Best Home Theater Systems of 2023

CNET follows a rigorous, unbiased analysis course of for all of its soundbar and AV system testing, from easy stereo audio system to Dolby Atmos techniques. Within the CNET AV Lab, I do comparative testing, pitting related techniques in opposition to one another aspect by aspect.

I consider the efficiency of every system with a lot of several types of content material, together with motion pictures, music, TV exhibits and video games. I exploit a lot of take a look at scenes — together with the opening of Mad Max: Fury Street for playback of the spatial audio standard Dolby Atmos for techniques and soundbars that support it. I additionally use the Thanator Assault scene of Avatar (26.53) to check a product’s dynamics and element retrieval. 

In the case of music, I exploit a number of CNET test tracks which you’ll find here in a Tidal or Spotify playlist. Tracks akin to Nick Cave and the Unhealthy Seeds’ Crimson Proper Hand, with its deep bass and tenor vocals, assist decide a system’s capability to trace male voices particularly, with out sounding congested. The tune additionally helps with uncovering hidden particulars and the relative dynamics a speaker system is able to. Utilizing each forms of content material — motion pictures and music — I then grade the sound high quality of every product. I consider traits akin to speech readability, dynamics/quantity, bass response and musical playback. 

CNET’s devoted audio lab in downtown New York features a number of 2022 and 2023 televisions (with HDMI eARC), plus Apple TV 4K streamer and Roku Extremely streamers, a Microsoft Xbox Series X and an Oppo UDP-205 4K Blu-ray participant. I additionally use Roon music software to stream to particular person gadgets or the Oppo participant as wanted.