Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ariba and I'm Alfred Inge and I'm friend of the show David Katz Mayer so today we wanted to focus on a new crop of smart sound bars coming out including the $400 so nose beam the $300 pulk command bar and there's also the soon to arrive Roku TV wireless speakers for $200 now we already got the price points here but David maybe you could give us like a lay of the land to understand a little bit more about what these sound bars offer is it a good deal what do you think so the first two are actual real smart sound bars meaning to have Alexa built in you can say hey Alexa play blah blah blah and it will just like a regular echo speaker and of course it sounds a lot better so the appeal there is to have a really good sounding you know bar that works with your TV but also accepts Alexa voice commands for music and for a lot of other things so you can do pretty much anything you can Alexa wise with these sound bars that you could with any other Alexa speak and those two you're talking about are the Sonos beam and the pulk command bar now let's get also to the Roku one which seems it's cheaper but it also seems a little bit more limited very limited so it's not technically a smart sound bar at all it's designed to work only with Roku TVs not even Roku streaming sticks but just the actual television with Roku boot own that's built in they're super popular we really like these TVs and of course like all TVs they have crappy sound so it's great you can add these speakers to them it's a simple solution they're Wireless they're stereo most sound bars are a bar these you can actually get some stereo separation from but since they only work with Roku TVs and they're 200 bucks they're very limited I think Roku really missed a trick by not just putting a standard optical input on these things to make them competitive with other sound bars and work with any TV so do these sound bars work like the fire TV cube does where you can also change channels and like adjust like just stuff on your TV with it or is it a little bit different yeah so the sound bar is the the Sonos beam and the pole command bar designed mainly to be sound bars so they're not going to control your other stuff like the Amazon fire TV key which is another a device that selects a power that it works with home entertainment stuff the Sonos beam is really cool because again sonís is a really popular multi-room system it in the future to work with Google assistant and it also works with Apple AirPlay right now which is really cool if you have Apple on your phone and you want to you know play your music multi-room with the system the Polka man bar those sounds better it's cheaper so it's our pick for people that you know aren't into the Apple or CentOS universe and still want good sound and Alexa so this Google home assistant integration that you're talking about that's just gonna come in and update right like I don't have to buy the Google home assistant version nope the the Sonos also knows products is starting to the Sunnis won and now the sun's beam will get Google assistant they say sometime this year which is a unique feature I mean if you know like Alexa and you're in Google's multiverse you can wait around for this update which will add you know hey Google functionality these speakers the other limitation about the roku speakers that i also wanted to get to was the fact that it doesn't have alexa built in directly into the speakers itself from what i understand the voice commands you do from a mic in the remote right yes to a certain extent is that preferable because you get less false positives or so you actually get the voice commands directly and yeah i mean they'll spin it you know that way but really that features been around for years on other devices including the $20 on prime day amazon firetv stick you can talk into that remote to your heart's content the far-field voice recognition of not having to pick up a remote of say the word Alexa out loud is the real feature that is missing from this roku device the ultimate of laziness absolutely gonna have to pick up the room after nowhere you don't even have to own one you don't even have to yeah but it's interesting we hear that the Sonos one kind of doesn't actually went out quite to the pulk so you know you save a hundred bucks yeah it's it's about sound quality and features and again Sonos is great for those but we'd like the sound of the pulp better a lot because it has a wireless subwoofer included and it's cheaper so it's pretty cool nice alright if you want to read more about these stories check us out on SEANET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred Aang and David Koepp my a friend of the show thanks everybody for listening bbbbb check us out at Cena backslash file backslash Alfred - being really great stories it just put out a really cool story is this really gonna be a thing now what do you what are you really gonna just start the ghosting the entire chat like that yeah I would like to commend friend of the show David Katz Meyer for time yeah we made time whether like four minutes well you know Bryan does my voice overs for the for the reviews and I always have to slow down cuz you know it's it's it's actually relaxing with Bryan recording it you know cuz he's chill in there but you know when I when I get amped up and I've got a couple of those peppermint candies in the in the cafeteria I'm just like dude it's it's a four-minute