**Experience with Samsung Q950T Soundbar**

I recently had the opportunity to experience the Samsung Q950T soundbar, and I must say that I'm extremely impressed with its performance. At first, I was skeptical about having a wireless 5.1 surround sound system, but this soundbar far exceeded my expectations. It's not just a simple surround sound system; it's a full-fledged audio experience that can put out incredible sound.

The sound quality is crisp and clear, with excellent bass output. I watched an episode of Iron Man, and the base was shaking so hard that it was vibrating the entire room. My kids were sleeping upstairs, and they didn't get woken up despite the intense sound effects. This level of sound quality is truly remarkable, and it's a testament to the Samsung Q950T's ability to deliver an immersive audio experience.

One of the features I appreciate about this soundbar is its wireless setup. The speakers are wirelessly connected, which means I don't have to deal with cables or wires cluttering up my room. It's simple and convenient, and it works flawlessly. I just need to plug in the power cord, and it's ready to go.

However, one minor issue I encountered was related to the display on the soundbar itself. When adjusting settings using the remote control, I couldn't see what input or volume level I was adjusting because the display was limited to a small screen at the top of the soundbar. It would have been helpful if there was more visible feedback, such as displaying the current setting on the front of the soundbar.

Despite this minor issue, I've found that having the speakers integrated into the TV is a convenient feature. It provides a full sound experience coming from the front of the room, which is especially useful for watching movies or playing games. However, I wouldn't recommend purchasing the Samsung Q950T if you only plan to use it with a non-Samsung TV; the soundbar can still deliver excellent sound on its own.

Overall, my experience with the Samsung Q950T soundbar has been incredibly positive. The sound quality is exceptional, and the wireless setup is convenient and easy to set up. While there are some minor issues, such as the display limitation, they don't detract from the overall listening experience. If you're in the market for a great soundbar system, I highly recommend considering the Samsung Q950T.

**Setup and Ease of Use**

One of the benefits of the Samsung Q950T is its simple setup process. The soundbar comes with a user-friendly remote control that makes it easy to adjust settings and navigate through different modes. The setup process itself was quick and hassle-free, and I didn't encounter any major issues.

Another advantage of the soundbar is its wireless connectivity options. It supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, which means you can easily connect your devices and stream content wirelessly. This feature has been a game-changer for me, as it's eliminated the need to deal with cables or wires cluttering up my room.

**Features and Capabilities**

The Samsung Q950T soundbar boasts an impressive array of features and capabilities that make it stand out from other soundbars on the market. One of its standout features is its wireless surround sound system, which delivers a 5.1 channel audio experience without the need for cables or wires.

Another feature I appreciate is the soundbar's ability to connect to Samsung TVs seamlessly. The speakers are integrated into the TV, which provides a full sound experience coming from the front of the room. This feature has been particularly useful when watching movies or playing games, as it immerses you in the audio and creates an enhanced viewing experience.

The soundbar also supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, which provide an immersive audio experience with overhead speakers. The bass output is also impressive, with a range of deep, rumbling notes that add depth and complexity to the music or movie soundtrack.

**Comparison to Previous Experience**

I previously had an issue with my previous soundbar setup, which was using a separate receiver and separate speakers. The new Samsung Q950T has eliminated those issues altogether, providing a seamless and hassle-free listening experience.

The wireless connectivity options have been a major improvement over the old system, as they've eliminated the need to deal with cables or wires cluttering up my room. The sound quality is also significantly improved, with deeper bass notes and clearer dialogue.

One of the things that's struck me about the Samsung Q950T is its ability to deliver an immersive audio experience without the need for cables or wires. It's a testament to the soundbar's advanced technology and innovative design.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, my experience with the Samsung Q950T soundbar has been incredibly positive. The sound quality is exceptional, and the wireless setup is convenient and easy to set up. While there are some minor issues, such as the display limitation, they don't detract from the overall listening experience.

