LHB316 Sound Bar This powerful sound bar & wireless subwoofer are intended for best use with your flat panel TV and have adaptable placement alternatives on either a wall or a tabletop.

197 of 200 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of five stars Great Value for this price range, March 9, 2011
By Dr. Chuck See all my reviews This review is from: LG LSB316 280W Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer and Bluetooth (Electronics) We just bought a new 55″ LED TV for our great room and needed a sound system (as is well recognized, the flat panel tv speakers are horrible). We did research for some number of days and had settled on either the Sony CT150 or the Boston Acoustics TVEEM20. Both had recieved great reviews. The problem with Sony is that the subwoofer is wired and holds all the inputs also as the sensor for the remote. , the subwoofer must be near the TV and easily observable (given the wall mounted place in our room, its a ache to run ten foot cables through the wall). The problem with the BA is that it only has the circa 1980 RCA input (which not many modern TVs seem to have as an output option). After much research we decided we had to settle for one or the other and went to Best purchase to test them. Once there, we ran into the LG which had not been stocked still (just saw the box in the corner). After looking into the specifications, we were happy to see that LG had settled the problems! Wireless subwoofer can sit out of sight still gives great effect. The sound bar has two optical inputs, plus a USB port and is Bluetooth enabled. All ports are on the bar, so you only need a short single optical cable from the TV to the bar.

Set up took about two minutes; plug in the bar, the subwoofer and plug in the optical cable. That is it. Make sure to turn off your TV’s speakers to avoid any issues with sound bleeding.

Sound is great, presuming you have realistic expectations. This isn’t a $2000 home theater system so do not expect that. But, for a $300 $350 range soundbar, the sound is outstanding! Other than a tiny bit of static when set on a couple of the pre installed sound effects (which goes away when we tried a different setting), its great. Lots of power for our great room which is open on two sides and has 20 foot ceilings open to a loft (basically the worst acoustical set up you may be able to imagine). Still the LG puts out lots of power; have not turned it up more than half way as that blasted. Great range of sound as far as we can tell; looks to hand music, movies, games, etc well (again, use the different sound settings to get the best effects based on source and kind of content).

The Bluetooth sync is very easy. My wife had the Ipod running through the system by the time I was done putting away the box. The LG has a particular sound setting for MP3 files that upscales the frequencies, etc. The sound is really amazing.

If we had to create any negatives, we only have two minor ones. My wife does not like the look as much as the Sony (the LG speakers are exposed, so it seems a bit more industrial); but this is relative and minor. We both agree its stylish and low profile. The only other negative is that it will not sync with our DVR common remote, so we have to use the sound bar remote for volume control, and the other for everything else. Not really a big deal.

In sum, we ran into this by accident (didn’t know LG made a soundbar, which is ironic given that we had bought a new LG LED tv just some days earlier) and could not be more happy. If you are looking for a good, low profile sound system for your tv but do not want to go to a full theater system, this is a good choice. If you are an audio snob, you most likely will not like it, but then again you most likely sholdn’t be looking at soundbars anyway.

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57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of five stars A Nice Package, April 29, 2011
By Wallix (Winter Garden, FL) See all my reviews This review is from: LG LSB316 280W Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer and Bluetooth (Electronics) I’m some an audiophile so I’ll say that you have to have realistic expectations when buying this product. I have an LG 55LV5500 55″ TV and the soundbar sounds about 30 40 better than the TV speakers in my case. As far as sound quality goes, you do not get any customizable alternatives meaning no adjustable EQ. It is all a load of presets. For me, all of them sound ho hum save for, “Loudness” and, “Natural”. By now we all know what volume does: boosts treble and bass. The rest of the presets sounded flat in my living room. The subwoofer is pretty big. A pretty bit bigger than I expected so I had a hard time hiding it. Low end answer was, “Good enough” but nothing special. Luckily it has own volume control. I ended up turning it down into the negatives to balance it with the highs. It is not a punchy sounding sub. It is flabby and honky so it’ll need a bit of tweaking for sure. The sub is the part that really separates it from the TV speakers. But, I’m sorry to say that after only a week of use the subwoofer refused to work any more. The Bluetooth/power light freaked out all day long one day though the bar was off. At the end of the day when I powered the bar on, it was dead. So it is already sent back for repairs. I’ll say LG was nice, apologetic, and paid to have the sub returned and fixed. But still, I was just starting to have fun with it. One of the other nice features is the Bluetooth pairing with other devices. I can sit on my sofa, turn on the sound bar, and just start streaming from my iPhone entitlement to the speakers. This was an surprise. I do not know what the bitrate is from the iPhone via Bluetooth but it sounded nearly CD quality. My one gripe with this is lack of an HDMI connection. The only digital input you get is Optical. This is a shame because most newer TV’s support the HDMI audio return feature and I would’ve LOVED to be able to control the volume of the bar with the TV. Again, you get what you pay for. You’ll have to set up your common remote to control this device as your exclusive sound device.

