YAS-109

Overview

The YAS-109 is a Yamaha soundbar from 2019 with Amazon Alexa built in. It is 890 mm wide, 53 mm high and 131 mm deep, and Yamaha lists a weight of 7.5 lbs (about 3.4 kg). It comes in black. It can sit in front of the TV or hang on the wall from its keyholes without a bracket, and Yamaha says a built-in gyroscope optimizes the sound. Yamaha lists it as discontinued.

Yamaha lists two 2-1/8-inch front drivers, two 1-inch dome tweeters and two 3-inch built-in subwoofer drivers, with 120 W of total output power (30 W x 2 for the front channels, 60 W for the subwoofers).

The TV connects over HDMI ARC or optical. The bar also has an HDMI input, a subwoofer output, Bluetooth, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and a wired network connection. Over the network it plays Spotify Connect and Amazon Music, and music from PCs and NAS drives. Alexa controls the bar, plays music and can group it with other Alexa devices for multi-room audio; a mute feature turns Alexa off. Yamaha lists Clear Voice, Bass Extension and the surround modes Music, TV program, Movie, Sports and Game.

You control the bar with the buttons on the unit, the included remote, the TV remote over HDMI CEC, Alexa voice commands, or the Sound Bar Controller app for iOS and Android. The box contains the remote with batteries, the power cable, an optical cable, wall mount spacers, a wall mount template and the manuals.

What the specs mean

• 2.0 speaker setup: two main channels (left and right) with no separate subwoofer. The bass comes from the subwoofer drivers built into the bar.
• HDMI ARC, not eARC: the Audio Return Channel sends the TV's sound to the soundbar over the HDMI cable. HDMI.org describes eARC as the newer version that adds high-bitrate formats such as Dolby TrueHD; the YAS-109 lists HDMI ARC.
• Audio formats: Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Digital Surround. DTS Virtual:X is Yamaha's listed virtual 3D surround processing, which creates surround and height effects from the bar alone.
• HDMI passthrough (4K60, HDR10 and HLG): a streaming box or console connects to the bar's HDMI input, and the bar passes the picture on to the TV in up to 4K at 50/60 Hz with HDR10 or HLG. Yamaha lists HDCP 2.3.
• No room correction: the YAS-109 has no automatic room calibration.
• Not expandable: Yamaha lists no wireless subwoofer or wireless surround speakers for the YAS-109.