If you're in the market for a great soundbar system, I highly recommend considering the Samsung Q950T. Its advanced technology, innovative design, and exceptional sound quality make it an ideal choice for anyone looking to enhance their home audio setup.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enback in high school my friends and i would head to the movie theater every friday night to see the latest movie that was playing after that we'd come back to one of our homes and usually watch another movie or play some video games and we always tried to have the best sound system in our homes to have that movie-like experience at home for many years i've used a 5.1 surround sound system with a receiver and it's actually worked really well but ever since moving into this home it had wiring for a sound system with rear speakers but the wiring is messed up or maybe i have bad speakers and it just has always been kind of a problem ever since moving here now that i have the samsung q90t on the wall for the best video experience let's go ahead and try out what a better audio experience is going to be like this is the samsung q950t soundbar and in today's video we're gonna see what it's all about let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you now i did purchase the soundbar q950t at a discounted rate for this review so over here let's check out some of the features that are available on this sound bar so first it does have amazon assistant built in here it has an hdmi interface so you have two hdmi inputs and one hdmi output it supports dts x dolby atmos it works with smart things you can use spotify has an 8 inch sub it's energy efficient there's an hdmi cable included i'm not sure if it is a hdmi 2.1 that supports york so we'll find that out here it has a 9.1.4 channel so that's the 9 directional one is the sub and then four atmos speakers and then it does work with wi-fi or bluetooth next it has true 9.1.4 channel sound now i am a little bit skeptical because this is a lot of sound coming from the sound bar so i'm not sure if it's gonna sound like it's immersing you that much but we'll see next it has 3d audio codec support wireless rear speaker kit included built in assistant and q symphony so one thing that this also supports is because i have the samsung q9dt it is able to work with the speakers in the tv and synchronize them together so you have a more immersive sound so i'm excited to test that out so let's go ahead and unbox this and get it set up all right first up we have the sound bar here on the top you do have a little display volume controls you have mute and you have an action button here on the back and the bottom you have the two hdmi in one hdmi out and an optical port as well and then the power cable plugs in over here on the side and a little usb service so my main concern is if this was too big for my little entertainment center and it is slightly bigger but i think it will be okay and then you could possibly mount it as well next we have the power cables here's the hdmi cord and then on here it says it is high speed with ethernet so i'm thinking that this is a 2.1 cable pretty sure that's going to work and then here we have our remote with batteries it's similar to the q and idt remote but here it just has input pairing you have volume sound mode and then you can increase the volume or the woofer volume and play and pause right there on the remote and then a user manual as well all right next we have the two rear speakers so they're pretty beefy pretty nice size you would have the speaker pointing out here on the front and then the atmos speaker up on the top and then on the back it just has a pairing button with a link and a standby led and then you do have a mounting screw on the back to plug it in and then the power cable goes there in the bottom and last we have the sub all right that's pretty good size pretty heavy here on the back you just have the power option and then the same leds as well as the link button i really like how slim that is there is a mount if you want to secure the sound bar to the wall and then it also comes with some pads here and it also comes with these to help mount this on the wall let's go ahead get these plugged in and i'll show you how to set them up first i'm going to plug in the hdmi cable and then i'm going to plug it into the er port or the arc port on the back of my tv then i'm going to plug in the sub now it's going to be really different having wireless surround sound speakers but i think it's pretty cool the only thing is you do need to have these plugged in so i'm just going to use these stands that i built for the front speakers i'm going to put them here on the back i kind of want them back a little further and higher but we'll see how they sound right behind my couch here and on the back it specifies if it's around left or surround right all right i was able to hide most of the wires i think i'll velcro this one down but i think everyone in the family is going to be happy with less wires so let's go to the setup when setting these up plug in the subwoofer first and the rear speakers and then plug in the sound bar last and then it will automatically pair together when the light is solid blue that means they are linked together and here's the recommended placement for the speakers so you have the sound bar in front of the tv the subwoofer next to it and then the rear speakers behind the tv at a 135 to 150 degree angle how'd i do i probably could raise the speakers and pull them back a little bit further and here you can see the soundbar remote is very similar to the samsung q90t tv remote so just make sure you pick up the right remote when you want to control the tv when you press the multi-function button right here it will switch between the inputs on the soundbar so i push it once there we have hdmi 1 hdmi 2 wi-fi bluetooth and then here we have digital in so right now it's showing tv arc now if e-arc is working it should show e-arc so it looks like we need to check the settings on the tv or get a er supported cable so here i'm going to head into the settings of the tv go to sound and then right here you can see i do have different sound options so i could choose the tv speaker i could choose the tv and the sound bar or i can choose the sound bar but again it's only showing the arc option and i'm going to head down here into settings and i'm going to switch hdmi e arc to auto and let's go check the sound bar all right so after turning on e-arc on the tv it is showing e-arc so we are good to go all right let's do our first demo here it's cars whoa winner why is it doing that well so far not good it is pausing and then playing and then pausing so let's see if we can fix that and try again yay so my first impression of the sound bar is something is not quite working right whenever we're watching something it will all of a sudden pause the audio even though the video is playing and then it will just start back up or if i change the volume the audio stops as well so we're gonna try a few things to fix this first i'm going to add this 8k ultra hd cable um this was sent to me by snow kid store um so i'll leave a link to it in the description below but it supports that 48 gigabits per second speed uh the uncompressed audio so maybe this will have the full support i'm not really sure what the cable they sent has so we're gonna try this out and second we're gonna link the sound bar into smart things to make sure that we have the latest update make sure all the settings are correct and then we'll give it another go this cable is about six and a half feet long now this can be used for video but today we're specifically using it for the audio capabilities and it does support 8k up to 60 hertz so it should be a great cable that fits all the standards and gives us the sound quality we're looking for all right so now let's take a look at the remote here we have the power options so we can easily power off and on the sound bar next you have the input so this will change the input so here we're on e-arc next we have hdmi 1 hdmi 2 next we have wi-fi and so we'll set that up when we use the smartthings option the next option is bluetooth then we have e-arc again next we have the pair