Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE Review: Pretty Good, Hilariously Cheap

This Vizio soundbar system brings the sound of the movies to your living room, and it costs less than $250.

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To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED 8/10 It shouldn’t be this cheap to thoroughly enjoy the sound of John Wick as he breaks a real-life NBA player’s neck with a book. Yet for around $200 (a penny less if on sale), you can get a 5.1 soundbar system from Vizio that lets you hear the subtle crack of his vertebrae as a mildly stabbed Keanu Reeves twists his leather-bound enemy just so, in the intro to the franchise’s third installment. This kind of immersion used to cost you hundreds more, if not thousands. Now, just plug in a single HDMI cable to an eARC port of a chosen screen (or in my case, the 130-inch Hisense laser projector I’m also testing) and you can be drawn further into the action than you possibly could with a single central soundbar. As long as you’re ok with a few stray wires from the surround speakers to the subwoofer, it’s as easy as setting this system up, plugging it in, and enjoying your favorite content with new immersion. Been on the fence about getting a soundbar because you’re saving up for a full-blown home theater? Start here and you’ll buy yourself a long time to upgrade. A slim, nondescript main soundbar that’s 33 inches long pairs with small wired surround speakers and a wireless subwoofer to create this 5.1 system. The only aftermarket thing you might need is a pair of stands for the rear speakers, unless you plan to mount them to the wall (it has included mounting holes for this). One benefit that is exclusive to those who have Vizio TVs is the quick fit system, which allows you to pop this bar easily onto the bottom of compatible late-model Vizio TVs. This makes this bar a particularly good choice if you are also considering a TV like the latest Vizio 4K model we just reviewed (7/10, WIRED Recommends). The main downside to this system, and the reason why it costs significantly less than other options I’ve tested that produce sound of this quality, is those wires. They’re about 20 feet long, which is long enough to work in most average living rooms or apartments, but having to route cables is much more annoying than wireless systems. Once you get it set up, it’s as easy as plugging in a single HDMI cable from the main bar to your TV, at which time the magic of eARC takes over and you can use the bar to your heart’s content. As long as your TV is new enough to have ARC or eARC, you can use your TV remote (or in my case, a TV and then laser projector remote) to adjust the volume of the soundbar without having to touch the Vizio remote that’s included. Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE (SV510M-0806) Rating: 8/10 If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED You can also control the soundbar via the Vizio app on your phone, if you pair to it via Bluetooth. If you go Vizio-to-Vizio, you also get an integrated audio settings menu on the TV, so you don’t have to mess with the app or the remote. That’s nice, but you’re probably gonna set and forget this anyway. The best part of the Vizio 5.1 bar, in fact, is how good it sounds with minimal intervention. You just plug it in, press Play, and enjoy surround sound that’s shockingly dynamic and immersive for a cheap soundbar that should sound tinny and awful. The small surround speakers are the real highlight, more than powerful enough to give me a nice immersive experience when watching action flicks like John Wick or Master and Commander, where cannonballs whiz past my head even in standard 5.1. The Vizio 5.1 bar supports DTS:X and Dolby Atmos, but it doesn’t actually have up-firing speakers to bounce sound off your ceiling and do a “real” height channel. Instead, Vizio uses virtualization to simulate these channels. It’s hilariously convincing for a bar this cheap, and a testament to how good audio processing has gotten in general. Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE (SV510M-0806) Rating: 8/10 If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Can you tell the difference between this and more expensive bars from other brands, or even from Vizio itself? Totally. This set sounds a bit boxier in the midrange, and it doesn’t have the same channel separation or depth of flavor you really want when listening to music—I’d stick to bookshelf speakers. The subwoofer adds a lot of low end, but it won’t ever actually rumble your seats, unless you live in a derelict building. “Theater-like” is a really apt descriptor of this system. As an approximation of a high-end experience for less than a quarter the cost of higher-end Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar systems, it does pretty darn well. When compared to what you have in your new screen, this Vizio 5.1 setup utterly blows standard TV speakers out of the water. I’d even rather have this system than many stand-alone bars, which simulate surround sound, but don’t perform as well as a bar with actual satellite speakers. As I have come to expect from Vizio in this space, its cheap soundbar system remains my favorite new model this side of $500. It’s just hard to expect more from a product that does its job reasonably well for this cheap. If I had just bought a cheap TV and wanted to experience surround sound, this is where I’d start. Vizio 5.1 Soundbar SE (SV510M-0806) Rating: 8/10 If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED More From WIRED Reviews and Guides © 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices

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