Yamaha YAS105BLB Soundbar with Dual Built-in Subwoofers - Black

If you choose to keep up with reading my reviews, you'll have seen a whole bunch of reviews over the last couple of months relating to me redecorating my living room - and one of the side-effects of this update from a scabby, tatty old room to an ultra-modern one has meant that my partner's beloved Technics HiFi that she's had for years no longer fits in with the new room, so we made a conscious decision to get something to replace it that was far more modern and minimalist to fit in with the decor.I looked at soundbars and, after seeking the friendly advice of a certain famous UK HiFi retailer, decided to opt for this Yamaha model - but obviously decided to get it here on Amazon because it was nearly £50 cheaper. I was unable to have a listen to one of them prior to this purchase, so it took a little leap of faith in the hopes that the advice I'd been given was worth a tuppence.There was a little bit of of a kerfuffle involved with the delivery of the soundbar, which was sort of Amazon's fault as it was promised to be delivered up til 8PM by DPD the next day so I patiently waited for the WHOLE DAY and it never arrived. Sod's law meant that it arrived the day afterwards when I was at work, so I had to go and pick it up from the depot in the end.>>>>What's in the box?As you might expect, this soundbar arrives in a big, long box, emplazoned with the Yamaha logo and about a million patents relating to Apple, which is ironic as it's unlikely that any Apple kit will ever be connected to it since I'm definitely not a fan of the fruity technology company.Inside the box, you get the soundbar itself, a remote control (and batteries), a digital optical audio cable, a set of instructions and a template for putting it up on a wall should you desire to do so.>>>>First Impressions?Well, since I've never owned a soundbar before this one, I've nothing to compare it to - but upon lifting it out of its box I have to say that I was impressed by the weight of it and that it felt very well-built. The included remote control is a nice, but fairly basic, little thing too,As with anything like this, the proof would be in what it sounded like, so I set about setting it up.>>>>Setting it upWith this soundbar, you can opt for mounting it on a wall or you can sit it on your TV bench in front of your TV. I opted for the latter of those options, and found that there's a switch beneath the bar that optimises the sound for each way of placing it. Rather nicely, the bar is pretty much exactly the same width as my TV (a 40" LG LCD one), so it looks like they were almost designed to be placed next to each other.Connecting it up is dead easy - there's a small amount of ports on the rear of the bar; a digital optical (TOSLINK/SPDIF) port, a coaxial port, a sub-out port, a 3.5mm audio jack port and another one which looks suspiciously like a USB-C port which is curiously not mentioned in the instructions.I connected the digital optical cable to the back of my TV and to the bar, then connected a 3.5mm audio to phono cable to my turntable (which, incidentally required a pre-amp bought in order to get it working, but that's another review to write) and off I popped.>>>>Small bar, BIG SOUND!I had read reviews of this soundbar before buying it, saying that it had a surprisingly 'big' sound to it - but it caught me off guard when I fired it up and played a Blu-Ray through it for the first time. I was intrigued by the fact that it had built-in dual subwoofers, but at the same time I was doubtful that it would be able to really shake the room. I quickly discovered however that the rumbles coming from it were very impressive, lending movies and TV programs with a brilliant cinematic quality that makes them far more enjoyable.There are obviously limitations on squeezing a couple of small subwoofers into a device such as a soundbar, which became a little obvious during some of the scenes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'. The deep sub-bass rumble from on-screen Star Destroyers and when Rey and Kylo are having force battles was not quite there, so perhaps its a good thing that this soundbar has got a sub-out port and I'm definitely pondering over the thought of buying a separate sub box to deal with those low rumbles.Moving away from bass, another thing that this soundbar does really well is to create a wide '3D' sound field. With the surround settings turned on (rather than simply having it set to stereo sound), the soundbar does clever things to bounce the sound around the room to create a pseudo surround effect that works surprisingly well, and it has a 'clear voice' function that cleverly boosts the volume of dialogue so that it cuts through background noise. It's also satisfyingly loud and doesn't seem to lose any of its sonic oomph with the volume turned up loud. My neighbours are going to love this!When it comes to Playing music through this soundbar the sonic revelations continue. The staff member I spoke to in that famous UK HiFi store said that Yamaha, with all of their audio expertise, are best at making soundbars that are as good at music as they are at cinema sound - and I'll tell ya what; he wasn't wrong! That wide sound field I spoke about above does wonders with music too, and the bar has nice twinkly highs and decent mids that have made every piece of music I've thrown at it sound better than expected. The bass is decent too, but like I found out when watching a movie, music with strong sub-bass is definitely missing some oomph at the low end so a separate sub might be on the horizon.>>>>Check your TV!Now, I have to admit that my TV is getting on a bit - it’s a six year old 40” LG one which has an absolutely stonking picture on it and because I’m running a fairly frill-free system (The TV, a Blu-Ray player and a turntable, my plan was to route all of the sound through the TV. It wasn’t until I’d played about with it for a bit that I noticed that the Dolby Digital LED at the far left of the bar wasn’t getting illuminated and that the bar was always outputting it's sound in Dolby Pro Logic II, which is a sort of pseudo-surround field for what is essentially stereo sound. I unfortunately found that this is because my TV is only outputting the sound through the digital optical cable in PCM format and doesn’t have the option for Bitstream, which is wing-clipping the bar from putting its sound out properly.It’s not the end of the world, but I can’t take advantage of the proper ‘surround’ effect that the bar is capable of and I suspect that a new TV might be on the horizon at some point to fix this or I'll need to buy another gadget to deal with this. You might want to check your TV before buying this first, too!>>>>Wireless streamingOn the box for this soundbar, you'll find various legal notices and a big Bluetooth logo because, as you might expect, it's got built-in bluetooth meaning that you can stream music to it from bluetooth devices and services, which is great news for me as the majority of music I listen to these days is streamed from Amazon Music Unlimited. It's simple to connect devices to the soundbar and once connected, the sound from it over the bluetooth connection is actually very good.>>>>There’s an App for that!Although this soundbar comes equipped with a remote control, I’d highly recommend taking advantage of Yamaha’s ‘AV Controller’ smartphone app to control it. It actually offers a few options that the remote control doesn't have, such as different surround modes and it works really well.>>>>Summing upAs expected from Yamaha, this is indeed a great bit of kit and it does exactly what I was looking for it to do. It's ridiculously easy to set up, has incredibly good sound quality and features a decent amount of connectivity so that I have been able to get all of my kit connected to it without any problems. It's a fairly minimalistic but smart looking gadget too so it's able to sit in front of my TV without making too much of a song and dance about itself.Of course, it should go without saying that a soundbar (or at least one at this price point) is no replacement for a fully-fledged 7.1 cinema system, so if that's what you're hoping to achieve you'd be best look elsewhere - but if you're looking for a way to give your TV a massive boost in sound quality or you're looking for a subtle way of getting sound into a room, this should most certainly be on your shopping list.>>>>UPDATE: 14/02/18Well, I've had this soundbar for a few weeks now and it's had plenty of time to settle in, so since I had a couple of lazy days to slob in front of the TV over my birthday (the past two days), I decided to have a back-to-back watch through of all three of the extended Lord of the Rings movies on Blu-Ray and give the soundbar a proper run through. With the bass extension and clear voice turned on, I joined Frodo, Sam and the gang on their romp through Middle Earth and hoo, boy - I was not disappointed!The sound that this thing is able to pump out beggars belief - the battle scenes were properly engaging, with the oomph offered by those twin subs nearly rattling my living room - whereas the clear voice function made sure that even the dialogue in the quieter scenes was crystal clear. One thing that really surprised me about this thing is the revelation that it can pump the sound out at neighbour-annoying levels. ...No, seriously - this thing can get LOUD to the point that it will make your ears hurt and all the while remain clear and undistorted. Impressive, indeed!Another interesting thing I discovered was that, while playing around with the audio settings on my Blu-Ray player - and only when playing the alternate audio commentary tracks on the blu-ray - I noticed that the 'D' Dolby Digital LED had lit up on the bar; the first time I've seen it do that - so maybe my TV is sometimes passing through the correct audio format to the bar? In any case, it made no improvement to the sound as it sounds perfectly fine on the normal DPLII mode it stays in 99% of the time.So there you have it - after a few weeks, this thing is still slapping me in the face with the sound it puts out and also slapping a great big grin on it.

