AMBEO Soundbar Plus

Overview

AMBEO Soundbar Plus is the mid-size Sennheiser soundbar announced in September 2022 (model SB02M). It is 1051 mm wide, 77 mm high and 121 mm deep (including feet), weighs about 6.3 kg and can be wall-mounted.

Sennheiser lists nine drivers, nine class D amplifiers and 400 W RMS of total power: two 4-inch woofers and seven 2-inch aluminium-cone full-range drivers (on the front, sides and top). Four built-in far-field microphones handle room calibration and voice control.

The TV connects over HDMI eARC. Two HDMI inputs, an optical input, a stereo RCA analog input, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 are also on board, plus a subwoofer pre-out. Over the network it supports AirPlay 2, Chromecast built-in (Google Cast), Spotify Connect and TIDAL Connect. Amazon Alexa is built in; Google Assistant works through a separate Google-enabled device, not the soundbar's microphones. The box includes a premium high-speed HDMI cable, a remote control with its battery, the power cable and the guides.

You control it with the buttons on the bar, the included remote, or the Sennheiser Smart Control app for iOS and Android; a web interface is also available.

What the specs mean

• 7.1.4 speaker setup: seven main channels, one subwoofer channel and four height channels. Sennheiser says its AMBEO virtualization, developed with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, positions seven virtual speakers around you and four overhead from the single bar. Sennheiser says it also upmixes stereo content.
• HDMI eARC: the enhanced Audio Return Channel sends the TV's sound to the soundbar over one HDMI cable, including high-bitrate formats such as Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos and uncompressed multichannel audio.
• HDMI passthrough: a console or streaming box can plug into one of the two HDMI inputs; the bar passes up to 4K at 60 Hz with Dolby Vision through to the TV, with HDCP 2.2 copy protection.
• Audio formats: Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital, DTS:X, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS 96/24, DTS-ES, DTS, MPEG-H 3D Audio, Sony 360 Reality Audio, DSD, LPCM 2ch and multichannel PCM.
• Room correction: Sennheiser's self-calibration uses the built-in microphones to measure the room's acoustics and adapt the sound to it.
• Expandability: the AMBEO Sub connects wirelessly, and Sennheiser says up to four subwoofers can be connected and calibrated individually.