The TCLS55H soundbar sounds surprisingly good in most scenarios, and the wireless (still wired electric cable) subwoofer has a deep and rich bass, suitable for movie buffs and music connoisseurs alike.
There is however one “feature” with this sound system that could be a deal breaker for a lot of people - had I known this before purchasing it, I would not have bought this set at all.
The S55H comes with 6 pre-made sound profiles such as “movie”, “music”, “voice”, “standard”, “sport” and “game”.
Each of these have a slightly different EQ and since you cannot set the equalizer manually, you are stuck with these sound profiles. The only two settings you have for EQ is “bass” and “treble”. You can also calibrate a virtual living room using virtual sound processing, but for me personally that doesn’t do much.
Some effects, 4 to be exact, can also be added on top of the sound profiles, effects like “Surround enhance”, “DTS”, “Dialogue Enhance” and “Night”.
So what is the problem? Well, every time you change sound profile, or turn an effect on or off, you will hear an AI voice say in a loud voice whatever you are changing.
For instance, selecting the “game” profile with “DTS” you will hear:
‘GAME - DTS Virtual X On’
and when you change it to “movie” with “surround” it will say:
‘MOVIE - Surround Enhance On’.
You guessed it, for every change, the AI voice will repeat it throughout the speakers - even when you increase or decrease “bass” and “treble”.
Since we live in a day and age when apps are available for everything, you would think that there was an option for turning the AI voice on or off but you would be mistaken - it wouldn’t be hard to add that option though, if TCL wanted to.
Thankfully there is no AI voice for the volume slider, or this would have been a terrible purchase.
In the app however, you have a volume slider that jumps back and forth 10-20% whenever your finger is touching the slider; so it is almost impossible to choose a volume setting of e.g 15 and you end up somewhere between 10 and 30 instead. It would make so much more sense to have a + and - button for volume, instead of that terrible slider - that is also something TCL could fix while they’re at it.
TLDR; All in all this is a decent 2.1 soundbar system for Dolby Atmos at a reasonable price. It is heavy on the bass, and without any bells or whistles. You have 6 sound profiles and 4 effects, then bass and treble can be independently changed as you wish. You can use a virtual speaker profile for your surroundings, but it seems to be more of a gimmick.
Purchased on offer 2025.12.3 à 159,00 norm. 349,99
