volume is noticeably quieter than the smaller sound bar that this bar briefly replaced. On the prior smaller bar, a volume level of 12 is normally sufficient for watching television in a quiet environment from 12-15 feet away. I have to more than double the volume well into the 20’s on this Yamaha to achieve the same loudness under similar conditions. Also, there is little noticeable difference in sound quality with surround and/or enhanced bass enabled. Enhanced bass slightly increases resonance but doesn’t come anywhere close to the room vibrating performance of even an inexpensive dedicated subwoofer. Surround is the same, having very little noticeable impact on overall sound. Clear voice does effectively help isolate dialogue for better clarity and feels like the most effective of the three enhancements. ARC performance seems somewhat glitchy. My other sound bars allow me to adjust the sound bar volume through either my TV or cable remotes. None of my television or cable remotes work with this Yamaha through ARC. I’m forced to use either the included remote. The included remote is comfortably sized and works fine. However, there are flashing indicator LEDs on the sound bar to indicate certain remote commands seems a little odd. For example, the number of LED flashes indicates whether certain features are being toggled on or off. Why not just a single binary state LED to indicate whether a feature has been toggled on or off? Yamaha also offers a smartphone app available for both iOS and Android that makes remote control a little easier but that’s assuming it actually connects to the sound bar. Once connected, it basically performs the same functions as the physical remote, just a little more efficiently. Despite my listing several cons, this isn’t a terrible sound bar. I just can’t recommend it at this price point. There are too many other sound bars available that are similarly priced but sound nicer and have more additional features. Some even include wireless subwoofers that sound much better than the built-in subwoofers on this bar. I’m also left scratching my head wondering why Yamaha felt it necessary to include an optical cable yet exclude an HDMI cable. I realize not all manufacturers bundle HDMI cables with their devices but I typically find a bundled HDMI along with other cables when I purchase a sound bar. It didn’t take me long to remove the Yamaha and put the previous sound bar back in place. I really like the size and design but am not a fan of the sound or operation.

While I’m listening to music or watching my favorite tv series, the sound is crisp and vibrant. You can either use the controller by connecting it to your phone with Bluetooth or the controller it comes with to choose how you would like the sounds to be. I personally love the Yamaha sound bar since I enjoy listening to music often and it’s able to make the songs I play sound like I’m actually in a concert! Even though I barely play video games on my own, The sound quality is amazing and worth the money. I would totally recommend this to my peers and family members to make movie night a bit better!!!

Pros: Works well for gaming Compact size Cons: Comes with just an optical and my TV works better when using hdmi I use this on a TV primarily used for gaming. I have another soundbar with a set of speakers and a sub that I use for the main TV. I just wanted to try out something small to make gaming more fun. I wish this came with an option other than optical to hook up since hdmi is easier with the TV we use for gaming. The war game played by my husband definitely is louder and delivers a different experience with a soundbar vs just the TV. My husband is on the fence at this point though and might stick to wearing headphones vs using this. It's louder than our TV which has had some volume issues in the past but doesn't compare to our larger soundbar. The sound is OK and the bass is decent. Not sure I would recommend this without trying other compact soundbars first.

This sounds bar far exceeded my expectations. It really feels like the sound bounces off the wall behind us when we watch movies. What’s also great is our tv is on the same wall where our kids hall is. It seems like since the sound bar faces the opposite way our kids don’t seem to be affected by it.

The sound and set up of the Yamaha are second to none! First the sound is amazing and with built in sub it takes up little space. Last the Bluetooth connections make little use for wires - Buy, Buy!!!