bluetooth so if i press the pair bluetooth option then on our phone we go into the bluetooth settings under available devices and here you can see i have the samsung soundbar q950t so we just tap on that accept the pairing request and now anything i play on here is going to come out of the sound bar so i'm playing some music right now from my phone and it is coming out of the soundbar here i can increase the volume just like that then i have the woofer option so i can increase the subwoofer if i want to mute i can push the mute button right here and you can also push in on the volume and that will mute as well and then if we push the pair button again it's then going to disconnect what it's currently paired to and it's going to turn on pairing mode to find a new device and then here in the middle you have the pause play option so then to repair we will just need to go on to our phone tap the sound bar and we are paired next we have the control so we have up down left and right then we have the mute option here here we have the sound mode so first we have adaptive sound then we have surround here we have game pro and here we have standard next we have settings so with this you can adjust each of the different levels of the sound bar so if we push it once you see we have treble if we want to increase the treble volume we push the up or down however we want to increase it so here we can increase it up to five let's see i think you can go all the way up to a six or you can go down to negative six and so you can really find exactly what you want there so then the other options you have is you have base center speaker center level side level wide level front top level so that would be the atmos speakers on the sound bar then you have rear level and you have rear top level so those are the atmos on the rear speakers so one thing i've noticed after listening to this for a bit is i do need to increase the rear speaker sound i like a little bit more coming from the back so here we're going to go to rear and then i'm just going to push up a few and let's do the same on the rear uh top speakers and so that is how you can adjust the settings and then here at the bottom you have simple volume up and down and pressing will mute and here you have woofer up and down just like that and pressing to take it back to zero so that's pretty much the settings on the sound bar now let's go ahead and get this set up with samsung smartthings to connect over smartthings you will just need to have this smartthings app now this can be done on an android device or an ios device so we're just going to tap on smartthings now you should see a pop-up to add your samsung sound bar if this is the first time opening the smartthings app after installing the soundbar i have seen that i just dismissed it so to add the device i'm just going to select plus i'm going to choose device and then i'm going to select scan nearby to see if it can just find it through scanning the wi-fi and that just took a moment but here you can see the samsung soundbar q950t i'm going to tap on that and now it is going to add the soundbar so here we're going to select start we're going to choose where we want this so i'm going to add this into my family room and now it is connecting to the sound bar press volume down on the sound bar to connect once i did that it then connected and now you're going to choose a wi-fi network for the sound bar so here i'm already connected to this wi-fi so we're just going to tap on that one type in your password it's now registering the sound bar to my samsung account and now we're going to give it a unique name i'm just going to call this samsung sound bar to make it easy select done and now you can see we have the samsung sound bar so here in smart things i can easily turn off the sound bar if i want to i can turn it back on and then i can go in here and it's telling me about tap sound options so with tap sound you can easily tap your supported phone up to the sound bar and it will instantly connect to playing music over on the sound bar so right now i'm going to select turn that on and we'll get to that more in a minute now it's telling me about how you can use the sound bar with amazon's assistant alexa so with this you would be able to remove other echoes you have in the room and just use the sound bar so we're going to go ahead and sign in and link that now so you will be able to use the sound bar just like you do with any other echo device get started here it already has linked my samsung account to smartthings so i'm going to select allow and then you're going to choose your language and here are some different things that you can ask it and now we are connected to the sound bar so if i use the remote to increase the volume here you can see it's increasing the volume or if i want to adjust the volume i could do that all from right here now you might want to be careful because if you go too high it gets really loud so i stay down here under 10 and it seems to work just fine so first it's showing you where the sound is coming from so it's saying nothing is connected now in the smartthings app i do have the option to change the input right from here so i can tap on this i can choose what audio input i want so from the tv or i can choose external device so going to hdmi 1 or hdmi 2 or i can choose the samsung tv wi-fi or bluetooth from this phone so it is nice i could quickly switch the inputs right here from the smartthings app and then down here you can adjust your different sound modes so there we have the four different types of sound mode we have our equalizer right here so if you want to choose a specific equalizer you can do that and if you tap on that you can go to advanced where you can increase the base and treble and then down here we have our woofer where you can set the woofer volume right here instead of having to use the remote so some pretty simple settings right here in the samsung soundbar but if we go into the settings here we have the network status so we can see it is currently connected over wi-fi and then here you do have bluetooth pairing options so you tap on that it puts the sound bar in pairing mode you see a little light on the sound bar and then you can connect other devices to it and then here you have quick access to adjust your amazon assistant settings and then last you have option to adjust spotify settings so i don't currently use spotify but it looks like you can directly link it to the sound bar and then under these settings we do have one more option here which is information and here we have the option to do a firmware update and hopefully this update and the new hdmi cord will then fix any type of issues i was having before where the audio was pausing there is a new software update available that will take this to one zero one 7.5 so i want to get on that update so you can actually download the firmware onto a usb drive plug it into the service port and it will update so i'm just going to do it that way so during the update it will go through this update on wi-fi sep three times and then it will finish by showing the last input that you were on so here i was on wi-fi so that means the update is done let's check in smart things here you can see that i am on the 101 7.5 there is no update available great we are now on the latest software now the last feature i want to adjust is the tap sound feature where you can instantly tap your phone to start playing music so in the smartthings app you're going to want to go into the settings here and then you're going to scroll down and right here you have tap view tap sound on so once that is on on a samsung device then you have the option to just go up and tap the phone to the sound bar and then it will send what you're listening to over to the soundbar let's try it out so this does require a samsung phone and here i'm listening to some music on my phone and then i'm just going to tap my phone on the soundbar i don't know exactly where it is i found it right there so right in front of the little icon and then here it's saying tap casting with tap sound so tap sound will have access to all the sounds played on your phone while casting this includes phone calls music and sounds from apps so let's