BlitzWolf soundbar review — a sound upgrade for under $100

A few years after almost everyone upgraded to HD televisions, we began thinking about other ways to upgrade our home theater experiences. The soundbar was the easy answer to that as it enabled a plug-and-play solution to get better sound than the dinky speakers that are in our televisions. Today, the market has countless soundbar options from familiar brands like Samsung and Vizio as well as up-and-coming competitors like TaoTronics and BlitzWolf.

I’ve spent the last few weeks testing out the $100 2.0 60W BlitzWolf soundbar that is looking to make a dent in this space. And it should because it is an affordable and significant upgrade over what you probably have inside your TV — although you can get quite a bit more by spending a bit more as well.

What you’ll like

Rich sound

The No. 1 objective of a soundbar should be to take any audio source and add clarity, volume, and scale to it. The BlitzWolf soundbar easily accomplishes that goal with its six powerful speakers. It almost never struggles to reproduce loud, robust sound.

Character voices sound full and husky. Explosions are stunning without any crackling or distortion. Enemy footsteps are clear and distinct. And even without a dedicated subwoofer, the bass is noticeable and booming.

The BlitzWolf soundbar doesn’t handle space great. Environmental sounds, character voices, and the music tracks often feel bunched up together. This is only noticeable in the most cacophonous of moments, though. In quiet moments, where you have one voice, or a soft soundtrack playing against Foley work, the BlitzWolf is always great.

Relatively compact

At 36 inches long, the BlitzWolf isn’t exactly small, so it’s not going to fit on your desk. But it has a nice sound-to-price ratio that means you’ll get a lot of high-quality audio out of it and yet it should still fit nicely in your entertainment center or mounted to your wall.

It’s not going to fit on your computer desk like an under-monitor soundbar, but it obviously isn’t made for that.

What you won’t like

Minimal inputs and display information

The BlitzWolf soundbar is very light when it comes to input/output ports. It also doesn’t always tell you exactly the information you need to know to properly use it.

The only ports on the back are a USB, an HDMI ARC, an AUX, an optical jack, and an RCA jack. Having an HDMI ARC is nice. The ARC stands for audio return channel, and it means that an ARC-capable TV will return audio to the soundbar even if you’re using a different HDMI port. But I still want a few extra HDMI ports to make it easier to get audio from my devices when using with a non-ARC set.

The info display is also just a series of LED lights on the front and a woman’s voice who tells you which sound setting preset you’re using. The color-coded LEDs are annoying because they take a while to figure out what they refer to. Thankfully, the remote control has dedicated buttons for each input.

Conclusion

The BlitzWolf soundbar is great for $100 especially if you have a TV with an HDMI ARC port. You have dozens of options at this price for soundbars, but the BlitzWolf delivers what you should want unless you’re willing to spend a bit more. If you are willing to spend $150-to-$200, however, you can get a soundbar that sounds as rich and has a dedicated wireless subwoofer. If you absolutely don’t want to spend the extra $50, though, this device sounds great and does just enough bass that you can get by without a sub.

The BlitzWolf soundbar is available now for $100. The company provided a sample unit to GamesBeat for the purpose of this review.