Samsung HW-QS90H review

Like a mackerel in a large shoal, it is hard for a soundbar to stand out from the crowd in today’s oversaturated landscape.

Even with competitive pricing and specifications, plenty of soundbars fail to make much of a splash in the expansive home cinema ocean.

But will Samsung’s new model suffer the same fate? The brand is quite confident about its soundbar, stating that the HW-QS90H delivers “cinema-quality sound from one sleek soundbar”.

Those are bold words, but the brand has a strong history of offering immersive sound, as exemplified by the five-star HW-Q990H premium soundbar package. Can the newest entrant deliver on its promises?

Price

The HW-QS90H is widely available for £799 / $899 (around AU$1500).

That puts it in the same ballpark as the Award-winning Sonos Arc Ultra, which you can find for £849 / $899 / AU$1585. Immediately, this is tough competition for the Samsung bar, as the Arc Ultra scored highly for its impressive level of detail, clarity and precision.

The QS90H also has its sights set on the five-star Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9, which we liked for its solidity and dynamics. It is available for around £999 in the UK, although it comes in at a higher price of $1499 / AU$1799 in the US and Australia, respectively.

Design

If you have lived with a Samsung soundbar before, you will certainly feel at home with the QS90H. It mirrors the look of the HW-Q990H system’s bar, sporting a similar grey plastic grille on the top, while a perforated surface wraps around the side.

While it’s neat and practical, it's fair to say that the QS90H’s design looks a little bit too familiar. Samsung’s soundbar range could do with a glow up.

Still, the bar feels well-built and premium, and its inconspicuous design blends reasonably well into our test room.

The bar is 125cm long, which is almost the same width as the 65-inch TV with which we are testing it. It would still look perfectly acceptable with a 50- or 55-inch screen.

At 7cm tall, the QS90H will fit in front of the majority of TVs without blocking your view, but just make sure you have enough space under the TV if you are not wall-mounting.

Features

The Samsung bar offers flexible positioning. It can be placed flat on top of a media unit for a traditional soundbar set-up, or you can turn it 180 degrees and mount the base of the unit against the wall.

An onboard gyroscope determines which orientation it's in and adjusts which drivers are activated for their required task. For example, the front-facing and upward-firing drivers switch roles depending on positioning.

The QS90H boasts 13 drivers in total. These are configured in a 7.1.2-channel arrangement. Samsung states that there are nine wide-range drivers inside the bar, which are supported by four dedicated woofers.

The QS90H is compatible with a handful of Samsung-specific features, including Q Symphony, which pairs the bar with your Samsung TV's built-in speakers, and Eclipsa Audio, which is the company's own immersive spatial audio format – though it's currently limited to YouTube videos rather than movies and TV shows.

On the subject of immersive audio, the QS90H does, of course, support Dolby Atmos, with the dedicated up-firing drivers mentioned above allowing height effects to be beamed overhead rather than virtualised. On top of that, DTS:X is on board, which isn’t the case with the rival Sonos Arc Ultra.

Bluetooth 5.3 and wi-fi are also available. In terms of physical connectivity, there is one dedicated HDMI input as well as an HDMI eARC port, inside a cable cove around the back.

HDMI video passthrough is limited to 60Hz, not 120Hz, which will be a drawback for hardcore gamers who demand 4K/120Hz performance and lack spare HDMI 2.1 sockets on their TV.

You can connect the soundbar to the SmartThings app to customise your listening experience. That lets you turn on Smartfit Sound Pro, which uses the soundbar’s built-in microphones to automatically calibrate the sound to your space.

A plethora of AI features are present, too, including Active Voice Amplifier Pro, which enhances dialogue clarity in louder environments.

Of course, there is also the option to adjust the volume, output, and access advanced EQ controls through the app. It’s all pretty painless to navigate, and it connects to our various devices quickly.

If you don’t want to be looking at your phone too much while changing the settings, you can use the included remote control.

Sound

When we boot up the Samsung QS90H, we are met with a big, expansive sound that fills our test room.

Playing Top Gun: Maverick in Dolby Atmos (in the bar’s Surround mode), the thrum of jets zooming across the screen is delivered with an impressive level of width that feels like it wraps around us. The bar tracks the movement of the plane around the soundfield pretty well, resulting in a good sense of precision that adds to the overall sense of scale.

The sense of height is impressive as well, and the jets can be felt almost above the listening position – it sounds almost as if there’s a speaker in the ceiling.

Moving to Baby Driver (also in Dolby Atmos), dialogue is crisp and clean. When the titular Baby is chatting up his crush Debora at the diner, though, the soundbar lacks the dynamic finesse needed to make dialogue sound as realistic as rivals, and it comparatively struggles to capture the subtleties of their expression.

We turn on the Voice Enhancement feature, which brings vocals forward to make them clearer, but this causes the sound to feel less natural. We opt to keep it off.

The opening scene of Baby Driver is given an injection of energy from the soundbar’s bass delivery. The low end goes pretty deep, which means you can feel the revving of engines in your feet.

While the bass is strong, though, it is not the most refined. The Sonos Arc Ultra delivers its bass with greater subtlety. The Bass Enhancement feature makes the lower frequencies more prominent in the mix, but we leave it off as it results in a more overwhelming and off-balance overall sound.

There’s a fair amount of detail in the scene, as the squeak of windscreen wipers and the pressing of pedals are clear without being distracting.

The soundbar can reach pretty high volume levels. But when pushed hard, it becomes uncomfortably harsh and edgy. This is not a problem at most sensible listening levels; just don’t crank it up to its maximum limit.

We turn to music by connecting to Qobuz via Bluetooth, and switch to Standard mode to make the presentation more direct.

Listening to At Least I’m Hot by Renee Rapp, the bass gives the track a strong foundation and immediately gets our toes tapping. Rapp’s vocals sound a touch harsh at the loudest moments, though, and compared with the Sonos Arc Ultra, the delivery does not sound quite as emotive and musical.

While the Sonos bar cannot go as deep as the Samsung model, it counters with a more expressive and cohesive overall sound that hangs together more effectively.

Verdict

The Samsung QS90H is a solid performer that will provide a big jump in quality for people currently relying on their TV's built-in speakers.

It’s not as refined or dynamically expressive as the rival Arc Ultra, but it still delivers an engaging and expansive sound experience that is well worth considering, especially if you find it discounted.

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Design 5
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Sonos Arc Ultra

Also consider the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9

Read our Samsung HW-Q990H

Best Dolby Atmos soundbars: our reviewers' five recommendations