From their seductive appearances to the enhanced depth and contrast as well as other advantages they offer, curved TVs are favored by many LED TV buyers for varying reasons. But like their flat counterparts, they are unimpressive in the aspect of audio output — no thanks to the flat-panel design that makes accommodating a robust speaker impossible.
So, to enjoy top-quality audio from your curved TV, you need to invest in a matching soundbar. While you’d be fine with many of the top-notch options by reputable brands, you’d be better off with a soundbar that blends aesthetically with your curved TV. And that’s why a curved soundbar is highly recommended.
Best Curved Soundbars for Curved TVs: Our Top 5 Picks
Although most soundbars on the market come in the traditional bar-shape design, a number of models have broken away from this convention. To help you make the right choice, we spent several hours scouring the market for curved soundbars by top brands. We then compared and ranked them based on design, features, performance, buyer opinions, and other important factors.
Following our research, we came up with these top picks.
1. Sonos Playbase
Joining Sonos’ line of speakers is the Playbase, which offers almost everything you will want in a soundbar. While there are many rivals in its price category that it seems the Playbase is late to the party, make no mistake; this soundbar is what the party has been waiting for.
Design
There’s no mistaking this for a Sonos device as its design embraces the style of all the soundbars from the company: stylish, minimalist and sturdy. While it’s a nicer looking device on Sonos line of offerings, it is curved and on the small side for a premium soundbar as it measures 28.6 x 15 x 2.3 inches.
From the clean, matte finish to the subtle touch controls on its front, the whole speaker has an understated design that allows it to “disappear” into your home. The top of the speaker features the touch-sensitive buttons for play/pause, music playback control, and volume. The other button is the sync button used during the setup process.
Around the back, you will find a place to plug in the power cord: an optional Ethernet port (the unit also does Wi-Fi, which should be enough unless you’re streaming uncompressed audio) and an optical digital audio connection. Like the Playbar, there is no HDMI – which some might not be overly thrilled about. The sound equipment comes in black and white color options.
Features
One of the impressive facts about Sonos’ devices is that they’re all easy to use, so you will find a guide in the package that offers a visual representation of how to go about the entire process. Like its forebears, the Playbase connects to the Sonos platform wirelessly, giving you the ability to control it via the Sonos app or select app partners like Spotify and Apple Music. It also features ten amplified speaker drivers to deliver deep booms and crystal clear whispers.
Furthermore, the soundbar is also compatible with TruePlay tuning, a feature that detects the dimensions of your room and adjusts the sound of the speaker according to give room-filling sounds.
Other features the soundbar comes with are the Dialogue Enhancement (which enhances vocal clarity) and Night Mode (which tones down the bass during loud action scenes.) in addition, the package doesn’t come with a remote but it can learn how to use your existing remote to control the volume. All other controls can be carried out from the app.
Performance
Because the soundbar comes with ten amplified speaker driver system, you will likely be impressed by the width and three-dimensionality of the sonic presentation, especially if you’re accustomed to your curved TV’s sound output. Even without TruePlay calibration, the Playbase offered punchy bass, crisp vocals and a good sense of soundstage depth and height.
Watching movies is phenomenal because of the bass performance of the soundbar. Even without a subwoofer, it adds resonance to dialogue and delivers the sounds of all the actions to keep you immersed. Its strengths for movies translate to music playback as it delivers clear range, natural and distinct sounds to make your music experience more pleasurable. That doesn’t mean the soundbar doesn’t have its flaws like occasional sharp trebles, but the sound quality is superb for a unit without a subwoofer.
Pros
- Fantastic sound quality
- Sturdy build
- Room-filling sound
- Easy to set up and use
Cons
- No HDMI
- Expensive
- Doesn’t come with sub
2. Samsung HW-MS6500
If you’ve used Samsung’s MS-650 before, just think of the HW-MS6500 as its fraternal twin. It is the latest curved soundbar from the company that promises excellent sound quality with surround sound features. If you want a premium soundbar to pair with your curved TV, the MS6500 should be your first point of call.
Design
If you’re already sold on the idea of a curved television, then you would love the HW-MS6500 as it is the curved variant of the staggeringly good HW-MS650 soundbar. Every element of the design is crafted to save space while remaining modern and stylish. The angled edge at the top front, the metal grille and the well-engineered build have a distinctly premium feel. On the extreme right is a small display that shows information like the source and volume level selected while the control buttons are positioned just beside it. They include volume, input selection, and power.
