If you didn’t manage to catch it on Black Friday, Best Buy’s Cyber Monday deals feature $30 off Roku's Smart Soundbar and the retailer goes even further by throwing in four months of Apple Music. At $150, you’re getting a decent discount on a fairly new 2-in-1 home theater upgrade that combines streaming smarts with audio that’ll put most TVs to shame.
With the Roku Smart Soundbar, you’re getting a solid unit that features four respectable 2.5-inch drivers in a 2.0-channel array. It teeters on expensive for sheer audio, but when combined with Roku smarts, the price tag seems totally justified. Through an HDMI ARC port (there’s also optical audio) and a simplified voice remote, you’ll be able to access thousands of free and premium apps and channels on Roku’s platform.
If you have the hardware for it, its 4K support — combined with the magic of HDR10 — allows the Roku Smart Soundbar to deliver a worthy home theater experience with minimal setup and fewer devices. There are also fun features like casting, Bluetooth music playback, and access to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, giving you voice control for adjusting audio, finding content, and keeping tabs on all your connected devices and apps.
Should you buy the Roku Smart Soundbar?
The Roku Smart Soundbar is a great buy for any TV that doesn’t have its own smart capabilities, or doesn’t support the service you wish to access out of the box. Otherwise, you’ll get better value out of a standalone unit. You might also consider buying a basic soundbar separately — there are some nice ones for Cyber Week — and pairing it with a standalone Roku device, especially given the reservations Digital Trends’ Ryan Waniata had with the sound quality, which you can read more about in his review.
Another big knock on the Roku Smart Soundbar is that it lacks Dolby Atmos, though most do at this price range. You’ll want to keep that in mind if you’re planning on making more major audio upgrades down the line. Otherwise, the Roku Smart Soundbar is a fantastic solution for enhancing a dumb TV or replacing the operating system yours came with. This is a great price for Cyber Monday, especially if you factor in the free four-month Apple Music subscription you get with purchase.
