Gadgetory

hey I'm Matthew Muscovy a cat CNET and we're gonna take a look at the Yamaha why is 101 soundbar now there are a ton of budget sound bars on the market right now and they can all start to look the same but the Yamaha here is actually worth checking out it's two hundred and fifty dollars and Yamaha made two smart design choices with the why is 101 the first is along the back it has a built-in IR repeater so if your sound bar is blocking your TV's remote sensor the Yamaha actually shoots the signal out the back to your TV now that's a great solution to a problem that a lot of people have with sound bars and it's actually the first product we've seen that has that kind of feature the second smart move is that the Yamaha has a built-in subwoofer instead of a separate sub that cuts down on the clutter even more because even though most sound bars have wireless subs these days you're getting rid of another box in your living room and even without the separate subwoofer the ye-es 101 actually sounds pretty good when you compare it to other budget sound bars we had it stacked right up against the energy power bar which has a separate sub and while the energy did make more bass the Yamaha actually sounded better overall especially on movies and TV shows a budget sound bar is never going to replace a real home theater system but it does make a big difference over the built-in speakers on your TV and for a lot of people that's going to be good enough the main drawback on the Yamaha is connectivity there are only three digital inputs on the back there are no HDMI inputs and no analog audio inputs now you can still use devices that only have HDMI or an analog audio connection but you're gonna have to route everything into your HDTV first so the Yamaha is not going to work if you want it to make a direct connection it also doesn't have any wireless audio streaming features like bluetooth or airplay which are showing up on a lot of sound bars now so if you want to stream music directly from your smartphone or tablet you're gonna need another device to use with the Aloha still those shortcomings are pretty minor and overall the Yamaha ys 101 is one of my top sound bar picks that solid sound quality the hell full remote control signal pass-through and the convenient built-in sub all for 250 bucks which is a pretty great deal I'm Matthew Muscovy AK for CNET and this is the Yamaha YS 101