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Samsung HW-J7500 review: Pricey curved sound bar fills narrow niche
Plenty of noncurved sound bars sound better, and for less money, so you'll be paying a pretty penny for the privilege of the Samsung HW-JS7500's curved design.
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Despite their lack of any real benefits over conventional flatscreens -- apart from looking cooler, maybe -- curved televisions are enjoying their time in Samsung's marketing sun. But have you tried pairing a traditional flat sound bar with one? Perhaps you wish it, too, was curved to match your new TV.
Samsung HW-J7500
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Like an arsonist turned firefighter, Samsung comes to the rescue of the situation it created with the HW-J7500. It's a curved sound bar with a wireless subwoofer and a sleek, low-profile look. Its feature set is also strong, with a plethora of connectivity options including wireless multiroom.
With the help of a bit of EQ tweaking, the performance of the unit is quite decent, but its main appeal is good looks. If you have a curved TV, it's one of the only matching sound bar options available to you, and that could make it a better choice than competitors such as the Sony HT-ST5. On the other hand, $800 is just too expensive, and if sound quality is your chief aim, numerous superior bars are available for less money.
Design
Samsung released one of the "="" shortcode="link" asset-type="review" uuid="c6a8601f-b20f-4c92-8799-1268e5c24bf3" slug="samsung-unhu9000" link-text="first curved " section="products" title="Great picture quality, but the curved screen is a flat-out gimmick" edition="us" data-key="link_bulk_key" api="{"id":"c6a8601f-b20f-4c92-8799-1268e5c24bf3","slug":"samsung-unhu9000","contentType":null,"edition":"us","topic":{"slug":"tvs"},"metaData":{"typeTitle":"In Depth","hubTopicPathString":"Tech^Home Entertainment^TVs","reviewType":"In Depth"},"section":"reviews"}"> " in 2014 and this year it's decided to go curve crazy, with not only screens but curved sound bars and even curved Blu-ray players.
Samsung's HW-J7500 won't ever be mistaken for a flat sound bar. Every other competitor is a straight-edged box, while the HW-J7500's impressive 48.4-inch width is curved to match Samsung's curved displays. Not only that, the HW-J7500 is a mere 1.9 inches high, so its low profile should make for a less intrusive presence in front of your TV.
The HW-J7500 is designed to fit the company's 48-inch, 55-inch and 65-inch curved televisions, but it will also complement curved TVs from other brands, like LG's OLED models . As with last year the speaker is wrapped in brushed aluminum , but it's an effect you can only fully appreciate up close.
On top is a minimum of controls to handle power, volume and source selection. A six-character LED readout helps navigate the setup and provides cues during daily use. Despite the presence of video outputs, there is no onscreen display (OSD) on the HW-J7500.
The low-slung sound bar houses eight speakers and eight amplifier channels. The HW-J7500's wireless subwoofer measures a hulking 19.7 by 13.1 by 6.3 inches, making it one of the biggest sound bar subs we've seen. And no, it's not curved.
The clicker that comes with the sound bar is cute as a baby Ewok and provides access to many of the relevant functions. The Samsung Multiroom app can also be used to control many functions, such as switching inputs.
Features
Not content with a boring, old 5.1 channels, the HWJ7500's specifications mentions 8.1 channels. That number is misleading, however, because it only describes how many drivers the bar uses. The 7500 is not a true surround sound bar, and so it can only emulate surround effects. To help that emulation it employs two of those drivers mounted at each end of the bar.
Samsung multiroom system, a Sonos-style networked audio system, is featured in the HWJ7500 as well. It has enjoyed a significant upgrade since last we used it in 2014 , with heightened design and usability. The number of services it now supports has also grown from four -- Pandora, Amazon Music, Rhapsody and TuneIn -- to 11, and now includes more radio services in addition to Spotify and CD-ripping service Murfie.
Like the Shape systems , the sound bar can also connect to recent Samsung TVs through the company's "TV SoundConnect" Bluetooth protocol, which eliminates the need for cabling.