podcast so do you still have those Girl Scout cookies dude that's like January yeah I know but still do you still have yes and they're still perfectly thank you technology I just remembered s'mores ones if you have a hankering you don't finish off the s'mores I completely house those in like two hours less the ones that I had home I finished almost immediately and then I forgot about the ones at my desk so I'm gonna guys a question yes anyway let's get to some questions sure why don't we let's start off with a nice generic broad scope question from Alex and Mitchell and I'm getting into some more specifics because cats get ready I hope you brought like a snack or something cuz they're gonna be here awhile yeah those cookies man Alex Mitchell asks what's the sweet spot for soundbars without Google assistant or any assistant any rough number what's the price point that you think is a safe place to be shopping for price if you don't want smart capabilities in one 1995 yeah you broke your phone that is the Vizio sound bar I can't member the name is like SB 312 SW something like that the SW stands for subwoofer spectacular price to performance ratio I mean that sets the gold standard sir editor's choice right now for budget soundbars and it will make your TV and music sound hundred times better than anything coming out of your TV speakers and it's just a great overall value nice so I found out of the loop on sound bars for a while now just because I don't spend money on anything but what makes us sound bar better than like just actual speakers not actual speakers using or for me I'm also super cheap you mentioned this a little bit on there you just use the speakers in your TV yeah these beakers suck yeah I mean I might as well listen to your phone speaker and blast it super loud there's something wrong with that no you can you can bop around the kitchen too you know Taylor and and it sounds okay on your sound speed on your speaker yeah but like for my TV now when I need it for like better quality I'll just plug it into like some Bluetooth speakers that I have that have an aux port right right right so what makes what like what's the difference with a sound bar well so a Bluetooth speaker with an aux port will sound better than TV speakers as you said so the step up is real good sound no you know it's all just a matter degrees and you know for a hundred twenty bucks you're getting room filling sound and a you know real bass cuz it's got a subwoofer and and especially for music you can tell but even when you're watching a movie or a TV show you can hear this you know rumbling or whatever I mean there's a lot of things about Home Entertainment where the sound is really more important than the video in a lot of ways it really adds immersion some of these guys have you know built-in surround effects and things like that or you can add optional rear speakers if you want to go crazy but that vizio is kind of a baseline for what I would consider good sound you know again you can plug in anything you want and you can get some equivalent of it but I think it's maybe when you a little bit more you know loose with the old wallet it's worth considering especially be watch a lot of TV nice I'd be less cheap if I just got paid more here so alright we'll put into that yeah I mean Rogers watching this show so yes when he's not like packing things in a crazy he's going to come into the chat you'll still be cheap no matter how much money you make I believe that is the truest statement ever spoken on this show hey let's take a question from Eugene or Ella Sony versus Samsung which do you prefer in which context intolerance instead of Samsung I think he gave TVs I'm guessing he means TVs okay first of all totally you can't answer that because it depends on the television and what you're gonna spend right now on CNET I believe the Sony TV is ranked slightly higher than the latest Samsung TV I reviewed so that's one answer but the Samsung does a better picture quality so I could go on and on and on and on they're both pretty good one big difference is that Samsung Smart TV system I think actually works better than the Google powered system built into Sony's right now they're using Android TV and it's pretty pokey you can get Google assistant by talking into your remote control again on these Sony TVs but the Samsung system is just smooth polished works very well and is very slick on the latest model so if that matters to you but picture quality price to performance that kind of stuff it all depends on the models so no answer is that that's what you're saying I am NOT gonna commit to either ass okay Bryan is mad about that no I expected something a little more defining from you as you stand strong by your Roku TV right but there's so many different prices though I it's it's really hard just okay so what do you like better Mercedes or BMW and there's plenty people who are like for me sorry we don't care we can I so anyway it with TVs it's the same exact issue you have a lot of good manufacturers actually fewer than they used to be and there's different price points and different performance if you talk about price for the money neither those guys are very good Vizio and TCL ruled the roost right now for giving you the best picture quality for the money samsung has the best style Sony has some really good about their picture quality as well so yeah it all depends on the model my favorite Sony TV right now is the X 900 F which is a very