samsung soundbar q950t full review and first impressions

hi there this is  shubham and in this  article let's have a look at the samsung's premium soundbar that is the samsung soundbar q950t and this is a nine point uh 1.4 uh bar that supports almost  and dds x audio and guys if you recall i have been in search for a good atmosphere sound bar because of the situation that we are mostly in the

            

                              

                                 house so i was looking for a good sound soundbar andl i've tested a lot of sound bars even one sound bar from sony that has had atmos that was a mid-range but i was simply not satisfied with this that one and i was searching a lot for good atmosphere sound bars and i saw some rave reviews for this one so i thought why not like let's try it out so here we have it 

and i have been actually testing and using this for the last almost three weeks so let me share what do i feel about this sound bar so guys this is the sound bar and this is having that fabric i'll just name it on the screen what it's called because i'll misspell it and again as you can see it's very minimalistic in the design it doesn't try to stand out or something like 

that you also get this wireless subwoofer and apart from this we also get two rare satellite speakers that also have atmos capabilities that are firing one even for the rear one and these are all wirelessly actually connected moving to the connectivity uh we have one er port and also we have two hdmi in which actually support 4k video up to 60 hertz also it has optical in and also wi-fi support and it also supports alexa so guys i have connected the sound

 bar to this samsung tv and as you can see it's over here it's connected i'll show you the interface later on and uh this is connected over er connection and i did not have any problems for example i'll also show you netflix and stuff and that was a passing actually atmos uh signal and if you actually have a new samsung 2020 television they also have something

known as q symphony uh not only actually uses the sound from the sound bar but also uses the speakers that are on the tv uh so again if you have that option uh new latest samsung tv you have that option but you can actually disable it if you want and also in terms of loudness it's actually very very loud and as it's connected over an arc connection 

if you notice uh you can use your tv remote and it'll actually uh you can control the volume directly from that and also uh from the tv you can control some of the basic modes that it has like surround game adaptive sound and standard i'll talk about these things in the later part of the video in terms of actually the speakers on this one guys it actually has

 total of 20 speakers and it can get very very loud and guys if you uh recall as i said earlier this is actually a 9.1.4 setup generally if you see other sound bars most of them even atmos ones they will say that 5.1.4 or 7.1.4 what does this mean that means 

it has actually nine channels of sound and that point one means that one subwoofer you're getting and that point four means four speakers of firing speakers for atmos effect this is the only sound bar that supports that nine point one point four setup and for

 the atmos effect you also need that up firing speakers so we have our firing speakers on the sound bar itself and also on the rear uh what do you say satellite speakers that we have that also has a firing speakers so that way we call that point four that are the four of firing speakers that actually uh hit your body the ceiling and bounce back so you get that effect

 and you can actually uh control uh the individual channel levels on the soundbar for example i increase the top firing speakers level you can go up to plus six or minus six so i like the fact that it allows us to adjust the channel because everybody's room is a little bit different guys so you can adjust the center speakers side speaker top firing speaker the level of the back speaker so you can do all that and now coming to atmos sources guys as you can

 see this is netflix and some of the shows and movies do support atmos and you will get this icon again you have to be in the highest plan of netflix to get the atmos effect and also uh it shows you here we have a small digital display where if it's atmos it 

says dolby atmos for a second i don't like the display size it's very very tiny actually uh watch quite a few movies and that atmos effect is actually very good uh you get that uh immersive envelope experience and initially when i got it as i've told you now have it for a couple of weeks so so i really wanted to test it before making this video initially

 when i got it i was just looking at the back at some time what has happening because you get that effect that something is happening from here moving from here and stuff also moving to uh some of the sound modes and this is important guys because if you notice netflix also or apple tv um almost just about five percent to max of about 10 percent of the shows are actually in atmos others will be in the regular 5.1 or 7.2 audio that you are getting uh so

 how does a soundbar behave when you have let me just go back to netflix and show you there it actually shows us it's 5.1 or whatever for example this was atmos but many of the other shows or even the movies example they are actually encoded in 5.1 so again soundbar how does it produce output that is not native atmos and here i would say this sound bar did a very good job uh if you keep it on the standard board and if it's 5.1 you get that 5.1 effect or if 

it's just stereo you get the stereo effect but we also have a setting here if we go where you can change this uh uh what do you say sound mode here it's in game adaptive sound standard or surround and when you keep it on surround it upscales the audio to 9.1.4 and here i would say samsung did a very good job because generally if you know in many of these sound equipments etc we have that surround mode but when you invoke it it sounds very artificial and you 

start to hear sounds that are actually not there from the back but here i would say samsung did an incredible job in the surround mode uh and it upscales the audio very well and gives you a very wide sound stage so i was watching some of the older movies from 2002 2003 that was just in 5.1 audio but i kept it in the surround mode and then i got really really good effect and the rear speaker just does not keep on blasting all the time if you keep it on surround mode only

 when it's needed effect is there it comes alive so even watching some of the older movies that were not atmos i had a very good effect on this one in fact i would say this is one of those rare sound bars which i actually liked even for listening to music you know music is generally two channel and in the standard mode if you keep it it's generally in that two

 channel but here also with the sound mode it gave a very enveloping experience it felt like you were in a live concert or something so i feel the surround mode has been implemented very well on this uh soundbar apart from that we also have another mode uh for like game mode and i uh played a lot of call of duty with my xbox one x and i have to say uh 

