If you are a regular here, chances are you would have seen one of our Edifier speaker reviews. They offer a wide range of audio solutions for the low to mid range budgets, yet we’ve only seen bookshelf or portable speakers, until now. May I present to you, the Edifier S70DB Soundbar. This is their top of the range soundbar, which can be paired with a subwoofer and fits nicely under a 50″ tv. I’m hoping for good things, so let’s find out.
The soundbar totals 113cm in length, so a very large box arrived at my desk. Total dims are 113cm L x 11cm H x 14cm D, so it’s one of the chunkier soundbars on the market, but hopefully that means we’re going to get a quality sound. Included in the box is the soundbar, a wall mounting bracket (plus plastic wall anchor and screws (4)), optical cable, power cable (hardwired), 3.5mm to RCA, remote control and user manual. I’ve noticed it every time, you always get a variety of cables included with your Edifier speakers, which is good form on their part.
As stated earlier, the soundbar matches nicely with my 50″ TV, give or take, so it might overpower any smaller TV’s, but look ok with larger TV’s. The speaker itself is constructed from wood and has a glossy black and walnut effect exterior, finished with black grilles to the front. The back of the speaker and tucked away, allowing for a flush wall finish, is the inputs/outputs, including optical in, coax, line in, aux in, sub out, plus there is Bluetooth connectivity too! Either side of those grilles is the on-board screen and controls. The display shows information such as which source you’re using, and you use the rotary knob to select or change settings. It’s a very basic control/display set up but it’s easy to use, and the remote is a handy alternative that you will more likely use anyway. I did notice that once audio is being passed through the speaker, a mini equalizer shows up on the display. I initially thought this was the pattern of the audio passing through, but in fact, it’s more of a generic screen saver on loop, which is disappointing.
If you are anything like me and want a clean look on the wall, you will probably want to wall mount this speaker and hide the cables within the wall. Well, Edifier provide you with a wall bracket, a very crude wall bracket but it looks to be safer & more secure than just hooking onto a screw in the wall. Instead, you have a metal backplate that needs to be secured into the wall, to which the speaker sits onto. The cables will be below this bracket, so they can easily come down the wall. IF you do not want to wall mount, the speaker has rubber feet which sits the speaker up nicely from your surface. One negative for me, is you will have this slim tv on the wall, with quite a deep soundbar underneath. I understand why it’s so deep, but it could look odd depending on how slim your tv & bracket is.
Within the soundbar are four 70mm mid range bass units, plus two tweeters, packing a total of 88watts. This results in excellent performance from both movie and music aspects. There are three pre-set EQ modes, music, movies & news, which cannot be modified. For this test, I plugged the soundbar directly into my TV, via the optical port. Via the TV, I tried several movies, via both Netflix and my NAS drive. Dialogue was clear, explosions were…explosive and the mix between the sounds/frequencies, was on point. There was a faint rumble from the soundbar at low levels, that increased with the volume and though it didn’t shake the house, it was the perfect amount of bass. Not only did I try movies, but the World Cup was on too! I swapped to the news EQ for this, though I didn’t really notice a sound difference, but it sounded good none the less. Music, also very positive, though I personally wouldn’t use it for music but it’s more than capable of getting the party started.
Bottom line, I was hugely impressed!
Edifier have opted to pair the soundbar with a subwoofer, as part of a bundle. I’m not sure I agree with this, as there is ample bass from the soundbar itself but if you’ve got the space, it can’t hurt. You can also plug your own powered subwoofer in if you so desire, it doesn’t need to be an Edifier one. The soundbar and subwoofer combo currently retails at £449, so they’re competing with the new Sonos Beam.
For more info, visit the official Edifier website.
