Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Review

Verdict

A basic soundbar that boosts your TV sound, but the Fire TV Soundbar can’t quite escape the feeling that it’s a bit expensive for what it does and that Fire TV integration would have given this more of a reason to purchase. It’s fine for what it does but perhaps one to buy in the Amazon sales than to grab at its RRP.

Introduction

I’ve reviewed TVs, wireless speakers, and video streamers from Amazon, but the Fire TV Soundbar is the first of its kind – an actual soundbar from the shopping giant.

And it’s a surprise that it’s taken this long for an Amazon soundbar to appear. Released in the US back in 2023, it’s taken almost a year for this model to make its way across the pond. Compare that to its rival Roku, which has found success with its Streambar and others.

The Fire TV Soundbar aims to be a compact solution to boost your TV audio, but upon testing it, it’s not all I quite envisaged it would be.

Design

• Minimalist looks
• Comes with a remote
• LED display

Amazon has put the breaks on style and focused on function with the Fire TV Soundbar. It’s probably harsh to call it boring when it was never intended to excite, but nondescript and anonymous are fairer words to apply to its grey/black attire. It comes with a wall-mounting kit if you want to put it on a wall.

At 60cm wide it’s best suited to smaller-sized TVs (50-inches and smaller) – it looks smart enough, feels well built for the price (18% comes from recycled materials), and behind the covering is an LED display. It’s a series of dots which are easy enough to understand considering its simple operation.

Set-up is easy – this is essentially a plug and play soundbar – though I did find that to get sound playing through the soundbar, I had to mute a Samsung QN90D TV, which was odd, especially through an HDMI connection. The issue didn’t reappear with a Sony Bravia 8.

In a recessed area underneath the bar are the connections, with an HDMI ARC port, digital optical output, and USB input. On top are controls for power, input, Bluetooth pairing and volume control.

The remote is a small affair, one that might go missing if you’re not careful with it. Everything covered on the soundbar itself makes its way to the remote, with added extras in EQ options, bass control, and a spatial sound mode.

Features

• No Fire TV or Alexa integration
• Dolby Audio and DTS Virtual:X support
• Bluetooth streaming

Surprisingly, the Fire TV Soundbar does not feature Fire TV integration. Unlike the Roku Streambar, this isn’t a soundbar-cum-streamer in one device, which feels like a missed opportunity. Given how synonymous Amazon has made the Fire TV brand with video streaming, you’d assume its Fire TV devices would factor it in some way.

There’s no HDMI input so there’s no means of adding a Fire TV Stick into the soundbar. You might assume Alexa integration but she’s not available, which means no support for Alexa Home Cinema either. Amazon makes clear the Fire TV Soundbar is for audio only, and yes while I understand that the Fire TV branding has to do with TV/home cinema, calling this the Echo Soundbar would have made more sense.

The Fire TV Soundbar supports Dolby Digital soundtracks, as well as DTS Virtual:X processing with DTS soundtracks. The Spatial audio mode expands the soundstage but don’t confuse this with immersive audio formats such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. Even with Spatial audio activated, this is still a 2.0 stereo soundbar.

There’s Bluetooth support for streaming from a mobile device, three EQ modes (film, music, and dialogue), bass EQ (low, medium, high)… and that’s it on the feature count. Considering the asking price, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting much bang for your buck.

Sound Quality

• Decent dialogue reproduction
• Spatial Audio mode expands soundfield
• Lacks bass

While the Fire TV Soundbar might err on the wrong side of the price/value line, it’s a decent-sounding effort as long as you’re looking to boost your TV’s sound and nothing more.

Does the Fire TV Soundbar offer room-filling sound in the way that Amazon’s marketing materials would suggest. No, it doesn’t. Is it an improvement over your TV? If it’s a cheap and tinny sounding one then yes it is.

Effects are placed accurately enough on screen, audio doesn’t sound as if it’s just emanating from the soundbar but from points on the screen too. Dialogue is clearly and smoothly reproduced in the bar’s Movie mode, and it extracts a decent amount of detail from movies and TV shows, though in its stereo mode the soundstage has a squashed feel to it.

Switch to its Spatial Mode and the soundstage expands in width, although to be honest that width should be par for the course for any soundbar. Its merely ‘decent’ level of details in its default mode become ‘good’ when watching Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – there’s more background detail and ambient to pick up – a dialogue scene where waves crash upon a beach becomes more noticeable – there’s more room for effects, music and dialogue to co-exist without stepping on each other’s toes.

It sounds clearer and louder if a bit thinner too, the processing applied in its Spatial mode robs the soundbar of its smoothness and weight, throwing a crisper tone into the mix.

Personally, with films I’d switch to the Spatial Mode for that added width and crisper sense of detail and clarity. There’s no sibilance creeping in despite dialogue sounding thinner with it on.

It offers three levels of bass from low, medium to high but none really add more depth or power. If anything it hardens the soundbar’s bass output, which makes the Fire TV Soundbar’s output sound uncomfortable in moments when where more punch or bombast is required.

Watching an episode of Industry on the Player, it’s a clear and detailed performance with vocals sounding more or less natural. The Spatial Mode works again in terms of a bigger soundstage.

With music over a Bluetooth connection, the Fire TV Soundbar sounds adequate. Everything I mentioned above applies here with its stereo and spatial modes. Its sense of dynamism is more noticeable with music than movies, even moving between quiet and loud is more slight than major.

Boosting the bass has a bigger effect with music, bringing more depth and weight, and I’d suggest playing with the presets available – the Music preset makes audio crisper but the Movie mode adds warmth and smoothness.

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