the positioning of the sound is really good uh in call of duty i could get a lot more kills thanks to the sound bar because when people were trying to sneak up from behind i just came to know because the position of the sound was so good i came to know they were coming from the back and i could uh fire at them so i would say the positioning is very good and

 it gives you that bubble effect that you're really looking uh forward so in terms of sound i would say i was very happy with the sound of this sound bar but now let's talk about some of the cons that i've noticed on the sound bar everything is not perfect and the first big con that i have is you have this display and it is so tiny if you notice i don't know 

why they have it such a tiny thing on this one and the position is also very bad you have to actually stand up to look at it what's happening so again it's very very tiny and also for setting up the individual channels for example you might want to enhance the center channel or want to enhance the side firing speakers again you have to use this supplied remote to 

control that and you have to use this tiny screen to adjust all the settings which is actually very very irritating so i simply do not like this one the next thing is that again it's a very high-end soundbar yes you also have a app this is the samsung smart things app that they have and you can control many aspects of the soundbar but with this app you simply 

cannot do the calibration uh that is very easy to do the calibration you have to come back to this remote so i feel they should have provided a separate app for this sound bar considering it's a high-end soundbar and also i hope with the software update they enable the calibration of individual channels with the app and also i do not like the fact that uh though 

it's a high-end soundbar uh it does not have any auto calibrate option uh so actually uh to calibrate it you have to use this remote and individually adjust the channel and again you have to do it because not everybody's room is uh equal so you have to manually adjust it and it took me about two three days to do it and it's very painful to do it 

via this remote considering the very tiny small screen that we have on this one also moving to equalizers uh through the app you can uh do the equalization but for some strange reason i don't know if this will get fixed with the firmware update as of now uh you can do the equalization let's say you want more bass etc you have a five band equalizer

 on this one uh but the problem is that that equalization is only applicable if you are in the standard mode if you move to any other mode that equalization goes off it's very silly i hope they fix it for the update also one peculiar thing happened with this sound bar is that my xbox one x i was using the uh er connection and it was connected via that but if i was 

going back that route i exhibited some audio lag which was very perplexing to me uh so i don't know if it's a bug with the xbox or the bug with the sound bar i hope they fixed this one uh with the software update uh so it was very annoying but when i connected my xbox right now it's connected directly to the sound bar as it has that two hdmi ports then i don't have any issues of audio syncing or lip syncing issues and i'm also getting the atmos signal so maybe

 i don't know it's a firmware issue or something but that is something that i have noticed uh apart from that i would say i overall like this soundbar coming to the sound quality the sound quality was very very good on this one i really and you get that that surround atmos bubble effect you feel that the sound is coming from this side from the top so can be very immersive and again i would say the effect depends from a movie to movie some movies have

 implemented it very well some haven't but i also like the fact that that surround mode on this one works very well so i would say overall if you are looking for a high-end atmosphere then you can certainly have a look at this one and in terms of sound quality i would say uh this was one of the best sound bars that have tested and i've also heard both sound bars guys uh so i would say in terms of rating if i have to give it overall i would give a rating 

of 9 out of 10 and now you might ask why only 9 out of 10 though i'm telling that it sounds great the problem is that as i've told you some of the cons the screen on this one is so tiny so it's difficult and you have to do a lot of operations looking at the screen so i do not like that and also i feel it needs some firmware upgrade for example as i've told you that audio lag that i had when i was connecting it directly by er that xbox so i feel there are some bugs hopefully

 they can fix it and i feel samsung should actually come out with a dedicated app for this soundbar instead of just using the smartthings app and provide a lot more functions if they can do that then i would say this product will become definitely better but when it comes to sound this pure sound quality i was very impressed with this one and guys it's not like that i was just looking at this model for atmosphere if you recall uh earlier i tested the sony's

uh mid-range atmos bar that was about just 40 000. but as it simply did not have any rear speakers i simply didn't get that enveloping experience then i also shortlisted the jbl 9.1 soundbar that was for about 80 000 but i did a little bit of digging and found that with the jbl 9.1 soundbar you simply cannot manually adjust the levels of channel and that is very irritating 

because not everybody's room is different here as i told you i had to change the channel levels as per the sound setting i wanted with the jbl that is simply not possible um so again i thought i didn't want to take a risk then i also wanted to uh check out and i did check out the bose sound bar the bose 700 sound bar but again the problem with the bose is that the sound bar just is about 80 000 but you do not get a subwoofer with that if you want to buy the subwoofer and you need a subwoofer otherwise you won't get anything you have to spend 65 000 extra okay fine then next thing is you don't even get the red speakers with the bose so if you want those ray speakers

 add 30 000 more so the total was coming about 1 lakh 75 000 for the bose setup but still the bose does not support atmos because it simply does not have any top firing speakers so ultimately i gave up so to summarize i would say uh this is a very good atmos same atmos sound bar if you have that kind of a budget and you don't want to get into a typical home theater

 setup we're doing all those wirings and keeping what you say speakers if you're that kind of a person then you can certainly have a look at the sound bar and in terms of sound as i've told you uh you get that bubble and a very impactful sound effect on this one and 

overall as i've told you guys i would rate this one 9 out of 10. anyways guys that's it for now thanks for watching this is SHUBHAM and if you have any questions then comment down I can reply