hit start now and here it's showing paired over bluetooth and the music is now coming out of the soundbar so then you can use your phone as the controller to go ahead and control music now because the sound bar works in smart things that means it will also work in the google home app now i usually use google assistant and one thing that's pretty cool is if you link smart things to google assistant you then see this samsung sound bar and with that you now have option to control the sound bar with google assistant so you can do things like turn the sound bar on and off and you have the option to easily adjust the volume with your google assistant as well turn off samsung sound bar sure turning off samsung soundbar turn on samsung soundbar sure turning samsung soundbar on turn up the volume by 3 on samsung soundbar and then under the amazon assistant here under view devices we now have an option here called samsung soundbar and here we can see it's currently connected with amazon assistant now one thing i do have a question on is can you create a group with the soundbar and other echo devices so if i set up multi-room music here you can see only echo devices are showing up as an option to add for multi-room now i'm not sure why i didn't see this at first but when you go into the samsung soundbar settings here you can see you do have some audio settings you have the connected devices speaker option here you have the sounds so you can adjust the alarm you have a do not disturb you can adjust your location and your time zone and then you also have the option for follow-up mode and adjust the measurement so we were watching a movie and we kept getting notifications that i had a package that was going to arrive tomorrow so make sure you go in and turn on do not disturb now that the amazon app sees my new sound bar i do want to make sure i add it into a group so this is my family room group i'm going to select edit and then down here i have the option for brett's soundbar so i'm going to check the box there and then save now that we have amazon assistant linked to our sound bar let's go ahead and test out some voice commands turn on the lights don't know if you noticed that happen but here on the front it's showing it's listening and then it did turn on the lights alexa what's the weather tomorrow here's the forecast for tomorrow in aurum look for partly sunny weather with a high of 41 degrees fahrenheit and a low of 22 degrees alexa play some music from title here's title alexa turn down the volume he was able to hear me while this is so loud so that's working great let's go ahead and play some more movies sure avengers infinity war google tv playing on cast ultra i am speed one winner 42 losers i eat losers for breakfast breakfast all right that sounds amazing i can really hear the sound completely surrounding me i'm demoing this this with cars and you can just hear the cars going this way or that way or i heard noises back here um exactly what related to what was on screen so really awesome so far now there's one more thing that we can do because i have the samsung q90 tv i can actually incorporate the tv speakers into the sound system they call this q symphony so let's try that out to change this setting we're going to do this on the tv we're just going to go over here to our settings and then we're going to go to sound and here you can see it has sound output so we have a few options we could just use the tv speakers here we could do tv with the sound bar or we could just choose the sound bar and then there's this other av soundbar wi-fi option or optical which i haven't used but let's go ahead and do the tv plus the sound bar so this is using hdmi e arc for that option all right let's play some more so after adding the tv speakers there's definitely a lot more sound coming from the front of the sound system so this would be nice if you really want to hear um somebody talking on screen so that's really helpful so we're going to go ahead and do a movie night listening to the sound bar and then i'll give you my final thoughts on the sound bar now let's take a look at using the inputs on the sound bar so here i'm currently on the disney plus app on my tv on the tv remote i'm going to select home come over to my source and go to soundbar so now anything that i've plugged into the soundbar hdmi is going to show up on here so currently i have my chromecast with google tv plugged into here so this is hdmi one on the soundbar remote i push the input button and then it's going to rotate to the next input which is hdmi 2 and here i have the wii u playing and i have the volume control now there's no volume meter that shows up that only shows on the little screen on the sound bar nothing shows up here on the tv so if i want to change inputs back to hdmi 1 i kind of have to just keep clicking until i find the one i want it's really too bad that display isn't on the front of the screen okay i'm back at the chromecast with google tv input now one thing i'm not seeing here is cec so i am not able to use the soundbar remote to navigate on my chromecast with google tv i need to pick up the chromecast with google tv remote to be able to navigate through if it's plugged into the samsung tv i'm able to use the samsung remote to do this so that's kind of a bummer but when i use the tv remote and the chromecast is plugged into the soundbar it does work so maybe you just need to use the tv remote more so then if i want to head back here to a tv app i can simply do that now one thing i wasn't able to test with the sound system is a blu-ray player or the new game consoles my blu-ray player died and i don't have any of those but the one thing you do need to know about dolby atmos is there are only certain devices that do support that so there are a bunch of vizio lg samsung tcl a lot of other devices that are able to support the dolby atmos features and then you need to make sure that you're using a compatible adobe atmos app so here on the samsung tv disney plus supports that netflix apple tv plus and voodoo are the ones that do support that um if i was watching something that wasn't on those the sound seemed to work great but you just didn't have that full dolby atmos experience now the atmos is the upward firing speaker so that kind of shoots in the air and so it sounds like there are things on top of you i didn't hear that effect too much maybe i still need to adjust some of the positioning with my speakers but overall i can tell you that the sound is totally surrounding me just when i was watching um cars earlier and there's that big wreck at the very beginning you could hear things going all back this way in that way and over and everywhere and it was a really cool experience now as for smart home integration i do like that it works with the smartthings app and so you have controls through there and that it has built-in amazon assistant now it would be cool if you could add google assistant to it internally but i don't know if that's really a problem because i have my other google assistant speakers that once linked samsung smartthings then i can control with my voice so that has actually worked pretty well it's not the full feature control but at least i can turn it on and off and i can change the volume which makes it pretty convenient to have now other than my original experience with this sound bar i never had any of those audio issues again the only other issue i had was every once in a while it would turn off the e-arc support and it would go back to just tv arc here you can see on the soundbar display it's showing tv arc and i really couldn't figure out what was causing this i was trying all the different types of hdmi cables and nothing seemed to fix it but then i realized that if i went back into the sound settings i just needed to turn back the e-arc option to auto and then it would fix the issue and it would keep working i don't know if my kids were messing with something and it caused it to turn off but then once i got it back onto e-arc it did seem to stay on there for a while whenever i was having the issue this would pop up on the screen saying that i wasn't using a supported device through e-arc but i had the cable plugged into the e-arc tv to the er