Samsung HT-X810

After the recent Philips soundbar review, my interest was piqued toward these sleek devices, and thus we decided to call in more from the competition in the market. And who better than Samsung, who is now one of the biggest names in the audio video consumer market. We are familiar with their LCD TV lineup, thus this new sound bar home theater is something we look forward to reviewing. The model name is HT-X810, and it's gleaming with cool features like wireless subwoofer, Bluetooth and more...

Design and Features
This system comes packed up in a long box; it takes two to lug it around. On unpacking we found the two main components of the system - the soundbar and a separate powered subwoofer. The finish all over is black gloss, which is typical Samsung, plus they have actually incorporated more style and design elements from their LCD TV range, like the thick transparent plastic flap around the border of the soundbar. As usual fingerprints will be galore on the surfaces, though Samsung has included a nice soft cloth to do the needful, along with a few cables (an HDMI is one of them).

The front panel of the soundbar is grilled to hide the speakers, with the top edge containing many important aspects like an LED screen, a cover for the DVD slot load, and a row of flush, touch sensitive buttons. The body of the bar is convexly arched, with quite a thick part in the centre. This section has a flat stand on the bottom, thus the unit can be placed on top of flat surfaces. There are wall mountable accessories also included. The sub is a side-firing unit, with the rest of the sides sporting the smooth gloss finish.

The features are impressive. Firstly there is Bluetooth, so you can wirelessly connect devices that support stereo Bluetooth for audio playback. There is a USB in for external memory, it supports WMV, DivX, MP3 besides regular DVD video and CDs. Another important feature is that it supports DVD-Audio (for the audiophiles). The best feature is a 5.8GHz wireless subwoofer. Last but not least there is an FM tuner with 15 presets. The power of the soundbar is 75W per speaker (there are 2) while the sub is 150 watts. Not that it's too critical, though there is no headphone jack. For inputs we have an audio EP in, a single HDMI and an optical in.