LG S95TR Soundbar Review

The LG S95TR looks very similar to the LG S95QR, although the latest-gen has a metal grille across the front and sides of the bar instead of fabric. That said, the left and right channels are protected by rectangular grilles, while the center channel has a round grille.

The subwoofer looks very similar to that of the LG S95QR as well. A fabric covering protects the speaker, and the back is mostly plastic.

The satellite design hasn't changed from its predecessor, the LG S95QR, either. It has an angular design with its front and sides covered in fabric to shield the front-firing speaker. The rest of the satellite is made of plastic, with a circular grille to protect its up-firing driver.

This bar is quite wide. It won't fit between the legs of a 55" TV stand. Luckily, it's not very tall, so it won't block your screen.

This subwoofer is roughly the size of an average desktop PC. Luckily, you can place it anywhere in your home since it connects to your bar wirelessly, although it still needs to be plugged in for power.

The satellites are a bit wide, but they're still small enough to be discretely placed in your home. They also connect to the bar wirelessly, but you still need to plug them into an outlet for power.

You can mount this bar and its satellites to your wall, thanks to the included brackets.

The LG S95TR has a great build quality. It's mostly made of plastic with a metal grille to protect its front and side faces as well as the center channel, which helps it feel durable. Similarly, the satellites are made of plastic but have fabric to cover the front speakers, while the up-firing speaker has a metal grille. Finally, the sub is a melanin-like material with fabric to protect its speaker. This fabric cover can be prone to ripping.

• Manual with mounting template
• Remote with 2x AA batteries
• Mounting plates with 4x screws
• 4x power cables (4.9 ft / 1.5 m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.5 m)

Using Standard mode, the LG S95TR has a well-balanced sound. Thanks to its subwoofer, it can deliver satisfying bass, especially when compared to standalone bars like the Sony BRAVIA Theater Bar 9, making it a solid choice for music genres like EDM and hip-hop or action-packed movies, thanks to its deep thump and rumble. Some people may find its sound a little boomy, though. That said, vocal-centric content renders great, as it's clear and easy to follow.

There are a couple of EQ presets you can use to adjust the bar's sound to your liking, and you can see how they perform here. Using the Cinema mode, intended for watching movies, your audio sounds a bit more immersive. However, the treble is slightly less extended, so content lacks a minor amount of brightness. Music mode also makes the audio sound a bit fuller and wider when used with the corresponding media. AI Sound Pro mode, on the other hand, doesn't sound good, subjectively, even after running the AI Sound Calibration feature. Audio sounds boomy, and mids (which include vocals) are pushed back. Treble sounds like cymbals also seem piercing.

There are bass and treble sliders to help you achieve your desired sound. For a more neutral sound, you can set the bass to '-2' and the treble to '3.' The bass is a bit more balanced, so it isn't as boomy. Vocals and instruments are still clear but have more detail, presence, and airiness to them.

The LG S95TR has a good stereo soundstage. The soundstage feels a bit wider than the bar itself, but it doesn't have any tricks to help make it seem wider than that. At the same time, the bar has very good focus, so it's easy to pinpoint sound objects, like voices, accurately around you.

The LG S95TR has great stereo dynamics. The bar can reach a loud enough volume to fill open spaces with sound. Compression is pretty low until you hit max volume, and even then, only a small amount is still present. That means that your audio sounds clean and pure all the way up to max volume.

This bar has a great center channel performance. Although the overall frequency response is treble-tilted, the mids still remain fairly flat. As a result, dialogue sounds clear, bright, and easy to follow.

This bar's surround performance is decent. Thanks to its discrete satellites, it can better represent surround objects in the soundstage than bars with phantom surround setups. In scenes like a car chase, you can easily follow the car in space as it moves on screen. That said, the response here is a bit dark and lacking in detail, as there's some treble roll-off.

This bar has two up-firing drivers built into the bar in addition to two on each of the satellite speakers. Together, they bounce sound off of your ceiling and back down to you in order to create the illusion of height. Although the frequency response here is a bit boomy, this can be a boon if you're listening to scenes with a lot of bassy excitement, such as explosions or revving car engines.

