1. Home
  2. Audio / Video

Polk’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar, the Signa S4, is just $399

By

Polk Audio has an enduring reputation for producing speakers and soundbars that punch well above their weight when you consider how affordable they are. This continues with the company’s first Dolby Atmos-capable soundbar, the Signa S4, which comes with its own wireless subwoofer for $399. It’s available starting today, December 15, at PolkAudio.com or other retailers.

At that price, the Signa S4 undercuts many other Dolby Atmos products like the $449 Sonos Beam Gen 2, the $599 LG Eclair, and the $450 Monoprice SB-600. Better yet, the S4 manages to do this while offering a discrete set of up-firing height drivers in the soundbar, which should offer a more realistic 3D sound field than products that rely entirely on virtualized Dolby Atmos, like the Beam Gen 2.

Polk Audio

To get to such a competitive price, Polk has chosen to focus purely on sound. There’s no smart speaker option as the company offered on its React soundbar, and no access to music streaming services via Wi-Fi. If you want to connect a smartphone or tablet, you’ll need to use the built-in Bluetooth connection.

Recommended Videos

Physical connections are equally spartan: You get a single HDMI ARC/eARC port for wiring the bar to your TV, and both an optical port and an analog port in the event that your TV doesn’t support sending audio over HDMI.

Polk says the main soundbar packs a seven-speaker array, including those two up-firing drivers, a discrete center channel, and left and right tweeters and woofers. The center channel has been designed to make dialogue clearer — a common problem with TV audio — through the use of Polk’s VoiceAdjust technology, which automatically optimizes speech even during loud scenes with plenty of background sounds. Unfortunately, Polk hasn’t mentioned an ability to upgrade the S4’s sound with optional wireless surround speakers for a more discrete 5.1.2 system.

The included remote control has one-button access to EQ presets for both music and movies, and there’s an adjustable bass boost mode for tweaking how much low-end gets pumped out from the subwoofer. Dolby Atmos is the star of this show, but Polk says the Signa S4 can also upscale non-Atmos content into highly immersive surround sound.

You can sit the soundbar on the same surface as your TV, or you can wall-mount it using the included hardware.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
Sennheiser’s Ambeo Soundbar Mini is a pricey, bedroom-sized Dolby Atmos speaker

Sennheiser has shrunk its impressive Ambeo surround sound technology into its smallest speaker yet with the newly announced Ambeo Soundbar Mini. It looks just like a smaller version of the excellent Ambeo Soundbar Plus, with a footprint that's nearly identical to the Sonos Beam Gen 2 and the Bose Smart Soundbar 600. But at $800, it's considerably more expensive than either of those Dolby Atmos soundbars. The Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Mini will be available starting September 1 at sennheiser-hearing.com and select retailers.

An exploded view of the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Mini Sennheiser

Read more
Dolby Atmos FlexConnect could eliminate home theater soundbars and HDMI cables

Dolby Labs has a new home theater technology called Dolby Atmos FlexConnect. The company says it will let people with a compatible TV place wireless speakers anywhere that's convenient, and the TV's built-in microphones will automatically calibrate them to work with the TV's speakers while ensuring the whole setup produces optimal sound. The technology will make its debut in the 2024 TCL X955 QD mini-LED 4K TV, but Dolby anticipates that other companies will also announce support for Dolby Atmos FlexConnect.

Because Dolby Atmos FlexConnect works wirelessly and uses a compatible TV's built-in hardware and software, you'll be able to set up a Dolby Atmos audio system that doesn't require a soundbar or AV receiver as its central unit and doesn't need an HDMI cable to send an audio signal to an external device.

Read more
Samsung adds HW-Q900C to its lineup of 2023 Dolby Atmos soundbars

Samsung has been pretty quiet about its 2023 lineup of Dolby Atmos soundbars since it announced the new collection back at CES 2023, but we finally have all of the models, prices, and features. As we already knew, the latest flagship is the HW-Q990C, a monster 22-driver, 11.1.4-channel system that carries forward the legacy of the HW-Q990B from 2022 -- a soundbar that deeply impressed our reviewer. However, it's now joined by the HW-Q900C -- a more affordable version for folks who don't need the 990C's surround speakers, but who nonetheless may want to add them at a later date.

Also new to the collection are two C-Series models that bring the price of better TV sound down to $200 or less. Here's the full lineup.
Samsung Q-Series Dolby Atmos soundbars
In addition to Dolby Atmos compatibility, Samsung's Q-Series soundbars feature Q-Symphony, a feature that lets a compatible Samsung TV enhance the soundbar's own performance through the use of the TV's built-in speakers. Version 3.0 of Q-Symphony also uses the TV’s sound algorithms to analyze each scene to match the TV and soundbar outputs.

Read more