sound bar so i'm not sure what that was talking about but after fixing it in the settings everything seemed to work just fine after using the samsung q950t for over a week i'm very impressed with what it can do now at the beginning i was a bit skeptical of having a wireless 5.1 surround sound system and of course this is a lot more than that and i am very impressed once i fix the initial issues that i had with it and kind of tweaked it for my preference in a full sound system overall i'm blown away by what this can do it's crazy how loud it can get when it's such a low volume i haven't even tested turning up the volume 2 lead just because it's already shaking the entire house so i don't feel like i need to turn it up any more than that there's been many times where my kids are just watching some daytime afternoon tv and i have to come in here and say hey we need to turn it down because it's too loud i can clearly hear what they're listening to upstairs so this definitely can put out some sound now overall all the speakers were very crisp and clear and i'm really impressed with the amount of bass that can come out of this now after watching some iron man the base was shaking the wall over here the kids were sleeping hopefully they didn't get woken up but i'm very impressed with the sound that can come out of that now my only real complaint about this sound bar is the display on the device itself when you are adjusting anything with the remote if you change the input or the volume you can't see what volume or input or woofer settings you're at because the display is up on the top all you see on the front is a few dots that show up whenever you're talking to amazon's assistant or if you change the volume it would be nice if that display was a little more front and center so that i could see it or even if you saw those things display on the samsung tv that i have here now the good news is because i have this samsung 950t i am able to quickly adjust some of those settings so i can adjust the sound output and i can change it if i want it to be on the tv and the sound bar or just the sound bar so that's nice but it would be better if i could see the display right on the front now having the speakers on the tv integrated in the soundbar is a pretty cool feature i really like how it gives a more full sound coming from the front of the room if you like that but i wouldn't say that it is necessary to have a samsung q90t tv and the soundbar together i think the sound bar with the speakers and the sub is able to output plenty of sound for your viewing experience but i can say with this great q led tv and the sound system overall we have a really awesome experience here when we are watching movies i no longer feel like i'm missing out not being able to go to the movie theater we have been able to replicate that here in the home and i really like how simple the setup is and that there aren't a lot of wires now as i mentioned before i love having the surround sound system and everything here but over the years it's getting more complicated the wiring and putting the speakers somewhere and maybe you have to power the speakers or whatever it is it's taking a lot more work and it seems like there's always something that goes wrong actually the previous receiver i was using was actually the one that i was using 10 years ago because i got a newer one and it was having issues and the speakers were being crackly so i had to go get the old one none of those issues will be here with these new speakers i love that it's wireless and the wireless seem to work great i don't have to drag cables around my whole room i just need to get power to it and boom it's ready to go so overall i'm really impressed with the samsung q950t if you're in the market for a great soundbar sound system this is really a great way to go and it's nice that you don't have to go and buy a bunch of pieces it's all in one package plug it in and it's set up and ready for your listening experience so if you so that is pretty much it on the samsung q950t soundbar if you have any further questions about it please let me know in the comments below and if you would like to see my full review of the samsung q90t make sure you check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next oneback in high school my friends and i would head to the movie theater every friday night to see the latest movie that was playing after that we'd come back to one of our homes and usually watch another movie or play some video games and we always tried to have the best sound system in our homes to have that movie-like experience at home for many years i've used a 5.1 surround sound system with a receiver and it's actually worked really well but ever since moving into this home it had wiring for a sound system with rear speakers but the wiring is messed up or maybe i have bad speakers and it just has always been kind of a problem ever since moving here now that i have the samsung q90t on the wall for the best video experience let's go ahead and try out what a better audio experience is going to be like this is the samsung q950t soundbar and in today's video we're gonna see what it's all about let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you now i did purchase the soundbar q950t at a discounted rate for this review so over here let's check out some of the features that are available on this sound bar so first it does have amazon assistant built in here it has an hdmi interface so you have two hdmi inputs and one hdmi output it supports dts x dolby atmos it works with smart things you can use spotify has an 8 inch sub it's energy efficient there's an hdmi cable included i'm not sure if it is a hdmi 2.1 that supports york so we'll find that out here it has a 9.1.4 channel so that's the 9 directional one is the sub and then four atmos speakers and then it does work with wi-fi or bluetooth next it has true 9.1.4 channel sound now i am a little bit skeptical because this is a lot of sound coming from the sound bar so i'm not sure if it's gonna sound like it's immersing you that much but we'll see next it has 3d audio codec support wireless rear speaker kit included built in assistant and q symphony so one thing that this also supports is because i have the samsung q9dt it is able to work with the speakers in the tv and synchronize them together so you have a more immersive sound so i'm excited to test that out so let's go ahead and unbox this and get it set up all right first up we have the sound bar here on the top you do have a little display volume controls you have mute and you have an action button here on the back and the bottom you have the two hdmi in one hdmi out and an optical port as well and then the power cable plugs in over here on the side and a little usb service so my main concern is if this was too big for my little entertainment center and it is slightly bigger but i think it will be okay and then you could possibly mount it as well next we have the power cables here's the hdmi cord and then on here it says it is high speed with ethernet so i'm thinking that this is a 2.1 cable pretty sure that's going to work and then here we have our remote with batteries it's similar to the q and idt remote but here it just has input pairing you have volume sound mode and then you can increase the volume or the woofer volume and play and pause right there on the remote and then a user manual as well all right next we have the two rear speakers so they're pretty beefy pretty nice size you would have the speaker pointing out here on the front and then the atmos speaker up on the top and then on the back it just has a pairing button with a link and a standby led and then you do have a mounting screw on the back to plug it in and then the power cable goes there in the bottom and last we have the sub all right that's pretty good size pretty heavy here on the back you just have the power option and then the same leds as well as the link button i really like how slim that is there is a mount if you want to secure the sound bar to the wall and then it also comes with some pads here and it also comes with these to help mount this on the wall let's go ahead get these plugged in and i'll show you how to set them up first i'm