We also subjectively assessed this bar's Atmos performance and found that the satellites don't create very much of an overhead experience by default. They're fairly quiet and don't seem to be level-matched with the bar's volume. That said, we played around with the Overhead Height volume settings, and even at max, there was only a little improvement. Still, content like a tower toppling to the ground sounds detailed, with plenty of rumble from debris falling, but the sound lacks elevation.

This bar has plenty of sound enhancement features, including a room correction feature, which allows the bar to optimize its audio reproduction based on your room's unique acoustics. For sound customization, there are bass and treble sliders as well as the following EQ presets: 'AI Sound Pro,' 'Standard,' 'Music,' 'Cinema,' 'Clear Voice,' 'Sports,' 'Game,' and 'BassBlast.' There's even a night mode to help level out the volume level between content and surround, rear, and overhead level adjustments.

In addition, this bar supports WOW Orchestra, which allows you to use your LG TV's speakers in addition to the soundbar to create a more immersive sound.

This bar supports quite a few inputs, including Optical and HDMI. It also supports WOWCAST Ready. This feature wirelessly connects your soundbar to your LG TV for a cable-free look. That said, you may experience higher latency than wired connections like HDMI. You can see a video demonstrating AV sync here, but keep in mind that these results don't account for TV sync error, and our results are limited to our setup. When we connected this bar to our LG C4 OLED, we noticed a slight AV lip-sync delay with movies. If you prefer the wireless look, the delay isn't enough to be a dealbreaker. However, if you're sensitive to delay (such as if you're gaming), then you'll want to make sure that you use a wired connection instead.

The LG S95TR has outstanding audio format support via ARC. It supports common surround formats, including Dolby Digital and DTS, which can be found on streaming platforms as well as Blu-rays. It also supports lossless and object-based formats, such as Dolby Atmos.

Similar to its ARC connection, this bar has fantastic audio format support using the HDMI In port. It can play common audio formats, including lossless and object-based formats like Dolby Atmos and surround sound formats.

This bar has incredible audio format support via Optical, too. It supports Dolby Digital, which is the most common surround sound format and found on many streaming services.

The LG S95TR has an amazing latency performance via ARC. It's worth mentioning that some apps and TVs compensate for latency, though. Luckily, if the delay bothers you, there's an AV Sync feature available to manually adjust for it.

Via HDMI In, this bar has amazing audio latency, too. While some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, you can also use the AV Sync feature to manually adjust for delay.

The audio latency performance over Optical is good. While the latency is a bit lower across the board compared to the LG S95TR, it's still somewhat high, especially with Dolby Digital. That said, you can use the AV Sync feature in the app to manually adjust for delay.

This soundbar can passthrough high-quality bandwidth signals, so you can use it as a hub between different devices like your PC and TV. The text looks crisp and clear on-screen too. On the downside, if you're using this bar with your newest-gen gaming console, you can't passthrough 4k at 120Hz 10-bit. We were able to get the bar to 4k at 120Hz 8-bit, with a 4:4:4 refresh rate though, as well as to 4k at 60Hz 8-bit 4:4:4. The difference in bitrate means that there isn't quite as much color depth, but it's still quite serviceable and vibrant.

The LG S95TR has outstanding wireless playback support. You have a lot of options available, including via Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay, and Spotify Connect, which is handy if you want to play audio from your phone.

There's a small display on the front face of the bar, slightly right to the center. Unlike the LG S95QR, it doesn't display letters but only uses LED light indicators. You can't see the volume level either, but there are lights that change from green to yellow to red based on the volume's safety for your ears. Since it can be difficult to know what settings you're using, you may want to use the app for a bit more insight. While there's voice feedback for the settings and presets, there's some delay present, whether you're using the controls or the app. The voice feedback can also lower the audio level while you change controls, which can be annoying.

The bar has touch-sensitive controls located on the top surface. You can turn the bar on and off, as well as switch inputs, adjust the volume, and activate Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi pairing. When it comes to voice prompts, the physical controls are faster to respond compared to the controls on the remote. You can also use the LG Soundbar app to access these controls and additional settings. You can see the app in action here.

The remote is pretty standard fare for LG soundbars. It offers basic features like volume control and toggling inputs. However, if you want to access additional features like the AI Room Calibration or Auto-Volume modes, you'll need to use the app.

The LG S95TR doesn't have built-in voice assistant support. However, if you have a third-party device like an Amazon Echo or Google Home speaker, you'll be able to connect them to your bar and control it with your voice.