HW-Q800D

As an owner of the Q800D, I can recommend it. For a reasonable space, the sound is big, has nice detail for its size and the bass is appropriately thunderous quite often. JBL is owned by Samsung FWIW

Depends. I've got a Q800d which is a very good midrange soundbar. I genuinely got a fright watching Fight Club the other night with the sound of the faux plane crash. I'd recommend that one out of personal experience. But any decent soundbar should comfortably twat TV speakers, especially any with a subwoofer

As a happy Q800d owner, that one. I'm going through the Harry Potter series currently and I just finished Chamber of Secrets. The Quidditch match in that film is one of the best action sequences I've seen in some time and the sound design for it is big reason why. I don't think I would have appreciated it as much with another soundbar. There's detail and real oomph (perhaps too much oomph from the sub, but that's not a problem for me) The side firing speakers give a nice width to the soundstage. And it handles action really well. Explosions and impacts have that 'WHOOMPH!' that I love watching action films in the cinema, with real size and depth. The raptors attacking the cow in Jurassic Park feels terrifying where it didn't before, the Trex attack is incredible, the bass when the brachiosaur's feet thunder on the ground is glorious, the car slamming to the ground when it falls out of the tree is amazing too as is the Galliimus stampede, which has great detail and real width, giving that sense of a herd of animals in your living room. I'm gushing a bit and using perhaps too many superlatives but I really love this thing. I got mine for a nice bargain and I see that, luckily for me and unfortunately for others, the price seems to have gone up. But if you can get it or one of its siblings (the Q800A, B, C or the current F) I'd recommend based on my experience with the Q800D

Not sure about others but in a 4m X 4m space, my Q800D gets plenty loud. I definitely don't go over 20 for the most part and I turned the bass down to minus 1 (though bass is something I'll occassionally adjust depending on given source material) I've also found that setting my TV to pass through dulls (for lack of a better word) the sound a bit, while setting the TV to Dolby Digital Plus adds some oomph and vitality and volume to the sound. I guess pass through is giving me the most accurate sound, DD+ means the TV is adding its own processing on, but I definitely prefer Dolby Digital on

People having a right go at you here in the comments. If it works for you, then it works for you. If not, then your dissatisfaction is part of your education on the matter. My first soundbar, a Hisense, was initially satisfactory but as time went on, I was increasingly dissatisfied to the point where I got a Q800d and I've been happy ever since Sometimes the first time works out, sometimes you need to get burnt so that you learn

Depends on what you want and what you can afford. But I had a Hisense soundbar that was decent. Had rears. Then I bit the bullet and got a Q800d. And I certainly don't miss the rears. I think what I realised matters to me is the size of the sound, the width of the sound field and the power of the sound. Even without rears, the Q800d trumps the Hisense. Obviously, it also has the Dolby digital and Atmos capability. But for big movies and big sound, you want that width with the extra channels that give you width and detail. Also, if you care enough to put down the money for something that has some capability, make sure to also be discerning about the quality of the media you're watching. I used to not give a toss about codecs but I've since changed my tune. Watching a copy of Fury Road that was encoded with AAC, I tried one that was encoded with EAC3 and the difference is STAGGERING. I did the same with The Good Dinosaur. I had a copy encoded in OPUS. But then I got a copy in EAC3 (which is basically Dolby Digital Plus). And where OPUS felt a bit lacking , EAC3 had a richness and real OOMPH to it. Obviously, this depends on your soundbars capability and ability to work with certain codecs. I'll sometimes read people complaining here about their soundbar not feeling powerful and I wonder if a part of it is using less than the best media kind. If you're going to get a soundbar capable of doing something, make sure you get the proper media for that.