going to plug in the hdmi cable and then i'm going to plug it into the er port or the arc port on the back of my tv then i'm going to plug in the sub now it's going to be really different having wireless surround sound speakers but i think it's pretty cool the only thing is you do need to have these plugged in so i'm just going to use these stands that i built for the front speakers i'm going to put them here on the back i kind of want them back a little further and higher but we'll see how they sound right behind my couch here and on the back it specifies if it's around left or surround right all right i was able to hide most of the wires i think i'll velcro this one down but i think everyone in the family is going to be happy with less wires so let's go to the setup when setting these up plug in the subwoofer first and the rear speakers and then plug in the sound bar last and then it will automatically pair together when the light is solid blue that means they are linked together and here's the recommended placement for the speakers so you have the sound bar in front of the tv the subwoofer next to it and then the rear speakers behind the tv at a 135 to 150 degree angle how'd i do i probably could raise the speakers and pull them back a little bit further and here you can see the soundbar remote is very similar to the samsung q90t tv remote so just make sure you pick up the right remote when you want to control the tv when you press the multi-function button right here it will switch between the inputs on the soundbar so i push it once there we have hdmi 1 hdmi 2 wi-fi bluetooth and then here we have digital in so right now it's showing tv arc now if e-arc is working it should show e-arc so it looks like we need to check the settings on the tv or get a er supported cable so here i'm going to head into the settings of the tv go to sound and then right here you can see i do have different sound options so i could choose the tv speaker i could choose the tv and the sound bar or i can choose the sound bar but again it's only showing the arc option and i'm going to head down here into settings and i'm going to switch hdmi e arc to auto and let's go check the sound bar all right so after turning on e-arc on the tv it is showing e-arc so we are good to go all right let's do our first demo here it's cars whoa winner why is it doing that well so far not good it is pausing and then playing and then pausing so let's see if we can fix that and try again yay so my first impression of the sound bar is something is not quite working right whenever we're watching something it will all of a sudden pause the audio even though the video is playing and then it will just start back up or if i change the volume the audio stops as well so we're gonna try a few things to fix this first i'm going to add this 8k ultra hd cable um this was sent to me by snow kid store um so i'll leave a link to it in the description below but it supports that 48 gigabits per second speed uh the uncompressed audio so maybe this will have the full support i'm not really sure what the cable they sent has so we're gonna try this out and second we're gonna link the sound bar into smart things to make sure that we have the latest update make sure all the settings are correct and then we'll give it another go this cable is about six and a half feet long now this can be used for video but today we're specifically using it for the audio capabilities and it does support 8k up to 60 hertz so it should be a great cable that fits all the standards and gives us the sound quality we're looking for all right so now let's take a look at the remote here we have the power options so we can easily power off and on the sound bar next you have the input so this will change the input so here we're on e-arc next we have hdmi 1 hdmi 2 next we have wi-fi and so we'll set that up when we use the smartthings option the next option is bluetooth then we have e-arc again next we have the pair bluetooth so if i press the pair bluetooth option then on our phone we go into the bluetooth settings under available devices and here you can see i have the samsung soundbar q950t so we just tap on that accept the pairing request and now anything i play on here is going to come out of the sound bar so i'm playing some music right now from my phone and it is coming out of the soundbar here i can increase the volume just like that then i have the woofer option so i can increase the subwoofer if i want to mute i can push the mute button right here and you can also push in on the volume and that will mute as well and then if we push the pair button again it's then going to disconnect what it's currently paired to and it's going to turn on pairing mode to find a new device and then here in the middle you have the pause play option so then to repair we will just need to go on to our phone tap the sound bar and we are paired next we have the control so we have up down left and right then we have the mute option here here we have the sound mode so first we have adaptive sound then we have surround here we have game pro and here we have standard next we have settings so with this you can adjust each of the different levels of the sound bar so if we push it once you see we have treble if we want to increase the treble volume we push the up or down however we want to increase it so here we can increase it up to five let's see i think you can go all the way up to a six or you can go down to negative six and so you can really find exactly what you want there so then the other options you have is you have base center speaker center level side level wide level front top level so that would be the atmos speakers on the sound bar then you have rear level and you have rear top level so those are the atmos on the rear speakers so one thing i've noticed after listening to this for a bit is i do need to increase the rear speaker sound i like a little bit more coming from the back so here we're going to go to rear and then i'm just going to push up a few and let's do the same on the rear uh top speakers and so that is how you can adjust the settings and then here at the bottom you have simple volume up and down and pressing will mute and here you have woofer up and down just like that and pressing to take it back to zero so that's pretty much the settings on the sound bar now let's go ahead and get this set up with samsung smartthings to connect over smartthings you will just need to have this smartthings app now this can be done on an android device or an ios device so we're just going to tap on smartthings now you should see a pop-up to add your samsung sound bar if this is the first time opening the smartthings app after installing the soundbar i have seen that i just dismissed it so to add the device i'm just going to select plus i'm going to choose device and then i'm going to select scan nearby to see if it can just find it through scanning the wi-fi and that just took a moment but here you can see the samsung soundbar q950t i'm going to tap on that and now it is going to add the soundbar so here we're going to select start we're going to choose where we want this so i'm going to add this into my family room and now it is connecting to the sound bar press volume down on the sound bar to connect once i did that it then connected and now you're going to choose a wi-fi network for the sound bar so here i'm already connected to this wi-fi so we're just going to tap on that one type in your password it's now registering the sound bar to my samsung account and now we're going to give it a unique name i'm just going to call this samsung sound bar to make it easy select done and now you can see we have the samsung sound bar so here in smart things i can easily turn off the sound bar if i want to i can turn it back on and then i can go in here and it's telling me about tap sound options so with tap sound you can easily tap your supported phone up to the sound bar and it will instantly connect to playing music over on the sound bar so right now i'm going to select turn that on and we'll get to that more in a minute now it's telling me about how you can use the sound bar with amazon's assistant alexa so with this you would be able to remove other echoes