Connectivity includes stereo analog, optical digital, USB, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which should satisfy most buyers. The sound bar has HDMI-in and -out and these support both Dolby Digital and DTS.
We are waiting for confirmation of support 4K-resolution standards HDMI 2.0 and HDCP and will update this review when we get that information.
Setup
This is essentially a "set-and-forget" system, so there's not much to do other than plug in an HDMI cable. If you want to get the full benefit of streaming music services, you'll also need to connect it to your home network.
If you don't use an Ethernet connection handy, then be prepared for a convoluted and frustrating Wi-Fi setup routine. As we mentioned there's no onscreen display, so the wireless setup needs to be performed with a paper clip (!) and a smartphone.
We jabbed the Add Speaker button in the Samsung Multiroom app countless times in our attempt to get it to recognize the sound bar. "It could be the firmware," we told ourselves. But the only way to upgrade is via USB, and our attempts failed despite several downloads and USB keys -- it wouldn't recognize the update file. The reason? It was already updated to the latest version all along, something the inscrutable "NOFILE" message failed to properly convey.
Eventually the app did recognize the sound bar; it just took more patience, and more presses of Add Speaker. Not fun.
Performance
Straight out of the box the HW-J7500 sounded fine, but not exceptional. Nothing was out of sorts, but in comparison the Sony ST5 sound bar perked up the sound -- it was more detailed and energetic, and the soundstage opened up a bit compared to the Samsung.
So we decided to explore the HW-J7500's extensive sound tuning options, which include an eight-band equalizer, bass and treble, and subwoofer level controls. After fiddling with the equalizer we settled on boosting the 1.2, 2.5, and 5kHz bands by +3 dB each.
Those changes significantly improved the HW-J7500's detailing and excitement as we watched "American Sniper" in our listening room. On the other hand, you might be perfectly happy with the non-EQ-ed sound from the J7500. Every room is different, so it's great that the HW-J7500 offers the most extensive opportunities to fine-tune the sound balance of any sound bar or 'base we've tested. The easy-to-read LED display in the center of the speaker lights up whenever you make an adjustment, and disappears after a few seconds. The big catch is that the tuning controls are 100 percent manual; there's no auto setup or calibration options. You have to fuss with the EQ controls on your own.
"American Sniper" battles and gunfire had plenty of power; the sub and sound bar's sound jelled into a coherent whole. Dialogue sounded clean and natural. When we experimented with the HW-J7500's surround processing and dynamic range reduction modes, we heard only minor differences. Returning to the Sony ST5, the sound was more dynamically alive, and the soundstage was a tad wider.
When we listened to Snoop Dogg's new "Bush" album, the R&B party feel of the music sounded better on the ST5, too; the HW-J7500 was more uptight and smaller overall. Both bars did justice to the fat bass lines running through "Bush," so they should do a decent job filling moderately large rooms with sound.
With bluegrass diva Gillian Welch's more acoustic music, the HW-J7500 sounded a bit too lean and thin. Of course, we could tweak the EQ to fix that, but we doubt too many users will want to make adjustments every time they change music or movies.
As this is a streaming player we were interested to test the differences between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and they were evident. Using "The Singer Addresses His Audience" from The Decemberists' new album, there was a greater sense of space using Wi-Fi that was lost when switching to Bluetooth. Sure Samsung's bar won't reveal as many such differences as a higher-end audio system as a true stereo setup could, but the benefits of Wi-Fi were still apparent. If you buy this sound bar, there's no reason to use Bluetooth again.
Conclusion
Sonically, The Samsung HW-J7500 is just an average sound bar. We've recently tested a few sound bars and bases that lacked any sound-tuning features, namely the Cambridge Audio TV5 and PSB Alpha VS21 , so we were pleased by the HW-J7500's tone controls and flexible EQ controls that allow users to tweak the sound to taste. That's great, but the HW-J7500's narrow soundstage and constrained dynamic punch put a damper on our overall impression for a sound bar in this price class. In addition to the premium-priced Sony HT5, the less expensive Yamaha YAS-203 and Vizio S5451w-C2 are also better sounding alternatives. The trade-off is they won't look as good with curved screen displays.