Vizio VHT215 Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer

Hi, I'm Andrew Gash with Audioholics. I just love this thing. It's not a surround sound system. It's not the best set of speakers money can buy.... but for a street price of less than $275 you get a product that will actually make decent sound and far outperform anything your TV has to offer. With shrinking TV thicknesses come shrinking speakers... and at this point, what's left is really starting to hurt the overall experience of watching TV. It's that bad. And Vizio knows it's on to something, too, because the VHT215 is showing up everywhere. It's very visible and the company apparently wants you to be able to get your hands on one.

So let's talk about what it is exactly. The VHT215 is a sound bar - which is to say that it replaces your TV's speakers and gives you something that you can actually play loudly and which has some fidelity. It does this with dual speakers in the main bar. These speakers are two-way and feature a pair of 2-3/4" midrange drivers and a pair of 3/4" tweeters. Now while that may not live up to your expectations of premium drivers, remember the cost and what else Vizio includes for the price, namely a wireless subwoofer and a system that can pull audio from two HDMI 1.4a inputs, optical S/PDIF or coax and even analogue audio.

Physically, the VHT215 measures 40" wide and just 3-1/4" tall (without the feet) and seems perfect for displays from 40" to 60" in width. It's also It comes with attractive removable feet for tabletop installation, but also small brackets for mounting it underneath a flat panel that is affixed to the wall. Since it's only 2" deep, it will look good with even the thinnest displays and the back of the unit has convenient built-in cable management hooks to help you hide and route your cabling for a cleaner install. There is a nifty remote control with a slide out panel that lets you adjust tone controls, subwoofer level, SRS modes and also select your source. An LED display in the center of the Vizio shows you the current input source, volume levels and aids you in setting the DSP modes, tone controls and sub levels. It's a perfect compliment to the remote and can be easily read from across the room.

There is a single HDMI 1.4a output, but it doesn't transcode audio from any of the other non-HDMI inputs. And, honestly, it doesn't really need to. Since this is an audio product, you merely pick the source you want to hear and you're done. But where the real magic happens is with ARC, Audio Return Channel. With ARC you can plug all of your digital devices, say a satellite box, game system and Blu-ray player, into your TV. You can then connect the TV to the HDMI output of the Vizio. Except that with ARC, the HDMI output is also an Input. It gets the audio of any of the selected inputs on the TV and sends it back to the sound bar via the Audio Return Channel. Sound simple? It is.

When configured, the Vizio VHT215 is going to give you audio that sounds worlds better than the speakers firing out the front, or as is more common now - the back of your TV. But don't forget - there's a subwoofer, too. Since the subwoofer is wireless, all you have to do is plug it in - it comes pre-paired with the Vizio soundbar so there's really no setup involved - just turn it on. Communication is over the 2.4GHz bandwidth, which is a common one, so there's the possibility of interference with WiFi and other transmissions. In our testing, though, we didn't experience any dropouts. Vizio claims a 60 foot range "line of sight" and we doubt you'll need to get further away than 30. The subwoofer, which is more or less a bass module, has a single 6.5" driver and dips down to around 40Hz, but it does have some physical punch to it. Vizio claims it goes down to 30Hz, but with no specified output levels they might as well have said it goes down to 20. What you need to know is that the satellites' low extension and the subwoofer's high extension are a decent match, and so the system as a whole sounds pretty good.

One thing we found odd was that, even though Vizio's VHT215 is specifically called a "sound bar", it comes with SRS TruSurround HD and SRS WOW, which basically means you have a surround bar. At the very least you can use the onboard DSP to simulate surround from its stereo speakers. It's certainly not as good as true 5.1 or 7.1, but it's a start and allows it to do more than just a typical sound bar.

We listened to a lot of different music, sourced from Blu-ray, iPod, and even the output of our television. Counting Crowes sounded great, with a nice, though narrow, stereo image. Turning on SRS TruSurroundHD was a fun exercise and it's a neat DSP to give even music a bit more depth without the "phasey" effects less sophisticated systems use. Movies also sounded great and the sub really added to the experience. That's not to say the VHT215 is perfect - if you crank it up too loud the drivers will distort like crazy, but we got tons of volume out of it before this happened, more than enough to dwarf the output of our TV speakers.

So you get a richly featured surround bar with wireless subwoofer for a retail price of $320 and a street price much lower. Is this the perfect addition to that flat panel TV? It just might be. We're sure of one thing: the VHT215 is going to make any TV sound better and, if you want to improve your listening experience on a budget, this is a great way to do just that.

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Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.