you have in the room and just use the sound bar so we're going to go ahead and sign in and link that now so you will be able to use the sound bar just like you do with any other echo device get started here it already has linked my samsung account to smartthings so i'm going to select allow and then you're going to choose your language and here are some different things that you can ask it and now we are connected to the sound bar so if i use the remote to increase the volume here you can see it's increasing the volume or if i want to adjust the volume i could do that all from right here now you might want to be careful because if you go too high it gets really loud so i stay down here under 10 and it seems to work just fine so first it's showing you where the sound is coming from so it's saying nothing is connected now in the smartthings app i do have the option to change the input right from here so i can tap on this i can choose what audio input i want so from the tv or i can choose external device so going to hdmi 1 or hdmi 2 or i can choose the samsung tv wi-fi or bluetooth from this phone so it is nice i could quickly switch the inputs right here from the smartthings app and then down here you can adjust your different sound modes so there we have the four different types of sound mode we have our equalizer right here so if you want to choose a specific equalizer you can do that and if you tap on that you can go to advanced where you can increase the base and treble and then down here we have our woofer where you can set the woofer volume right here instead of having to use the remote so some pretty simple settings right here in the samsung soundbar but if we go into the settings here we have the network status so we can see it is currently connected over wi-fi and then here you do have bluetooth pairing options so you tap on that it puts the sound bar in pairing mode you see a little light on the sound bar and then you can connect other devices to it and then here you have quick access to adjust your amazon assistant settings and then last you have option to adjust spotify settings so i don't currently use spotify but it looks like you can directly link it to the sound bar and then under these settings we do have one more option here which is information and here we have the option to do a firmware update and hopefully this update and the new hdmi cord will then fix any type of issues i was having before where the audio was pausing there is a new software update available that will take this to one zero one 7.5 so i want to get on that update so you can actually download the firmware onto a usb drive plug it into the service port and it will update so i'm just going to do it that way so during the update it will go through this update on wi-fi sep three times and then it will finish by showing the last input that you were on so here i was on wi-fi so that means the update is done let's check in smart things here you can see that i am on the 101 7.5 there is no update available great we are now on the latest software now the last feature i want to adjust is the tap sound feature where you can instantly tap your phone to start playing music so in the smartthings app you're going to want to go into the settings here and then you're going to scroll down and right here you have tap view tap sound on so once that is on on a samsung device then you have the option to just go up and tap the phone to the sound bar and then it will send what you're listening to over to the soundbar let's try it out so this does require a samsung phone and here i'm listening to some music on my phone and then i'm just going to tap my phone on the soundbar i don't know exactly where it is i found it right there so right in front of the little icon and then here it's saying tap casting with tap sound so tap sound will have access to all the sounds played on your phone while casting this includes phone calls music and sounds from apps so let's hit start now and here it's showing paired over bluetooth and the music is now coming out of the soundbar so then you can use your phone as the controller to go ahead and control music now because the sound bar works in smart things that means it will also work in the google home app now i usually use google assistant and one thing that's pretty cool is if you link smart things to google assistant you then see this samsung sound bar and with that you now have option to control the sound bar with google assistant so you can do things like turn the sound bar on and off and you have the option to easily adjust the volume with your google assistant as well turn off samsung sound bar sure turning off samsung soundbar turn on samsung soundbar sure turning samsung soundbar on turn up the volume by 3 on samsung soundbar and then under the amazon assistant here under view devices we now have an option here called samsung soundbar and here we can see it's currently connected with amazon assistant now one thing i do have a question on is can you create a group with the soundbar and other echo devices so if i set up multi-room music here you can see only echo devices are showing up as an option to add for multi-room now i'm not sure why i didn't see this at first but when you go into the samsung soundbar settings here you can see you do have some audio settings you have the connected devices speaker option here you have the sounds so you can adjust the alarm you have a do not disturb you can adjust your location and your time zone and then you also have the option for follow-up mode and adjust the measurement so we were watching a movie and we kept getting notifications that i had a package that was going to arrive tomorrow so make sure you go in and turn on do not disturb now that the amazon app sees my new sound bar i do want to make sure i add it into a group so this is my family room group i'm going to select edit and then down here i have the option for brett's soundbar so i'm going to check the box there and then save now that we have amazon assistant linked to our sound bar let's go ahead and test out some voice commands turn on the lights don't know if you noticed that happen but here on the front it's showing it's listening and then it did turn on the lights alexa what's the weather tomorrow here's the forecast for tomorrow in aurum look for partly sunny weather with a high of 41 degrees fahrenheit and a low of 22 degrees alexa play some music from title here's title alexa turn down the volume he was able to hear me while this is so loud so that's working great let's go ahead and play some more movies sure avengers infinity war google tv playing on cast ultra i am speed one winner 42 losers i eat losers for breakfast breakfast all right that sounds amazing i can really hear the sound completely surrounding me i'm demoing this this with cars and you can just hear the cars going this way or that way or i heard noises back here um exactly what related to what was on screen so really awesome so far now there's one more thing that we can do because i have the samsung q90 tv i can actually incorporate the tv speakers into the sound system they call this q symphony so let's try that out to change this setting we're going to do this on the tv we're just going to go over here to our settings and then we're going to go to sound and here you can see it has sound output so we have a few options we could just use the tv speakers here we could do tv with the sound bar or we could just choose the sound bar and then there's this other av soundbar wi-fi option or optical which i haven't used but let's go ahead and do the tv plus the sound bar so this is using hdmi e arc for that option all right let's play some more so after adding the tv speakers there's definitely a lot more sound coming from the front of the sound system so this would be nice if you really want to hear um somebody talking on screen so that's really helpful so we're going to go ahead and do a movie night listening to the sound bar and then i'll give you my final thoughts on the sound bar now let's take a look at using the inputs on the sound bar so here i'm currently on the disney plus app on my tv on the tv remote i'm going to select home come over to my source and go to