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Zvox set to reinvent sound bars again?

While known for its sound bases, Zvox has announced three new sound bars for 2016 with aluminum construction and Bluetooth playback.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury
2 min read
zvox-sb700.jpg

The Zvox SB700 sound bar

 Ty Pendlebury/CNET

While it popularized or even invented both the sound bar and the sound base, Zvox is still not a household name in the way that its main competitors are. There are probably a few reasons for this -- for example, Zvox is a small company and doesn't have the marketing budgets of the BOSE and Samsungs of the world. Despite this the manufacturer has managed to put out some respectable products in its 10 or so years of existence but things could change for the better in 2016.

After quite a few years off, Zvox is getting back into sound bars with some of the best-looking -- and if you believe founder Tom Hannaher, the best-sounding -- products the company has made.

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As seen at CES 2016, Zvox is prepping three main sound bars in 2016, the 36-inch SB400 ($499), the 43-inch SB500 ($599) and the 57-inch SB700 ($TBA).

Design has seemingly taken a back seat to performance in previous models but this year the SBxx models promise to sound as good as they look. The first thing you'll notice is the construction: this is no plastic cabinet with a sagging cloth cover. No, this is an extruded, brushed aluminum box with a solid metal grill.

Like Zvox's sound bases, the new sound bars are 3-channel systems with dedicated 2-inch left, right and center drivers. While Hannaher was loathe to call them subwoofers the speakers come with 4-inch bass woofers, the SB400 with one and the costlier models with two each. The speakers are ported at one end so they don't get boomy when wall-mounted, and they come with onboard processing, which promises to give full bass without distorting at high volumes. Sadly there's no subwoofer output like you'll see on competitive Yamaha models.

Based on a brief musical demo of the SB500, the unit certainly had plenty of bass power and lacked the edgy treble found on many competitors. We look forward to testing it out.

The middle SB500 appears to be the sweet spot of the three -- with more drivers than the SB400 and the same amount of drivers as the SB700 but a cheaper price. Look out for the SB400 and SB500 in March 2016 in the US. Australian and UK pricing and availability have yet to be announced.

  • Optical digital, coaxial digital, analog.
  • aptX Bluetooth
  • 140W digital amplifier
  • Dolby Digital decoding
  • Accuvoice voice enhancement