well priced high performance television you know and Sony's there they're continually coming out with good TVs and Samsung obviously has a 40% worldwide market share so they dominate all TV so you know they have a million different brands and different models out there they can be less a you know affordable for the same quality than a lot of guys out there but they also make some really good high-end TVs so that's a long-winded answer let's take the objectivity out of it stopped being a reviewer for a second what do you buy as a consumer in your home to advocate David Kazmaier as a TV yes it's gonna be tomorrow I would buy an LG OLED and why because that's like well over 2 grand yes okay well because just because I'm rich because I'm fricking loaded first of all second of all I already own an amazingly good television from ten years ago a Panasonic Plasma that I'm very happy with and if I mean again it's all personal if I was gonna upgrade tomorrow if I was the upgrade tomorrow I would buy the LG because I don't want to go down in picture quality and that's my life is you know looking at pictures and you know I'd be super annoyed to have frankly any TV that's lower quality than my Panasonic not saying that all these TVs out there that aren't LG OLED czar lower quality but if I was gonna spend my own money I just go in go all-in and I'd wait till Black Friday right after Black Friday well let's go around the horn real quick then for me personally it's about the profile I'm a not as much of a picture snob as some may be but I like to have my devices in my home very integrated very seamless very re recessed so that's why when they get the gimmicky paper roll out TV we saw at CES I was just like oh my god that I want because I want as few cables as few borders and bezels as possible I just want it to be one seamless kind of future house so that's that's where I'm at if I got a giant race I'd go get a rolly TV but that I'm not even going on and and you'd be three years in the future yeah exactly what about you guys i i've been i the TCL 65 or 55 inch roku TV which David keeps telling me you should absolutely get this twosome you also have very high ratings for the integrated Roku streaming capabilities yeah you know you didn't have very nice things to say specifically about like Android TV but roku seems to do a lot better so I'm probably going to buy that sometime around the holidays because I definitely need a TV upgrade but yes 65 that's an awesome TV for a grand and again you know less than half the price of the of the OLED and really really really good picture it's our current overall best pick right now I actually saw it was like somewhere close to 600 actually for the 55 yeah I felt really oh I'm getting my inches wrong right right yeah the 65 inch I mean don't buy a 55 inch TV Ben come on you're at you're a grown man get yourself a decent size TV if you can't sleep comfortably on it is it really a TV exactly it has to scare you if you can envision the creatures coming out of the TV to attend your live I think 65 inch TV would actually be larger than me there you go what's your answer I would just take your old TVs that you're replacing have three new TVs let's take some more questions from sir enjoy I want to know each one of your thoughts if you would consider a sound bora sound bar for a a piece of theater or b command & Conquer sound versus smart huh I'm not really sure what that means I don't know a throwback video game reference it might be I mean I remember command & Conquer I think he might be making a joke about the command the poke command bars named potentially or maybe he does that was like an auto-fill guy on his phone it says command & Conquer automatically nobody watches this on their phones Club yeah I I would probably be on the market for that like Dumber Vizio 1 because that's a really good price point if I was going to get a sound bar but again I'm probably as cheap as alfred so if i have some money to spend it's probably upgrading my TV and then I'd eventually get to a soundbar some of these other ideas sound really good but at the same time my house is overloaded with echo speakers already so the idea of adding even more echo speakers it gets to a point of redundancy that's not really necessary and confusing you know when there's seven different speakers that they're already there already is one in my living room so like why would I pick why would I like a purchase to do that yeah and and those that they were good with like a fire TV stick or whatever at a command stuff and you can do voice commands and things like that so you don't need to get like the integrated thing yeah get the Sonos just because it's uh it'll have like the home assistant coming to it and my house is a is a Google house is a Google household okay yeah it says it on the doormat it's good they need your money now yeah thank you I actually made a Kickstarter I'm probably gonna make that now that GoFundMe yeah David what's your thoughts on the poke magnify mini isn't one of the best in the lower budget end yeah we really like that speaker so that is it's funny because I think they're gonna lower the price now the command bars out that thing is now 250 which you know it's on the command bar is only $50 more and includes a subwoofer but the magnify mania is a little guy and it's got chromecast built in so if you're like Alfred and you have a Google home this thing will work with chromecast audio devices to have like multi