Although I have a high-end AV Multichannel Amp/Speaker System for films, drama, concerts etc, for normal programmes not needing a room full of sound this soundbar is ideal. I have a 55” OLED TV on a stand so that a large centre speaker can sit underneath the TV and, as the centre speaker is angled up a bit, there’s just a bit more room than needed for this soundbar to sit in front of the centre speaker. With its ultra low height profile and clean styling it blends in so well as to not be noticeable. When it is noticed, it gets praise as it makes the existing centre speaker and TV styling look cleaner and much improved. As the TV only has one optical out, and I didn’t want to use a splitter, it was ideal that the Yamaha had an analog in socket, driven by the TV’s headphone/line out. Also, as the TV’s inbuilt sound was so poor, I disabled this and used the feature of the Yamaha to learn to use the TV’s infrared codes for volume up/down/mute and to power on/off both the TV and Yamaha at the same time. I’m no longer embarrassed with the sound of my amazing TV when not using the AV System and just want to watch a bit of normal faimly TV viewing. Also useful when it’s a really hot day/evening and not wanting the AV System to make it even hotter...The sound of the Yamaha is rich enough with well defined middle to high frequencies and is really good for voices, both dialogue and singing. There’s a bass extension mode, which I prefer rather than some units that over boost bass so it becomes muddled - if you want more bass you can raise it. I also use the soundbar for some quiet time music, where it sounds good when there’s just a few instruments and voices. As it can also be used as a Bluetooth receiver I also use it with iPhones etc to stream music, which also sounds rather good.Being Yamaha I had some fairly high expectations, even if not that expensive, and I was still pleasantly surprised with what I heard...... as for the TV, it might have been more impressive if it came with no speakers - at least I didn’t have to spend the £800 price tag for their matching soundbar some sellers are feeling the need to bundle with it.

Excellent soundbar with only one minor drawback which at the price point of £99 can't be argued which is why it gets the 4 star rating. For my own use I like a LOT of bass, not that the Yas-105 lacks it entirely; everyones taste is different. I combine movies with music listening with this so for me I will be purchasing a Yamaha subwoofer to match up for music and to add some extra depth to the bar. Don't get me wrong though for the size and design of the unit bass production is still very good however it does start to drop out when the volume is raised above 23 using the iPhone control app on music listening. The Yas-105 easilly outperforms alternative brands within the current price bracket, I've listened to a few including Sony and Samsung costing £150-£175 and the Yamaha wins hands down. It's the second Yamaha system in the house. Not only do you get the solid build quality but the sound quality is superb. I'd seen another review suggesting the bar was lacking clarity in voice but booming on action scenes, in my experience having spent time tweaking the settings for different sources and input devices I do not find this to be the case. I can understand the reviewers point but founf by enabling the "clear voice" function and adjusting bass settings it solves the problem... that is if you experience that. That being said set up is very easy, and the bonus of Bluetooth and the IOS control app to switch settings is very useful. I would highly reccomend this product and should the £99 price point return I would be tempted on purchasing a second for another room. For ultimate performance though and for me to be able to give it the 5 stars I would have to add an active subwoofer to the setup, but at £99 how can you complain!