VIZIO’s latest soundbar, the SB36512-F6 is truly a piece to be listened to. In exchange for an honest review, VIZIO offered me a free sample of their latest soundbar, and my ears could not be more grateful for the experience.
The SB36512 offers an attractive sound bar that sits under the TV. It houses left, center, and right front-firing speakers to match the audio with the on-screen action.
There’s a wireless subwoofer that can hide in an out-of-the-way corner of the room yet still provide deep bass for a fuller, richer sound that also adds the full impact of explosions and car crashes (not to mention those lightsaber battles!).
To add to the two up-firing speakers in the bar that reflect sound off your ceiling, there are two satellite surround speakers that connect to the subwoofer and can be placed to the sides or behind the listener to fully immerse you in the movie or music’s ambient sounds and helpfully draw you into the on-screen action. We are talking about some serious Vader vs. the Rebel Alliance watching here.
The upward-firing speakers delivered a new level of sound quality that had me wondering if I was going nuts at one point while my husband was playing a video game and had me in awe as I was listening to one of my favorite movies.
Biggest Selling Point for Me!
Thanks to Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual X technologies, you can hear things like birds, thunderstorms, wind, and other subtle sound effects like you are experiencing them right along with the characters themselves.
While my husband was playing Zelda: A Link to the Past, I kept hearing a cat and thought maybe one of our neighbor’s cats had snuck into the house, only to realize it was in his video game and the sound was coming from the speaker behind our couch. All the times he played the game before, I had never heard cats in the game. Wild!
You get this dome-like effect with the speakers because the sound is coming at you from all directions. It’s really quite amazing to sit in the living room and listen to Star Wars and hear all the action of the battle scenes as they happen around you; you feel like you become part of the action.
Speaking of the Speakers…
The speakers work from a total of eight crystal clear channels for maximum clarity and a fully-immersive, yet crystal clear sound performance.
For those who like deep, powerful bass, you can get it with sounds playing as low as 40Hz and sound output levels as high as 101 db.
What Are Some Other Nice Features?
Something else worth mentioning is that the SB26521-F6 is compatible with Google Home and that means it works with your voice-activated Google Home speakers and can become part of your multi-room audio experience. This allows you to connect the surround sound system to your other Google Home-enabled devices in various groups, so that you can play music through all of the speakers, or to different groups of speakers throughout the house. You can play whatever music is on your surround sound system to your other Google Home speakers, or different music can play through different Google speakers.
Something I personally love is using the VIZIO SmartCast Mobile app to turn my phone into the ultimate remote and control multiple VIZIO devices around my home from one place. It just makes it easier than looking for all the different remotes (and I can screw with my family when I want to control the music).
With Chromecast built in, you can cast anything from a cast-enabled device and send it directly to the speaker. Listen to your favorite YouTube station, stream your favorite Spotify station, whatever you want. Since the music is not streaming from the phone, there’s no degradation in quality, and you can leave the house or take a call and the music is not interrupted for everyone else.
It’s Bluetooth compatible so your guests don’t need to do any kind of complicated setup to connect if they want to share their music library with you. They can connect to the speaker via Bluetooth and go.
Another nice feature is that everything from cables to mounting tape is included in the box. There’s no last minute trip to Best Buy to get what you need to get this set of speakers put up. You can get everything set up and running with what you get in the box.
For $499.99 you can’t beat the quality of the SB36512-F6. VIZIO outdid itself in this model for sure.
For more information, check out VIZIO’s website.
