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New Soundbar Review - Vizio SB2920-CS

Haywood

Well-Known Member
Famous
Several years back, I bought three Boston Acoustics Soundware XS 2.0 sub/sat speaker systems. They sounded great, but proved unreliable and flaky. All three had to be repaired once under warranty. When the control module on the system in the kitchen quit, that was it. I was done and I needed to find something else.

The soundbar needed to mount under a 32" TV and the size seriously limited my options. It is not that hard to find a soundbar that sounds good for TV programming, but I needed something that could also play music in the kitchen and most cheap soundbars sound like garbage for music. After reading a lot of reviews and customer feedback, I decided to try the Vizio SB2920-CS for $85 on Amazon.

The speaker system the Vizio replaced retailed for $450, so it was not surprise that the soundbar did not match it. The surprise was how good the little Vizio did sound, especially with music. I ran through familiar tracks from The Cult, The Commitments, Cherry Poppin' Daddies and The Eagles. The speaker put out fuller sound than expected with tight mid-bass that did not descend into the kind of flatulent faux low-end I've come to expect from a lot of lower-end speakers. I chose Hotel California from the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over album, because I thought the acoustic guitars and the drums in the intro might push it into dangerous territory. It didn't. The speaker sounded fine. Where it fell apart was with The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn from Alison Krauss and Union Station's New Favorite album. The bluegrass track is heavy with banjo, which sounded harsh and a bit too bright. Overall, however, the speaker is more than adequate for enjoying music in the kitchen while cooking and washing dishes.

The speaker has quite a few inputs (optical, coax, analog RCA, analog 3mm, USB and Bluetooth). It also has volume leveling and virtual surround features by DTS. The volume feature is useful. The "surround" feature is more of a gimmick, but it does add a little sense of space and impact with movies. It is an attractive speaker, but feels a bit flimsy when you handle it. On the upside, the weight is not a problem for mounting purposes.

Verdict: It is a killer soundbar for a small TV in a secondary environment that doesn't break the bank.
 
nice, another goddamn reason to stop looking at amazon and shit like this.

hehehe. thanks for the review haywood.

pictures!

wait, did you already have one on here? :p
 
It never happened without pictures, so...
czyPh2M.jpg
 
That webcam has a disturbing Big Brother Alien Invasion vibe to it. :shocked:

My youngest daughter has significant problems with mental illness and we need to be able to keep an eye on her for safety reasons. If my wife is upstairs in the bedroom or my daughter is downstairs in the family room, all my wife has to do is take out her phone and open an app to check on her. Alana has been better in recent months, but a body chemistry or medication change can alter that at any time. The cameras are a precaution. Sometimes we need them, sometimes we don't.
 
Sorry to hear that, and can appreciate why you need it. I just noticed the design looks a bit science fiction Mars invasion-ish.
 
The cameras are made by Arlo. They are designed so that they can be activated by sound or motion and capture a short piece of video. This can then alert the homeowner, who can play the clip or turn on the camera to watch live. The cameras have microphones and speakers, so you can talk to whoever is there. Unfortunately, the five second delay makes that difficult. I leave all the automated stuff turned off, because we have a house full of cats and it gets annoying really fast.
 
nice rig bro! i like a lot!!!

arlo is great, work for me and my families.

just a quick tip haywood, consider different placement, the arlo sensitivity is greatly increasted from a side to side movement, and not straight on. so try using an angle of sorts. hoping this helps.

oh, at times, check out the single base units, they end up cheaper at 100 a set rather than the add on camera for 130 i believe.

i still have a spare base station if anyone might be interested.
 
nice rig bro! i like a lot!!!

arlo is great, work for me and my families.

just a quick tip haywood, consider different placement, the arlo sensitivity is greatly increasted from a side to side movement, and not straight on. so try using an angle of sorts. hoping this helps.

oh, at times, check out the single base units, they end up cheaper at 100 a set rather than the add on camera for 130 i believe.

i still have a spare base station if anyone might be interested.

The Arlo cameras that I use do not need a base station. The angle of the camera is set up to capture as much of the kitchen/dining area as possible. I don't care about motion capture, because I don't use it. I just want to be able to pull out a phone and see what is happening in the room. It looks off in that picture, because we had just finished moving a bunch of stuff around and the camera was not aimed yet.
 
cool! it was mostly, my reference to the other 'types' of arlo systems out there.

mine does the wireless thing, and you can plop it anywhere within the house, provided you are conncted via base station. i dont know if it uses wifi to connect or what not, but it does eat up a bit of my bandwidth.

does the soundbar by the way have a subwoofer or a way to add one on via sub out?
 
My Arlo cameras have to be plugged in to a power supply and connect via WiFi. I didn't need portability or weather resistance.

The soundbar does have a subwoofer output, but I do not plan to use it. The soundbar puts out adequate bass for the application and my wife was way too happy to see the sub from the other system disappear for me to suggest replacing it.

The cool thing about this soundbar is the number and variety of inputs it has. I never expected to get six inputs on such a small and inexpensive soundbar. The bad thing is that the only one that is directly addressable is Bluetooth. The other five are on a round-robin and the power is a toggle. That makes things a bit ugly from a Harmony remote perspective.
 
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