Home cinema
Hisense HS3100 review: a 3.1 soundbar and wireless sub for people who hate TV speakers
Six drivers, a wireless subwoofer, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS Virtual:X, and a 480 W number on the box. I have had this under my living room telly since the spring. Here is what those things actually mean in a normal-sized room.
7/10
Good value for a bar with a proper sub. Skip if you want real rear speakers rather than virtual ones.
First, the numbers on the box
480 W is a peak figure. Every soundbar maker quotes one and none of them mean the same thing by it. What matters is that this is a 3.1 system: left, centre and right in the bar, plus a separate subwoofer. The centre channel is what makes dialogue clear, and it is the reason I stopped rewinding mumbled lines in dramas. It is the main reason to buy a bar like this over a cheap 2.0 stick.
The Amazon listing says "rear surround speakers" in the title. Read that carefully. The surround effect comes from DTS Virtual:X, which is processing, not speakers. There are no rear boxes in the box, and I checked twice. It does a decent job of making sound feel wider than the bar, but no helicopter has ever flown behind my sofa.
The subwoofer is the point
The 6.5 inch wireless sub is what separates this from bars at the price below it. Bass in a soundbar without a sub is a polite suggestion. With one, explosions have weight and music has a bottom end. Mine lives behind the sofa next to a plug socket, and I have turned it down a notch from the default because the neighbours share a wall.
Hisense's TV mode is worth a mention if you already own a Hisense telly. It lets the TV's own sound processing drive the bar's speakers. My TV is an LG, so I have never used it, and the bar has worked fine over HDMI ARC regardless.
Setup and everyday use
Setup took me about ten minutes. One HDMI cable to the TV's ARC port and the sub paired to the bar on its own. Bluetooth 5.3 is there for phones and I use it for radio in the mornings. EzPlay is Hisense's app control, which I opened once. If you have never owned a soundbar, this is the level where the upgrade over built-in TV speakers is immediately obvious to everyone in the room, not just the person who bought it.
Images from the Amazon listing.
Good
- Real subwoofer at a sensible price
- Dedicated centre channel makes speech clear
- Simple HDMI ARC setup
- Bluetooth 5.3 for music
Not so good
- "Rear surround" is virtual, not actual speakers
- Peak wattage figure means little
- TV mode only helps Hisense TV owners
Should you buy it?
Buy it if you want a clear step up from TV speakers with proper bass and do not want to run wires to the back of the room.
Skip it if you want true surround. Budget for a system with physical rears instead.