Editors’ Note: This is the most recent version of the Fire TV Soundbar. Read our review from October 9, 2023 below.
Amazon consistently puts out top-notch media streamers under the Fire TV name, like the Fire TV Stick 4K, so I was excited when it announced the $119.99 Fire TV Soundbar. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly fell apart while testing it. Not only does it lack any Fire TV features or unique connectivity with Fire TV devices, it doesn’t actually sound better than the speakers built into most TVs. So even at its budget price, it’s underpowered and underwhelming. You’re better off checking out a pricier but much more satisfying soundbar like the $179.99 Roku Streambar Pro.
Pleasantly Compact
At 24.0 by 3.5 by 3.5 inches (HWD), the Fire TV Soundbar is downright puny. It’s two-thirds the length of the Roku Streambar Pro, though over half an inch taller. The front is completely covered in a black grille cloth, while the rest of the speaker is a one-piece matte black plastic chassis. The top of the soundbar holds power, input, Bluetooth, and volume up/down buttons, and a recess in the back features an HDMI port, an optical audio port, a USB port, and a connector for the power cable. Two keyholes for optional wall mounting also sit on the back of the soundbar, and mounting hardware is included in the box.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
The included remote is a short, squat black plastic rectangle with flat, circular buttons. Power and Bluetooth buttons sit at the top corners, with play/pause, rewind, and fast forward buttons below. A volume rocker sits in the center flanked by input, EQ, bass, and sound field buttons, with a mute button below.
A Fire TV Product in Name Only
You might be wondering what makes the Fire TV Soundbar a Fire TV device. The answer is nothing besides the Fire TV logo on the remote. This is a basic, audio-only soundbar designed to work with any TV equipped with an ARC port over HDMI. With an ARC connection, you can control its volume with your TV remote, even if your TV doesn’t use the Fire TV platform. It has no Fire TV features itself, no Alexa voice assistant, no media apps, and not even a companion app for making EQ tweaks (the EQ only has Movie, Music, and Dialogue presets, which you can cycle through using the remote).
This is far from the experience you get with the Roku Streambar ($129.99) or the Streambar Pro, which function as their own Roku-based media streamers. If you want Fire TV, you’ll have to get a Fire TV streamer like the Fire TV Stick 4K, or a Fire TV-powered TV like the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
You can also connect over optical audio, but in that case you’ll need to use the soundbar’s remote to adjust the volume. The Fire TV Soundbar also has Bluetooth for streaming music from your phone, though Amazon doesn’t specify what Bluetooth codecs it supports. Again, neither of these features have anything to do with Fire TV.
Underwhelming Sound
The Amazon Fire TV Soundbar is a two-channel stereo soundbar with a peak output of 20 watts per channel. It has two rectangular full-range drivers, though Amazon doesn’t specify their size. It supports DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Digital surround sound, but not Dolby Atmos spatial audio. The latter omission isn’t surprising, as spatial audio likely wouldn’t be well served by just two drivers.
Without a subwoofer, don’t expect tons of bass from the Fire TV Soundbar. When playing our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” it produced modest low-end, even with the volume turned up and the bass set to high. At maximum volume, it also distorted heavily, sounding a bit crunchy during the bass synth notes and popping harshly with the kick drum beats. Even then, it doesn’t sound very big, with a relatively narrow stereo sound field.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Switching to surround sound mode with the remote yields a larger sound field, but it throws off the already aggressively sculpted audio balance. In the opening of Yes’ “Roundabout,” the acoustic guitar plucks get a strong sense of resonance with punchiness in the higher frequencies and reasonably crisp string texture in stereo mode. In surround sound mode, the string texture overwhelmingly comes through, with an extremely bright sound that’s almost harsh on the ears. When the track properly kicks in, the bassline prominently stands out alongside the cymbals, with the guitar strums and vocals sitting a bit behind. It’s a very scooped sound in both modes, but while stereo mode is simply unbalanced, surround sound mode is downright unpleasant.
Music is good for testing accuracy and balance, but soundbars are primarily meant to improve the audio for movies and TV shows, and the Fire TV Soundbar fails here as well. The opening chase scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness lacks any real bass, stripping a sense of impact from flying rubble and preventing the usually bombastic soundtrack from feeling big and exciting. The sculpting of surround mode isn’t as jarring here as it is with music, but it merely widens a narrow stereo field to sound about as wide as what my TV itself can produce. When I unplugged the Fire TV Soundbar and used my TV speakers, I didn’t notice much of a difference, except the TV didn’t sound as aggressively bright.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
In comparison, the Roku Streambar Pro puts out solid audio while offering the aforementioned smart TV features the Fire TV Soundbar’s name implies but fails to deliver. Even the smaller Streambar offers a little boost over my TV’s speakers. In addition, those soundbars offer satisfying audio between 40 and 70% of their volume scale, while I have to crank the Fire TV Soundbar up to 90% to get something close to similar performance. And both Roku soundbars can be augmented with optional subwoofers that can really generate some thunder, something Amazon’s soundbar can’t do.
Short on Audio and Features
The $119.99 Amazon Fire TV Soundbar is a disappointing and unnecessary speaker that doesn’t live up to its name or product category. It doesn’t actually have anything to do with the Fire TV platform and its many useful features, and its audio output isn’t any better than what a large TV can do. For nearly the same price, the $129.99 Roku Streambar packs better sound into an even smaller package, offers all of the functions of a 4K media streamer, and can be expanded with a subwoofer. If you really want to give your TV an audio boost, though, take a look at the Roku Streambar Pro, our Editors’ Choice, which sounds better, gets louder, and even comes with a remote with a useful headphone jack for privately listening via wired headphones. At $179.99, it’s a bit more expensive, but unlike the Fire TV Soundbar, it will make a difference in audio you’ll actually notice.
Cons
The Bottom Line
The Amazon Fire TV Soundbar is an underpowered and disappointing soundbar that falls short on features and likely won’t deliver better audio than your TV can on its own.
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About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
