Customer Ratings & Reviews

Look. I’m a huge fan of Sennheiser courtesy of family members who are in the music industry. I bought this as a replacement for the Polk Audio Magnifi AX that couldn’t be repaired. First, I have to say that this little thing is a hard hitter with the audio! I didn’t buy the separate subwoofer but won’t be buying it either. I just feel manufacturers release products without fulling testing them. While I understand their idea of not having a dedicated power on/off button on the soundbar or remote, that’s where the major issue stands. Of course you only find out about this issue when you start looking to see if anyone else has a similar issue or if your system is just special. It turns out this is a huge problem not only with this model, but also with Sennheiser AMBEO Plus. Since the soundbar can’t be fully shut off and only goes into eco mode, you’ll have a syncing issue. If at any point your tv is off for a long while, a couple hours to overnight, you’re going to run into this issue. When you turn on your tv, the soundbar will act like it to is waking up and when you’re to watch whatever you’re going to watch, you’ll hear nothing. The work around that I found after a week of owning this soundbar is rather annoying. You’ll need to either disconnect/reconnect the HDMI cable to the soundbar or you can go into the Sennheiser app and restart the soundbar. This is rather annoying and I’m not convinced that this can be fixed via a firmware update. There have been reports of this issue on many forums online dating back over a year. For this reason, I’m going to be returning it. I simply cannot have this $800+ soundbar knowing that I’ll have to restart it or disconnect/reconnect the cable every time I’m going to watch tv. If you don’t see the AMBEO icon turn on (lower right of the soundbar) you’re not going to get sound coming from the soundbar. I can’t seem to upload a video to better showcase what I’m describing.

For the last few years, I’ve been using a small soundbar similar in size to the Ambeo Mini, from another major consumer electronics company. My living room isn’t conducive to a full-blown surround system, but I wanted to get better sound than I was getting, so the Ambeo Mini piqued my interest. Unboxing the Ambeo Mini lets you know that this is a high quality item. Everything is meticulously packaged and protected, which I expected at this price point, but it was still nice to actually get that. Included are the soundbar, remote control, power cable and HDMI cable. Setup is dead simple. My TV supports eARC, so I only had to plug in the power cable and connect to the TV using the eARC port. The Sennheiser Smart Control app is required to connect to your wifi and complete the setup. The most important step handled by the app is to calibrate the soundbar to the acoustics of your room. This is a simple process that is handled by the app, and when it finishes, you’re good to go. The Ambeo mini is about 28 inches long, a little over 4 inches deep and just over 2.5 inches high, making it very unobtrusive sitting in front of your TV. Build quality is excellent, with metal casing and fabric covering the speaker grills. Control buttons are included on top of the unit, and these are touch-sensitive, not physical buttons (I never needed these buttons). There is one eARC HDMI port for connecting to your TV, as well as one USB-A port, but that’s it. Optical sound connection is not supported, and the single HDMI port means you’ll be reliant on all sound coming from the TV if you want it to come out of this soundbar. For me that’s not a problem, but if you were planning to connect to other devices in addition to the TV, you won’t be able to do that. In case you’re wondering, eARC is the latest iteration of the ARC (audio return channel) system. This allows all of the various devices connected to your TV to use the same HDMI connection for audio output, hence the reason there’s only one input port. eARC increases the bandwidth available, allowing you to consume content that includes Dolby Atmos, as well as other audio standards. One nice side benefit that I didn’t have with an optical audio connection is that powering on the TV powers the soundbar. I’m also able to use the TV’s remote to control the output level on the soundbar, which is very convenient. The Ambeo’s remote isn’t necessary unless I want to change the EQ modes that are available. So, how does it sound? The demo mode included with the app really shows off what the Ambeo Mini can do, taking you into the jungle and surrounding you with sounds of wildlife. This is quite impressive. Next, it was time to try it with movies and TV. Obviously, better input results in better output, so I made sure that I tried out the Ambeo Mini with high quality inputs, such as movies and shows that feature Dolby Atmos sound. Movies such as Top Gun: Maverick and shows like Amazon’s The Rings of Power have Dolby Atmos sound and in fact they sounded great on the Ambeo Mini. When you’re playing Dolby Atmos content, the Ambeo indicates this by lighting up the words on the top of the soundbar. Highs are crisp, mid-range sounds full, and even the bass sounds good, but not nearly as deep as it would with a subwoofer. Some reviewers have heavily criticized the weak bass response, but I think it’s actually quite good, especially for its size. After listening for a while with video content, I switched to Bluetooth streaming from my phone. It sounded very good, but I wasn’t blown away. That’s when I switched back to my previous soundbar to compare the sound and was very impressed with the sound output from the Ambeo. Everything was richer and fuller, and sounded like speakers much bigger than they actually were. This reminded me that it’s easy to get used to something and you need to be able to compare to really notice the differences. The Ambeo Mini is not a bargain soundbar. It is priced with other premium competitors, and the main reason for that is the proprietary technology that gives the Ambeo Mini the ability to mimic a 7.1.4 surround setup. This creates a much more immersive experience while watching a movie, without all the extra equipment needed to have a real surround setup. Is the Ambeo as good as the real thing? No, but it provides excellent sound in a small package that you can almost set up without thinking about. I do think the marketing hype about its virtual surround capabilities is a little overblown, and I never really felt like sounds were coming from around and above me. Nonetheless, it is noticeably better than soundbars without this feature, so you’ll ultimately have to decide how much that is worth to you. The Ambeo Mini features several EQ modes, such as movie, music, news, sports, neutral and adaptive, which dynamically chooses the mode based on the input. Movie mode produces an overall rich soundstage that goes with the typical movie experience, while other modes minimize the background sounds to focus on the main sound channel. One feature I especially liked was the voice mode, which emphasizes dialog in movies and TV shows, and it really does do a good job of emphasizing dialog and making it stand out against background music or sound effects. Night mode subdues the bass, allowing you to listen with all the quality but without disturbing your house mates. The Ambeo mode attempts to create a more spatial feel, with sounds seemingly coming from above and behind you. While the effect wasn’t dramatic, I think it’s good enough to leave it on all the time, as the overall sound is noticeably better with it on. In the beginning of this review, I mentioned the lack of multiple inputs. The only issue I found with that is when I used my Blu-ray player. There was a slight mismatch between the audio and people’s lips during dialog, and even though the app allows for some customization in lip-synching, I could never quite get it right. I think that would not have been a problem had I been able to connect the Blu-ray player directly. I’ll continue to tweak this, so maybe I’ll be able to make it better. The Ambeo Mini is a fantastic option for small to mid-size rooms. Sennheiser offers bigger soundbars for bigger spaces, if you need that. I like the “all in one” nature of soundbars and not having to mess with multiple speakers. For that, a dedicated media room is better, but soundbars like the Ambeo Mini are perfect for rooms where you don’t want to dedicate yourself to a full-blown surround setup, but you still want high-quality sound. This was a significant upgrade for me, but I feel that the sticker price is a bit steep for a system that lacks a dedicated subwoofer (which you can buy for another $699). The virtualization features are excellent. Even if they could be a little better, I’m not sure there’s anything else like this on the market.