All in all, I’m happy for the price. In many regions it exceeded and in others it let me down a pretty bit. But I think for the average ears this is a nice little upgrade and will serve you well till you may be able to build your dream audio system.

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65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Good product LG, good value Amazon!, March 16, 2011
By James D Whitby See all my reviews () This review is from: LG LSB316 280W Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer and Bluetooth (Electronics) I saw on an online post in a tech blog about a year ago that LG goed to launch a sound bar product. I has been intrigued because I had bought three LG lcd TV’s in the past several years for different rooms in my home. I think they make a good product that’s competitively priced. Sound performance never been a strength of any flat screen product, and till you get a set in place in your home, in a particular room and live with it for a while, you really do not understand how good or how bad the TV performs.

My 47″ family room TV underperformed, but I didn’t want to go the whole distance and install an AV receiver and costly speakers as I had done in the “man cave” that my son has since taken over for XBox and other teen actions. When I saw the pre buyer Electronics press release from LG late last year that a sound bar product was in fact coming in 2011, I has been interested. I didn’t see many of contact from CES 2011, but knew it was only a matter of time before it popped up in stores given spring product launch/introduction cycles.

So last weekend the Best purchase round in the local paper came and showed a free LG sound bar with the buy of a 55″ LG TV, stating the retail value to be $329. The sound bar from LG was available, but I doubted the retail price if Best purchase offered it as a freebie, as a new prodcut (the LG and BB marketing guys really know how to kill a new product margin.But to my benefit). I quickly went to the web, looked at the Best purchase site ($329), the LG site ($329), ($256 sourced through World large Stereo . Went to their site, $269) , then did a larger Google search..nobody less money than Amazon, with shipping inlcuded!

WOW, is living up to their price leader repute I thought. I had been through this before with Amazon. Sometims they hit a price point, and it only lasts for some days or a week or two, , then the price goes up and you know you missed the chance to purchase for a low price. I did not know if this could be the case with a brand new product, but I thought, depending on other sound bar merchandise I had looked at, that this was a good product at a great price. Bought it on Saturday, it has been delivered on Monday. Can not do much better than that Amazon.

Oh yeah, the sound bar. Came in a big box. Nicely filled to avoid damage shipping all the way from South Korea or wherever LG built this. The sound bar is small in size. They say it’s built to go with up to a 42″; makes me think they must have a bigger variant coming out next. But the 39″ large variant looks good sitting on my console in front and under my 47″ LG TV. Set up was fast and easy (can be wall mounted, bracket included). Plug in the optical cable to the Comcast DVR and the sound bar. Set the wireless sub woofer on the floor beside my TV console and plug it in. Turn on both devices (TV and DVR). Everything works, 1st time, less than ten minutes, amazing! Also nice that they included at least one optical cable so you may be able to get the system working now.

The remote is small, intuitive and if you have an LG TV, automatically controls both (wish it controlled my LG BluRay.But I guess I will be looking at a Harmony remote next), was easy to use. After it was all set up, I looked at the instruction manual! The sound was good, not great, but much better than we had from the TV. It can really pack a punch though when you turn up the volume. There are different settings for the sound based on the kind of programming you’re watching. I have generally thought this was kind of gimmicky, but since having something alike on a new AV receiver, I realize that there’s real value in the way they rigged these electronic chips. We look forward to the much improved experience watching BluRay movies or streming Netflix or just watching regular TV. Certainly happy with my buy and the price I paid. Good product, good value. Happy I waited for this and did not purchase a bigger more complex 5.1 type set up with all of the hassel extra wires and need for an AV receiver. I know the sound may be better, but in a smallish sized room, this is perfect for what we need.

The complete icing on the cake is the BlueTooth connect. We have some number of Apple iTouch and iPhone devices in the house and a big library of iTunes and music on our home server. I have been looking at a Sonos set up to stream music through the house but want to see what Apple does with AirPlay before I make a last choice and investment. The sound bar BlueTooth, though it’s by no means a hi fidelity device, gives you a bit more freedom to unlock your music from a sound dock or ear buds. The LG LSB317 again worked flawlessly connecting to the iPhone and iTouch and the music did not sound half bad.

The worst part of the whole experience was the stupid label that LG placed on the front surface of the sound bar. It didn’t peel off easily, and it most likely took longer to take it all off with rubbing alcohol that it took to unpack the box and set up the system..go figure! I guess LG does not have any packaging engineers?

I think LG has a winner on its hands with this product.

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