If you have been considering upgrading your TV viewing experience in your Basement, a brand new Soundbar for your basement can be just what you need. Sure, you can get the giant flat screen TV and mount it up on the wall, but it’s the audio experience that really makes what you are watching spectacular. Soundbars have been in the market for quite a long time now, and their quality is only going up. There are a plethora of basement soundbar options to choose from in the market today, and it can be confusing trying to determine which is the best for what you are trying to accomplish with your downstairs entertainment.
Whether you are looking for a basement TV soundbar for watching movies, sporting events in a man cave, or to add to your gaming experience, there’s no question how much you will enjoy and appreciate the addition of a soundbar. Many new flat screen televisions come with excellent speakers, but you often pay for what you get. Depending on the layout of your basement, and if you have your TV placed in a single room like a home theater or a large open concept design, built-in TV speakers are no match for the sound of Dolby Atmos and a wireless subwoofer that comes with a soundbar. If you find yourself on the fence about whether or not you should purchase a soundbar for your basement TV or home theater, trust us when we say you’ll thank us later!
Below is our list of top basement soundbars worth considering. We’ve broken the list down into categories to make it easier for you to find a soundbar within the price range, features, size, or overall needs you are looking for.
- Our Pick For Best Basement Soundbar 2023
- Best Basement Soundbar For The Money
- Best Compact Basement Soundbar
- Best Basement Soundbar Under $300
- Best Basement Soundbar Under $500
- Best Basement Soundbar Under $1,000
The Best Basement Soundbar of 2023
Polk Audio Signa S4 Ultra-Slim Sound Bar
It was challenging to choose which product to put at the top of our best basement soundbar list, but the Polk Audio Signa S4 is what we decided on. Unlike the Polk Audio Signa S2, the S4 does support Dolby Atmos content (boom!). We liked it’s shape which resembles a V, providing a nice punch of bass and charm of treble. It’s a mixed usage soundbar, which makes it ideal for music, movies, TV shows, sports, and gaming. It has a bass adjustment feature to help you customize just how deep you want that rumbling bass to go. It has a 3.1.2 setup, which means it has a discrete center channel for voices so you can hear dialogue clearly. It has a sub that connects to the soundbar wirelessly too. For the price and what it offers, it really made it the best buy of basement soundbars for us in 2023.
Best Basement Soundbar For The Money
Sony S100F 2.0ch Soundbar with Bass Reflex
At just under $100, the Sony S100F 2.0 channel soundbar delivers high quality, enhanced sound from a trusted brand name at a very reasonable price. What makes this basement budget soundbar option so nice, aside from the price, is its Bass Reflex feature. This enhancement in the speaker provides a deeper audio sound that will fill the room. It can easily connect to your basement television through an HDMI connector, and has USB and Bluetooth capabilities too. Its connectivity is so simply, you can control both your TV and soundbar’s volume with a single remote. If you have built-ins for your basement TV area, the S100F soundbar is wall mountable for seamless integration with your basement entertainment center. Sony is a name that has been in the electronic and audio game for a long time, and they really did a great job on this soundbar.
Best Compact Basement Soundbar
VIZIO V-Series 2.0 Compact Home Theater Soundbar
Is your basement TV and entertainment center in a smaller part of your basement? Or just tucked away in one room downstairs? Enjoy outstanding room-filling sound with Dolby Audio and DTS Digital Surround from the VIZIO V-Series 2.0 Compact Home Theater Soundbar. Even with its minimalist size, 24 inches wide, this soundbar produces basement transforming sound. A low-profile design allows it to sit discretely under smaller TVs and is really designed for smaller to medium sized basements. With HDMI and ARC inputs, you’ll hear the highest-quality audio from your downstairs TV. You can wirelessly stream your favorite music and podcasts with Bluetooth using your phone or compatible device.
Best Basement Soundbar Under $300
JBL Bar 2.1 – Deep Bass Soundbar
Immerse your basement entertainment area in powerful, deep sound. The JBL Bar 2.1 Deep Bass Soundbar is sure to turn your downstairs into a cinema or stadium environment with the quality audio it produces. At just under $300, this basement TV soundbar delivers 300 watts of incredible JBL signature sound. Connect to your basement TV with just one optical or HDMI cable or stream music from your phone with built-in Bluetooth. Dolby Digital and JBL Surround sound bring a real cinematic experience to your downstairs TV viewing area, making anything you watch more epic, more thrilling and more powerful.
Yamaha Audio YAS-209BL Sound Bar
Get cinema sound in your basement for your favorite movies, music, and games in a streamlined and minimal setup. Built-in Alexa voice control means managing your sound bar, playing music, setting alarms and controlling smart home devices is as easy as asking. Place the wireless subwoofer anywhere in the room. At just over 3 feet long, this basement home theater soundbar will make your downstairs viewing experience exceptionally better.