Flip the soundbar to the rear and you will find Wi-Fi setup and speaker add buttons for multiroom installation. Connections include a single HDMI 2.0 input, ARC output, optical and 3.5mm inputs. A USB port lets you connects the TV and speaker through which both components can be powered via a single mains lead. For that purpose, you will need the optional One Mount kit (WMN300SB). It also comes with built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which allows the soundbar to become part of a whole-system complete with music streaming from Pandora, Spotify and other music services via the Samsung Multi-room app for your mobile device.
Features
Apart from being a curved soundbar, another attraction to the HW-MS6500 is that it is a one-box solution that doesn’t require a subwoofer or surround speakers to deliver powerful bass. It does so by using six 2 x 4.3-inch mid/bass drivers that move simultaneously, something Samsung calls Multi-Speaker Control.
Another impressive feature is the distortion canceling technology that delivers deeper bass and a clearer, more detailed sound. It achieves this by predicting the distortion and automatically tuning the speaker’s output before the distortion occurs.
Furthermore, the Bluetooth connection lets you stream audio from Samsung TVs, which will be good news to the ears of cable-phobes everywhere. It also comes with six modes including Standard, Music, Clear Voice, Sports, Movie and Surround. You can switch between the modes or just let the Smart Sound feature detect the current content and select the best EQ setting for it. In addition, you can control the soundbar using the OneRemote which also works for select 2017 Samsung TVs. You can also use the audio remote app to control the soundbar.
Performance
When it comes to performance, the HW-MS6500 doesn’t come behind the MS650 in any way as it matches MS650’s amazing performance pound for pound. The most remarkable thing about the sound quality is the bass output, which has the rumble, depth, and room-filling power to give any external sub a run for its money.
The soundbar is so powerful that you could almost swear some wireless subs were connected to it. In spite of this, the clarity of the dialogue amazingly indescribable as you can hear everything in the midst of the background sounds. Used for music, the soundbar ensures a full spread of sound, ensuring a spread of details for a single-box soundbar.
Pros
- Premium single-body design
- Powerful bass without a separate sub
- Feature-rich
- Set up is fast and easy
Cons
- Single HDMI input
- The LED display is harder to read than its predecessors
3. LG LAS855M
Another great potential partner for a curved TV is the LG LAS855M, which works like your typical soundbar that boosts audio alongside a matching subwoofer. It packs a range of fantastic features that would delight anyone.
Design
LG has always had an attractive design for its products and the LG LAS855M isn’t any different. The soundbar dons the brand’s familiar silver finish and super-slim style so it perfectly matches a curved television. While the design is top-notch, it loses points on build quality as it made of plastic in spite of its pricing.
A plasticky finish in many places seems to be an obvious flaw of the LAS855M but this is can be overlooked as what it lacks in this department, it makes up for in the feature department. Rather than the commonly-used fabric mesh, the soundbar makes use of an aluminum grille in hiding the speaker.
Just beside the grille is an LED display that reveals the name of the selected input, volume levels and more, which is far better than cryptic lights and icons. On the top of the bar, you will find a few buttons with their corresponding icons beneath them, but keep in mind that they are not touch-sensitive.
On the back, you will get a range of connectivity options such as HDMI input and ARC-enabled output as well as optical, digital and 3.5mm mini-jack inputs. There’s also an Ethernet port and a USB port for software updates.
Features
Unlike the other soundbars on the list, this soundbar comes with a stylish subwoofer that’s fairly compact in size. You can either keep them together or separate them but make sure the subwoofer isn’t too far from the soundbar.
Going further, the soundbar has a Google Cast built-in so you can cast your favorite music apps like Pandora and Google Play Music from your personal device to your speakers while Bluetooth 4.0 caters for your other portable devices.
Another notable feature is the built-in dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4/5GHz) which combines with Mesh Network to help you enjoy high definition music on a more stable, seamless connection. In other words, you can send music to multiple speakers around the house.
Furthermore, you can also control the soundbar from its app, which also provides access to music services such as Spotify, Deezer, Napster and TuneIn radio. The LAS855M also comes with an ergonomically shaped remote with large buttons that are responsive, but the soundbar is equally compatible with TV remotes from eight manufacturers.
Performance
So far, the LAS855M soundbar has a great design and boasts tons of features. As per performance, it does justice to sounds from action movies as it delivers a powerful soundstage while maintaining a pleasant tonal balance with crisp treble and rich bass.
The sound equipment can produce room-rattling sounds that you can only dream of with your TV’s speaker. However, while the bar shines for movie playback, the same cannot be said for music playback. While the output isn’t poor, it also won’t wow you as it lacks detail finesse that soundbars in its category offer. Nonetheless, it is a great sounding bar that delivers immense value.
