Groov-e Soundbar 75 Review

Design

• Simple looks
• Can be wall-mounted

The Soundbar 75 looks much like Groov-e’s other soundbars. It won’t win any fashion awards, but it’s not in the least bit interested in doing so.

There’s a front-facing grey grille, and a glossy black/reflective surface that’s prone to scratches or smudgy fingerprints if you’re careless moving it about. Connections are around the back, and on the front is an LED display that’s bright and visible from a decent distance. If it’s too distracting, holding the EQ button can turn it off completely.

It can be wall-mounted (the kit is included with the soundbar), and if you manage to lose the remote control, there are buttons on the right-hand side for power, volume and Bluetooth pairing.

Features

• Optical input
• EQ modes
• Stereo support

There’s no HDMI for this soundbar, so connections consist of optical, RCA, USB-A, and AUX (3.5mm). The use of optical makes this TV a partner for older, non-HDMI models, and the size of the soundbar itself (50cm) would be suited to TVs around 40 inches and less. An optical cable is included in the packaging.

The Groov-e Soundbar offers 75W of power (hence the name), but around 30W RMS is likely what you’d get (that’s the average power output).

As the Groov-e relies on an optical connection, a slight downside is that you can’t use your TV remote (that’s only possible with HDMI CEC), so you’ll have to keep track of both your TV and soundbar remotes.

With the remote, you can also adjust the sound settings – there’s E1, E2 and E3 to choose from, which are Music, Movie, and Voice (the soundbar does not make figuring this out particularly easy). There’s not much difference between the modes aside from the sound’s size, which is larger with E1 and E3, but E2 sounds better with dialogue. You can also customise bass and treble.

Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity (SBC) is provided to connect a mobile device to the Soundbar 75, and it only plays audio in stereo 2.0. There’s no room to connect any audio speakers like a subwoofer to the Groov-e.

Sound Quality

• Punchy bass
• Dialogue can sound slightly muffled

Often, cheaper soundbars sound tinny, harsh, too crisp and lean, and can be severely deficient in bass. That’s not the case with the Groov-e Soundbar 75.

It’s an improvement on the Amazon Ember 2-Series’ built-in speakers when watching One Piece on Netflix. Bass is clear and punchy, the soundstage sounds bigger and ‘fuller’ in describing the highs down to the lows.

It’s not always the clearest with voices, but the dialogue sounds natural enough, rather than straining to be overly crisp or bassy, as can happen with the balance on less expensive soundbars. The Groov-e finds a decent balance across a range of TV series and films, though if there’s one area for improvement, it’s the slight unintelligibility of some dialogue.

Watching Citadel S2 on Prime Video and raising the volume shows that it can, when pushed, get close to sounding a bit shrill and sharp. A sound that’s a little bright at max volume (level 32) so my preference is to bring it down to 25. Yours may vary, but I wouldn’t stray away from the mid-20s.

Again, dialogue can sound a little rough in places – not hard or sibilant – just not the best in terms of definition. Nevertheless, the Groov-e delivers some excitement and dynamism with the action set-pieces of Citadel, though that’s not an invitation to watch the series if you haven’t done so already.

Switching to series three of The Capture on BBC iPlayer and dialogue sounds clear and natural, which speaks to the slightly inconsistent tone the Groov-e takes with dialogue. Native stereo content seems to sound best through the 2.0 channels of the soundbar.

With a Blu-ray of Avatar, the Groov-e doesn’t deliver a particularly big soundstage until the volume is raised, and even doing so doesn’t mean that it’s the widest soundstage. It’s also not very loud with Blu-rays or external sources, which I’m not sure if it’s the soundbar or the TV it’s connected to.

But what we’re looking for here is an improvement over the Amazon Ember TV’s sound, which isn’t too bad itself, and what the Soundbar 75 delivers is a bigger focus on dialogue (though not always the clearest), can reach a higher ceiling in terms of loudness, and offers more energy. There’s a limit to how deep it can go with bass, but detail levels are solid enough without necessarily standing out.

With music, the Soundbar 75 is not too shabby a performer. Despite having only SBC Bluetooth, it sounds clear, smooth, slightly warm and decently balanced.

It’s punchy rather than forceful with low frequencies, not showing much depth with bass, but voices and treble are clear. I listened to it in its music mode (EQ1), with the other two modes adding a bit more weight to the bass and midrange but not sounding as clear.

Should you buy it?