room music throughout your house controlled on your phone which works really well so we would still really like that speaker doesn't sound as good as the as the pull command bar again no subwoofer and a smaller size but it's still a great Buy and I I would be really surprised they didn't drop the price on that thing it's it's too expensive 250 I see $1.99 or maybe 150 on there so all these smart sound bars are they like would they not work if you didn't have Wi-Fi like to do their primary function so if my wife I went out like would it still be able to play music from my TV if it was like plugged into it that's a big negatory yeah you need Wi-Fi to play oh no no sorry I'm just to play music from your tea yeah yeah well your TV needs why fighting to get oh my god what a feat what if you put a tape in the VCR there you go no like these things don't have yellow inputs okay can't connect because I got I got a a Google home like alarm clock like a few months ago really and when my Wi-Fi goes out it can't display the time due and it's like you definitely don't need the internet for that like that's a noxious we so so yeah that like the Polka man bar has HDMI in it so if your TV's outputting an audio signal independent of Y v and yeah it'll work it's the same thing with the Sonos beam as well they all have a physical connection except for the Roku speakers which are just wireless but it's not Wi-Fi from your router it's a Wi-Fi connection from the TV to the speaker's that'll still was a Bluetooth or a Wi-Fi no they use Wi-Fi their remotes are Wi-Fi too so I mean it's six of one half dozen the other works the same way but they've considered Wi-Fi a little more that's extremely high ratings yeah so but it again it doesn't depend on your home's Wi-Fi it's just a local ad hoc network between the speaker and the TV isn't Wireless supposed to make things easier this seems like we're going a little backwards on this well it has a lot to do with the fact that like Wi-Fi is just being utilized in so many new types of devices that if your Wi-Fi goes out as Alfred is saying more of your stuff stops working which can be pretty frustrating find that like it can't use Google home when the Wi-Fi is out that makes sense but like for to not be able to like show me the time you know what that's absurd like there's no reason why it should do that it's a silly goose and for the record I give zero condiment to anybody the best advice I can give you don't ever give out for the aux cable what are you talking about yeah it's a silly goose it's not obvious I'm done with this week hey a few more questions before you wrap it up code or to code or Antonio I'm sorry if I put your names why isn't anybody talking about the burnin and the LG OLED models nobody's being honest a consumer well cold-read fee Cadore antonio Ghidorah Tonio dread butcher we actually have an extensive article on OLED TV burnin I'll tell you why I would spend my $2,000 on it it's because I don't leave a static logo on the screen for 48 hours or you know two weeks why well you know if I did it would be that logo right back there yeah if I had any logo to leave on the screen to be 359 logo which burned into an OLED would probably pretty fetching David Katz my friend of the show but the issue there is that OLED TVs do have more of a propensity if you have static image on the screen for a long time to burn in meaning have that image not be removable - regardless of what you watch then an LCD based TV so I'm willing to take that risk because the picture quality is that much better and from anecdotal and everything that I know about the technology and including some tests that know the publication did that are really good it seems like you got it really fricking destroy these you got to do it on purpose you got it or let's say okay here my father-in-law Fox News it's in the lower left hand corner all day all night right I he bought an OLED TV so we'll see he's a real life test case that has but he watches a lot of other stuff too so my point is if you're like the local bar for example you have ESPN playing constantly or the TVs downstairs here seen it you know what those probably shouldn't be LEDs but that's not a normal consumer use and you know Vernon is not covered by warranty there's plenty of things if you go to youtube and look there's people maybe you know looking right now there are a lot of videos of people with burned and stuff for I don't know how they got there and again it's not cover by warranty so it is a risk and it's more of a risk with an OLED TV than an LCD TV all that said it's a small risk as so far and the TVs have been around for a while at first so LEDs were like twenty thirteen day or more they got more potential for burnin than the newer ones the newer ones have some really cool anti burnin technology like screen savers you can actually run like these wipes for you know overnight or for a week if you want that they try to get rid of it so you know all of that is another thing to consider is phones samsung in particular has had OLED screens for years and they are very rarely get burnin we have last year with the Google pixel to that the pixel to excel that guy had some burnin issues on the OLED screen and that was basically a new LG OLED technology and you know it looks like they you know had some real problems with it with a phone and that's just it was the the notification bar the numbers are the little buttons on the bottom that stuff is static and it