Best Basement Soundbar Under $500
Bose Smart Soundbar 600 Dolby Atmos
Bose knows audio. And when you have a little extra cheddar to spend on a basement soundbar for your home theater, you can’t go wrong with the Bose Smart Soundbar 600. Not only does this soundbar come with Dolby Atmos standard, but Bose TrueSpace technology which intelligently analyzes signals other than Dolby Atmos and unmixes them to create a multi-channel sound experience like you’ve never heard inside a basement before. The Bose Smart Soundbar 600 is an awesome and surprisingly compact package for a soundbar that has a plethora of capabilities to your sound needs and wants. It’s only 27.5 inches wide, making this a perfect fit under any basement TV. Even more, the soundbar continues to deliver with wired connectivity support via optical cable and HDMI for connecting to your audio source.
Klipsch Cinema 600 Sound Bar 3.1 Home Theater System
It’s Klipsch, so you know it is good. With a sleek, low-profile design, the Cinema 600 soundbar will fit easily into your basement TV area. It also has some premium touches like wooden endcaps, a wraparound grille cloth, and Klipsch’s signature Tractrix® horn-loaded tweeters to bookend this basement soundbar. The bar’s built-in amplification powers seven drivers for an audio upgrade that will definitely make a noticeable impact on those basement family movie nights or when you host the fellas for the big game. The Cinema 600 also comes with a wireless subwoofer in an attractive wooden enclosure.
Best Basement Soundbar Under $1,000
Sonos Arc Smart Soundbar
We like to consider this the Cadillac of basement soundbars. Sonos is no stranger to producing some of the most popular and well-reviewed soundbars in the market presently. Even if you have a soundbar for your TV now, Sonos Arc is going to be a massive upgrade to your TV’s audio experience. This soundbar has side-firing and up-firing speakers and an advanced signal processing that creates a multi-dimensional experience for the ears. It comes with Speech Enhancement options that make movie and TV show dialogue easier to understand. You can also add additional wireless speakers or a subwoofer to the Arc to provide a more robust basement home theater experience. It also comes in two colors, white or black. This soundbar was designed with the basement home theater in mind, but still puts out great sounding music and audio for sports and gaming.
Soundbar vs. Surround Sound: Which is Better for Your Basement?
The short answer is it really comes down to the size of your basement and whether or not you have a dedicated home theater room, or just another living space with a TV downstairs. A surround sound system can have multiple speakers placed strategically around your basement or home theater room. This can really increase the price tag on improving the audio experience quickly. Also, not all surround sound systems are wireless. You’ll need to make sure you know what you’re buying and how to install it without wires criss-crossing around your basement.
Here are some of the benefits to a soundbar over a surround sound system for your basement TV:
Easy Installation
Soundbars are far more simple to install than a surround sound system in your basement. Most soundbars only need a power source and plugged into the back of your downstairs TV in order to start working. The only tools you’d need are if you are mounting your soundbar to the wall. With surround sound systems, there are multiple speakers and multiple connections, some wireless and some hardwired, that you’ll need to think through and plan placement in order to achieve the desired layout.
Take Up Less Space
Even though basement soundbars can be run longer than 3 feet in length, they are still very compact in size. Unlike the multiple speakers that come in a surround sound system, you only need space under your basement TV to fit the soundbar. Surround sound speakers need multiple locations in the room available in order to achieve the desired sound.
Much More Affordable
As you’ve seen, there are multiple basement soundbar options below $300. Some surround sound systems can cost upwards of 10x what a quality soundbar does, and it can still produce equal, if not better quality sound.
Are Dolby Atmos Soundbars Really Worth It?
The short answer is absolutely, yes! You will pay more up front for a basement soundbar that comes with Dolby Atmos, but that’s because you’ll enjoy a more immersive and dimensional sound compared to standard soundbars. A standard soundbar has a 2.1 configuration, meaning 2 speakers (left and right) and one subwoofer. Dolby Atmos provides a 5.1 configuration, with the primary soundbar typically containing 3 speakers (left, center, and right), 2 additional surround speakers, and a subwoofer. Object-based sound and vertical sound adds extra dimensions to a much richer audio experience.
Do Soundbars Make A Great Gift Idea?
If your dad is always in front of the TV downstairs for the big game, or the family is always gathering for a weekend movie in the basement, you have to consider a soundbar as a gift idea for dad. For the price and added experience, the addition of a soundbar to your basement entertainment center will make games, shows, and movies far more enjoyable. Whether he’s tuning into the hometown hockey game or he’s watching one of the episodes from the Star Wars saga, soundbars make a great gift for dads.
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