Philips - B8905 / TAB8905/37

Mine has arrived with two dents on the top. While the set up was a bit finicky, it otherwise works fine for the price.

I'm going to keep it. Idk if it's worth the hassle to try and get another one in good condition. Who knows, the following set could pick up another ding on the way here. I'm coping, but I'll forget about it eventually as it sits in the shadow of a tv.

I'm returning it for this reason. The low end is horrible. I didn't expect perfection but that crossover point is a joke.

The crossover really is in a bad place. Because the sub goes up to 160hz I get constant low-mid rumbling whenever anything happens on the screen. And the sub doesn't go low enough so when I up the sub to +5, that rumbling gets worse and worse. I see you can drop 150hz in the app EQ but I'm assuming if I drop that low, anything below 150 will get lowered as well.

It's pretty good for movies. For music, no. If they didn't have the crossover set at 160hz it would be a different story.

The setup/update process really is awful.

It's not an upgrade.

It's definitely better than TV speakers. Have the same TV and those speakers leave much to be desired.

Alright, this thing is a bit fucky. I tried the music preset yesterday and it did turn off the sub. I tried it today with different content and the sub stayed on. Do you recall if the content you were watching/listening to enabled/disabled dolby codecs? Does it change anything when you turn on/off dolby with the remote?

No, haven't had time to try anything other than 150hz@-5 and sub@+5. The rumbling was still there. I think I'm just gonna leave it as is. I am having issues with the update though. The music app says there's an update for me in the entertainment app but when I launch that, there's nothing there. I was going to say the soundbar is fine cause it's only $90 but honestly, it's not.

If you already have the bose there's no reason for you to think about the philips.

I've tried both. Surround on seems more colored, "fuller". Might play with sub placement as well. Sub being off when you select the music preset is a headscratcher.

It might depend on the content or codecs but my experience has not been the same.

I'm on 76.

The directions themselves were a bit misleading in my case. I finally got wifi to work by skipping all the way to the end of the on-screen prompts and then just pushing the wifi button on the back of the soundbar til I heard 2 "beeps". After that it popped in my wifi list and it worked from there. it connected to my 5Ghz by default I'm pretty sure. I did have issues with updates. 1st one completed but then said failed. Then I couldn't restart it. Then it hung on install but when I checked it was finished. The 2nd update from the ent app was a pain too. The app wouldn't initiate the update for a few hours then it just showed up and went through.

Same here. Tempted to buy a second one for my other TV

Sounds pretty good too. Does exactly as I wanted i can hear dialog just as good as the crazy loud parts

I did the same. Arrives next day with free shipping. Tired of how the TV is so quiet when they talk and super loud any other time

I'm not suprised considering they just chucked it on my porch. It only had 200ish miles to travel to my house but it looks rough. Oh well still sounds good

For me it was. Wish I had bought 2

I haven't messed with the settings much. My TV outputs dolby atmos ao I've let it do it's thing

Interesting review. The spec page on philips tells a bit more. Soundbar frequency only goes as low at 160hz which is fairly pathetic. And the sub is expected to cover 40-160hz. This is likely in large part why the bass performance is so weird as most systems have a crossover at a much lower frequency so the sub isn't having to cover such a high frequency with regularity. Vocals can be found above 100hz. So asking the sub to cover vocals is an odd choice. Philips also lists the THD @ 10% which is HIGH. At this price it's a deal, but not without compromises.

Reviews at 450? Doesn't really matter at the price point Edit: To follow up, these destroy anything in the $100 price range.  I'm happy with the KEFs I bought a few weeks ago and I'll be adding these to the system.

Except it isn't. Was 450 at launch, it's an older model. List price was still 300 on amazon until clearance.. It's a solid deal. Not going to expect anything amazing for $100, but I guarantee you'll have a tough time finding a competitor at the price until stock runs out.

I am most definitely going to use it as a computer speaker. 60" length of desk space beneath my mounted monitors. It's actually gonna be pretty perfect. My current speakers are not bad, but there's no ideal place for them to be placed due to the monitors not being high enough.

Let me know if you are able to fix the sound profile. I really don’t like how the lows are everywhere and out of place. Also if you switch the profile to Music it entirely disables the sub.

Let me know if find one, the sub of this thing is everywhere. I can’t stop hearing the rumbling even with classic music. It’s a poorly optimized one in terms of sound balance.

I’m glad you also noticed the same. I’ve been testing all day and it sounds better with surround off

This is exactly what I did. Turned the surround off and decreased bass to -2

What I noticed is that music present ONLY with surrounding on turns off the sub. I just opted for keeping the surround off and using the movie preset, while decreasing the bass to -2 and increasing treble to +3. I’m not an expert but for me with surround on the sound is hollow and lacks depth.  Edit: this is ONLY for music with Airplay 2. Once you switch to the ARC input it will automatically turn on the surround feature and I don’t know how to fix that. 

Edit: also even if you turn surround off for the ARC port, it will turn back on after you exit an AirPlay session. The software is messed up, on top of a messed up hardware. This is not even $50 soundbar, I’m not surprised they wanted to clear the inventory up.

Put the bass on -3, movie preset and just forget about it. Return it if you are like me, paranoid about the bass. 

My unit got stuck during a firmware update. Display Reads "UPG50" and no longer receives signal from remote, or buttons. Too scared to unplug, but if its bricked that's a return from me I guess.

Yeppp was watching linus tech tips and even his voice would rumble at time- Linus's voice should NOT be rumbling like at all lol