stays on the screen for a long time so you know but Samsung phones generally don't have that and then there are plenty of people who have reported burnin on their phones so you know it is more of an issue with OLED than with LCD even apple with the iPhone 10 acknowledges that burnin is more of an issue and they even mention it as something not covered by warranty that that can happen with the you know certain use cases so again long answer but I'm not too worried about it I was even gonna ask about the use case but you went right down in that road before I could even get there because by nature using a phone the screens going to be less Sadek there's a lot more going on changing constantly checking different apps then a TV when you are watching a lot of the same things over and over again the watermarks etc well except the clock is a notification bar so that's becoming less common with these edge to edge screens and going fullscreen and some of the bars go away a lot of the time depending on what app you're using yep yep yeah it's it's it is all about the static image again if I when I buy an OLED TV I'm gonna I'm gonna be just as careful that wasn't my plasma meaning I'm not gonna leave it on for weeks but I play hella video games all the time with HUDs and things like that I watch a crap ton of sports with scores that are on for hours at a time in the same part of the screen that stuff is not gonna hurt your TV as long as you don't leave it on again for a really long time a really really bright can exacerbate it a little bit but at the end of the day it's about these static images and and limit and I think that's a normal thing that people are kind of used to with screen savers and things like that already almost out of time like I said everybody wants to talk to cats I want to give a special mention to Joe Johnson in the chat who says you look like The Three Stooges dumb dumber and dumbest and I just want to say that my feelings are severely hurt that I was left out of this what am I the Shemp of this organization not cool sir enjoy says you covered so no she covered poke no love for Samsung the H WMS 650 and the H WM s 750 sound bars are incredible I'd say the best in the market David have you tried the Sony sound bars no that there is a think we reviewed their first Atmos on bar the high-end Samsung I'm not sure the model number but we really liked it you know again it just depends on the model a lot of Samsung sound bars look really cool because they're designed to go with their TVs which already look really cool so that's a big factor too so yeah I'm sorry Noah one more question before we call it a day this is more of a theater theoretical question something more philosophical which sound bar would be used best in a case of self-defense hmm I'm gonna have to go with the magnify mini looks like basically it's a fat little Club you can really chemically so nose beam is that thing isn't happy it's a baseball yeah you could really like you could poke somebody with it that's true well you know you have got or you could take out a you could take out a zombie what about the subwoofer if you just draw out how is that not a part of your reviews when when we're like to look at gadgets like in a self defense situation like we give this a 0 out of 5 in the event of zombie apocalypse how easily could this kill at least 5 zombies rushing at you it depends on how good you are with a bow you know it I I feel like we can do that nice video with that and then treat it like really really seriously yeah exactly that's like not no joke in the dystopian future that we all live in currently oh yeah I would I would I would club somebody with any of them actually I mean if you don't have a club near your television a sound bar is a great substitute you pull or the television a bigger the better you could take this Samsung your Bowie you're both so filled with Ray the poster TV and roll it up hmm and then use that a little floppy I say hold on like you know old school 65 inch plasma just like I just stated Roku sticks here invader I'm like they're like daggers I'm pretty sure our bosses aren't gonna love the new platform of Cena's which device is best to bludgeon with we don't have a weapons review so I should sleep in laptops Dan just show me these they're like blades basically just like writing the jugular with them taking a weird turn that's the end of the week and on that note we are out of time but there's so many great questions trickling in I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of them let's try to do let's do this add something that you don't even like working yeah this doesn't count but there's more from in Sanjay and Ricky B and mark dybul and a peck had some really awesome questions coming in hit us up on Twitter we'll try to address more stuff there leave more questions down below and we'll try to pocket them for future episodes but we're out of time for the week and we'll be back on Monday with more episodes probably not with cats this time around unfortunately but well I gotta start making this like a regular thing we'll have Pat Moore friend Oh show mm-hmm okay where do I even look okay the 3:59 is available on itunes tuna and stitcher feedburner google play music google podcasts Amazon echo what am I missing see Netcom cnet.com everybody cats friend of the show thank you very much for joining this wraps up the week we'll see you all very soon and have a lovely weekend bye everybody damnit you you