soundbar so now anything that i've plugged into the soundbar hdmi is going to show up on here so currently i have my chromecast with google tv plugged into here so this is hdmi one on the soundbar remote i push the input button and then it's going to rotate to the next input which is hdmi 2 and here i have the wii u playing and i have the volume control now there's no volume meter that shows up that only shows on the little screen on the sound bar nothing shows up here on the tv so if i want to change inputs back to hdmi 1 i kind of have to just keep clicking until i find the one i want it's really too bad that display isn't on the front of the screen okay i'm back at the chromecast with google tv input now one thing i'm not seeing here is cec so i am not able to use the soundbar remote to navigate on my chromecast with google tv i need to pick up the chromecast with google tv remote to be able to navigate through if it's plugged into the samsung tv i'm able to use the samsung remote to do this so that's kind of a bummer but when i use the tv remote and the chromecast is plugged into the soundbar it does work so maybe you just need to use the tv remote more so then if i want to head back here to a tv app i can simply do that now one thing i wasn't able to test with the sound system is a blu-ray player or the new game consoles my blu-ray player died and i don't have any of those but the one thing you do need to know about dolby atmos is there are only certain devices that do support that so there are a bunch of vizio lg samsung tcl a lot of other devices that are able to support the dolby atmos features and then you need to make sure that you're using a compatible adobe atmos app so here on the samsung tv disney plus supports that netflix apple tv plus and voodoo are the ones that do support that um if i was watching something that wasn't on those the sound seemed to work great but you just didn't have that full dolby atmos experience now the atmos is the upward firing speaker so that kind of shoots in the air and so it sounds like there are things on top of you i didn't hear that effect too much maybe i still need to adjust some of the positioning with my speakers but overall i can tell you that the sound is totally surrounding me just when i was watching um cars earlier and there's that big wreck at the very beginning you could hear things going all back this way in that way and over and everywhere and it was a really cool experience now as for smart home integration i do like that it works with the smartthings app and so you have controls through there and that it has built-in amazon assistant now it would be cool if you could add google assistant to it internally but i don't know if that's really a problem because i have my other google assistant speakers that once linked samsung smartthings then i can control with my voice so that has actually worked pretty well it's not the full feature control but at least i can turn it on and off and i can change the volume which makes it pretty convenient to have now other than my original experience with this sound bar i never had any of those audio issues again the only other issue i had was every once in a while it would turn off the e-arc support and it would go back to just tv arc here you can see on the soundbar display it's showing tv arc and i really couldn't figure out what was causing this i was trying all the different types of hdmi cables and nothing seemed to fix it but then i realized that if i went back into the sound settings i just needed to turn back the e-arc option to auto and then it would fix the issue and it would keep working i don't know if my kids were messing with something and it caused it to turn off but then once i got it back onto e-arc it did seem to stay on there for a while whenever i was having the issue this would pop up on the screen saying that i wasn't using a supported device through e-arc but i had the cable plugged into the e-arc tv to the er sound bar so i'm not sure what that was talking about but after fixing it in the settings everything seemed to work just fine after using the samsung q950t for over a week i'm very impressed with what it can do now at the beginning i was a bit skeptical of having a wireless 5.1 surround sound system and of course this is a lot more than that and i am very impressed once i fix the initial issues that i had with it and kind of tweaked it for my preference in a full sound system overall i'm blown away by what this can do it's crazy how loud it can get when it's such a low volume i haven't even tested turning up the volume 2 lead just because it's already shaking the entire house so i don't feel like i need to turn it up any more than that there's been many times where my kids are just watching some daytime afternoon tv and i have to come in here and say hey we need to turn it down because it's too loud i can clearly hear what they're listening to upstairs so this definitely can put out some sound now overall all the speakers were very crisp and clear and i'm really impressed with the amount of bass that can come out of this now after watching some iron man the base was shaking the wall over here the kids were sleeping hopefully they didn't get woken up but i'm very impressed with the sound that can come out of that now my only real complaint about this sound bar is the display on the device itself when you are adjusting anything with the remote if you change the input or the volume you can't see what volume or input or woofer settings you're at because the display is up on the top all you see on the front is a few dots that show up whenever you're talking to amazon's assistant or if you change the volume it would be nice if that display was a little more front and center so that i could see it or even if you saw those things display on the samsung tv that i have here now the good news is because i have this samsung 950t i am able to quickly adjust some of those settings so i can adjust the sound output and i can change it if i want it to be on the tv and the sound bar or just the sound bar so that's nice but it would be better if i could see the display right on the front now having the speakers on the tv integrated in the soundbar is a pretty cool feature i really like how it gives a more full sound coming from the front of the room if you like that but i wouldn't say that it is necessary to have a samsung q90t tv and the soundbar together i think the sound bar with the speakers and the sub is able to output plenty of sound for your viewing experience but i can say with this great q led tv and the sound system overall we have a really awesome experience here when we are watching movies i no longer feel like i'm missing out not being able to go to the movie theater we have been able to replicate that here in the home and i really like how simple the setup is and that there aren't a lot of wires now as i mentioned before i love having the surround sound system and everything here but over the years it's getting more complicated the wiring and putting the speakers somewhere and maybe you have to power the speakers or whatever it is it's taking a lot more work and it seems like there's always something that goes wrong actually the previous receiver i was using was actually the one that i was using 10 years ago because i got a newer one and it was having issues and the speakers were being crackly so i had to go get the old one none of those issues will be here with these new speakers i love that it's wireless and the wireless seem to work great i don't have to drag cables around my whole room i just need to get power to it and boom it's ready to go so overall i'm really impressed with the samsung q950t if you're in the market for a great soundbar sound system this is really a great way to go and it's nice that you don't have to go and buy a bunch of pieces it's all in one package plug it in and it's set up and ready for your listening experience so if you so that is pretty much it on the samsung q950t soundbar if you have any further questions about it please let me know in the comments below and if you would like to see my full review of the samsung q90t make sure you check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one\n"