Pros
- Clear, balanced sound
- Powerful, rumbling sound
- Lots of features
- Practical, smart-looking design
Cons
- Lacks subtlety
- Unwieldy size
- Setup isn’t straightforward
4. Samsung HW-J8500
The Samsung HW-J8500 is specially designed to complement curved TVs and it fulfills that purpose flawlessly. Housing 9 speakers including a dedicated center driver focusing exclusively on dialogue, the HW-J8500 is sound equipment that will give soundbars in its category a run for their money.
Design
The HW-J8500 is almost identical to the HW-J7501 in terms of design, except that this is a flagship product from the company. The bar has an elegant design as the largely metal construction perfectly pairs with the slim grey speaker mesh. It has an excellent build quality that proves it is well-engineered, giving a solid feel to its construction.
While the soundbar doesn’t ooze an aura of being premium, the aluminum finish indicates that it fits into the above-average category of soundbars. The top center of the soundbar spots raised buttons for power, volume and input selection while and LED display, which is positioned slightly to the left, shines through the mesh to provide information about the volume and selected levels.
In terms of connections, there is a recessed area where you will find an HDMI input and an HDMI output that supports ARC, which isn’t helpful if you have two or three external devices to connect.
There is also an optical digital input and a 3.5mm analog mini-jack plus a USB port for music playback from flash drives as well as a LAN port for a wired connection as part of Samsung’s multi-room system and built-in Bluetooth. You can place the soundbar on top of your TV stand or just mount it on a wall so you can use the supplied L bracket to attach it to the bottom of the set.
Features
The HW-J8500 boasts a lot of features. One of the notable features is the inclusion of a side-firing and center channel speakers, which adds a new dimension to the sound output for a rich, immersive experience. This feature is in addition to the dedicated center speaker, which provides a balanced sound from one end to another.
In addition, the soundbar comes with a handy remote that’s nicely designed and comfortable to hold.
The J8500 also has multiroom audio, a feature that makes it possible to beam music to other rooms in the house or use other Samsung wireless speakers to create a surround-sound system. You can also stream music from your favorite streaming services in high-quality sound from your mobile device using the Samsung Multiroom app.
The package also comes with an external subwoofer, with a black brushed metal design, to boost audio performance. Using what Samsung calls the Multi-Air Gap feature, the sub can deliver deeper bass than the usual soundbars on the market
Performance
The first thing you immediately notice is that the J8500 can deliver a great sound performance, regardless of what you’re watching. It delivers an open and wide soundstage with a great amount of clarity than its predecessor. It uses active crossovers to effectively distribute different frequencies to the correct drivers so you can clean and rich sounds.
The added sub makes for impressive immersion while also guaranteeing distinct sounds during music and movie playback. You can expect the dialogue to be clear without missing the actions of your favorite movie as well as enjoy a balanced and detail sound output when listening to music.
Pros
- Elegant design
- Wide and powerful soundstage
- Clear dialogue
- Multiroom functional
Cons
- Single HDMI input
- Subwoofer lacks detail and agility
5. Proscan CURPSB4888
The Proscan CURPSB488 is a budget soundbar that comes with all the basic features needed to complement a curved TV. It doesn’t promise perfection but it’s a good deal considering its price point.
Design
The CURPSB488 sports a minimalist design and comes as a one-box package. It is wrapped all around with aluminum with a black finish, which is juxtaposed by a metal grille. On the top of the grille as a range of buttons for volume, source selection and power on/off. There’s also an LED display on the curved soundbar so you never have to guess its current status.
On the rear, the following sockets are what you will get: one HDMI input, HMDI output, and USB port. It also comes with Bluetooth as well as a remote which feels good to hold. You will need the remote for controls as the soundbar doesn’t connect to other remotes. You can place the bar on your TV or mount it on your wall to save space.
Performance
Whether you use the CURPSB488 for movie or music, what you will get is a decent sound quality that is way better than what curved TVs offer. The speaker gives a nice bass output and takes the edge off the treble.
One of the major issues of the soundbar is that the volume is slightly low, meaning you might not get room-rattling sound output, especially, if you place it in a large room. Also, the settings don’t save as you will need to readjust the settings each time you turn it on.
At best, the soundbar is basic sound equipment but it isn’t bad for the price. If you’re on a tight budget but want to enhance the sound output of your TV, this soundbar is a safe bet but don’t expect too much from it.
Pros
- Decent design
- Affordable
Cons
- Settings don’t save
- Low volume
- Lacks features
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