Roth AudioSub Zero II TV Soundbar with Bluetooth

Hooked up to the television, it transformed the sound and viewing experience. I always looked at getting a full cinema sound system but didn't want wires all over the room and wireless was just too expensive. This gives a huge sound without the need for all that.But, and here is where it falls down, as a Bluetooth player for music, it is far too bass heavy.The actual Bluetooth function works like a dream, effortlessly connecting as soon as I turn on the function on my tablet or phone, but I had to install an equalizer to my devices and bring the bass right down or everything in the room shakes. You may want this if you're having a house party or all you listen to is hip hop, but if you want to actually LISTEN to music, you'd be better off getting something especially suited for this purpose.I will reiterate though, for TV and movies, this is fantastic and good value.

Soundbars come in many varieties. Some try to emulate the 5.1 surround sound experience, bouncing sound off walls to attempt to create the effect (although I imagine this only works if your living room is set up like a show room). Some come with separate sub woofer, wired or wireless. Some condense sub woofer with bar and simply attempt to provide the richness of sound that your flat screen TV fails to deliver.As a sub £200 sound bar (sub £150 in this case), you're not going to get all the bells and whistles that are available. I think it's better at this price point to focus on a system that delivers on the key requirements.Mine were:* Quality of sound (clarity / richness & depth with separation in the soundscape).* Bluetooth wireless capability so that I could use it to deliver audio from other devices (iPad / Nexus etc).* Compact (i.e. all in one with no additional speakers).* Simplicity - i.e. as few wires as possible with straight forward sound delivery. My view here is that I have hundreds of gadgets and what I really didn't want was yet another 'system' with 8 millions tweaking options. At best, I wanted a few preset modes of operation and then to leave the thing to do the simple job of delivering sound to earhole.Things I didn't need:* HDMI. I'm looking for a 2.1 system with punchy sound - HDMI is not going to add anything that Optical can't. At this level, it's not important.* USB / SD Card support. The whole point of getting a Bluetooth sound bar is that I can stream music rather than deliver it by physical media.* Fake surround sound. If you want proper surround sound out of a bar, it's going to cost you. Cheaper options tend to throw stereo wide at you. I decided that this wasn't something to get obsessed about.Roth Audio are a UK company with a good track record. The original Sub Zero got great reviews and was acknowledged as great value for the price. At £150 or just under,the Sub Zero II follows on from that but adds Bluetooth, including APT-X (or aptX) functionality. Where source and destination support aptX, it offers high quality stereo over an A2DP pairing. The unit also has an integrated sub-woofer and appeared fairly straight forward in operation. It ticked all the boxes and although there were cheaper options offering similar functionality, I was concerned that if I went cheaper, I'd feature match but not get the sound quality I wanted. Let's not forget the primary objective here.Setup was as simple as plugging in an optical cable and switching to the correct source channel. Better still, my LG TV has Bluetooth capability so I paired the two together and managed to run the entire thing wirelessly. I was a bit concerned whether I would have any lip sync issues running it that way but it appeared not to be a problem. Other devices such as my iPad also paired up without issue and I was dishing up music from my UPNP player in moments.Interestingly enough, when sending music via the iPad, I could control the volume from there rather than having to change it on the Sub Zero II. The only technical issue I found with this (and I didn't test this extensively) was that when I next connected the TV up by Bluetooth, the volume appeared to be quiet and I was unable to make it any louder. It was as if the iPad adjustment had some lasting effect on the setup. This was soon fixed by turning the Sub Zero II volume right down and then re-connecting the TV via Bluetooth. At which point, the volume returned to normal. This is a small quibble in an unusual scenario. Long term, I'll probably run optical down from the TV and leave Bluetooth for other devices.The improvement in sound was immediately noticeable. Flat screens are known to be poor deliverers of sound but you only really understand how poor when you have something like a Sub Zero II to compare it to. What was once a lifeless din coming from the heart of an egg box is now a vast soundscape with individual sound events dotting the map. The sound bar delivered above my expectations.The integrated sub woofer really was enough to give that additional depth but without going over the top. I'm glad that I don't have yet another box taking up floor space - yet still have all the bass effect that I wanted.One thing worth noting with this and other systems is that you'll end up with yet another remote control. This is something that starts to become a real pain. If you use the 3.5 mm audio jack (run from a headphones point in your TV) then you can manage the volume using your TV remote and just put the sound bar zapper in a drawer. If you use the optical or other connectors then you have two options. 1 - Use the additional remote or 2 - do what I did and get an all in one remote. The one I've purchased allows me to learn commands, so I may have the majority of buttons mapped for the TV or for my SKY box, but I have dedicated the volume IR controls to the Sub Zero II. Problem solved.There were a couple of other systems that I took a look at but dismissed on my journey. Philips appeared to have a number of well featured bars at under £200 but surprisingly, I couldn't find enough reviews on the specific models and the ones I found for others at that price range were critical of sound quality. I didn't have time to go to a show room and check for myself. The other was a Toshiba mini sound bar which seemed good but had a separate wired sub woofer which I thought would be untidy in my house.In summary -Pros:Vastly improved sound quality when compared to the bodiless sound of a flat screen TV. Simple setup up and management. Effective and easy to connect Bluetooth functionality.Cons:Yet another remote control. No on screen volume indicator - front panel display is not big enough or bright enough to compensate.

Came with incorrect power supply originally which then took a couple of weeks of chasing. Sound is good, but out of sync when connected via optical cable to new Sky box due to the difference in output - would've been good to know this before as I was unaware. Works best connected to headphone socket of TV, but sound nowhere near as powerful as optical output. OK for the price though.

First one supplied was faulty out of the box (Bluetooth not working). Replacement has worked for 6 months but has now become faulty (little used, because I was away overseas for about 3 of those months). Similar Bluetooth defect to first one and audio output level has dropped - probably indicative of a fault with the Class D amp chip inside the product.When working properly the sound quality is good, but clearly there are issues with quality control at the Chinese factory.

Unit arrived and worked right out of the box, however it became faulty after only 1 hour of use, the volume control didn't work. I returned the unit to Amazon but was not offered an exchange which was what I wanted but only a refund. I liked the unit so checked if any more were available from Amazon and found that the unit now cost £30 more that when I purchased it 3 days before. I had to return the unit to Amazon via the Royal Mail which cost £12.50 unbelievable, I am also a Prime Member which makes this worse, I don't have to pay for delivery but I had to pay to return a faulty unit. For a previous item I had to return I was able to drop it off at an amazon pick up point at no cost, this procedure however was not on offer this time "Very bad Amazon poor customer service".A stated previously I liked the system so I bought it at Tesco for £20 less than it was on sale by Amazon, works perfectly, very happy with the system, however very unhappy with the service from Amazon.