It’s not often that soundbars take the limelight at CES, but when it comes to Samsung’s sound bars I expected to see the flagship HW-Q990H wireless surround sound system make an appearance. Not so at CES 2026.
Instead, it was Samsung’s HW-QS90H that was at the centre of its home cinema offering (at least at CES), an all-in-one soundbar that seems very intent on barging the Sonos Arc Ultra out of the way.
An all-in-one soundbar with bass
One thing that’s been lacking about all-in-one soundbar concepts is the lack of bass they can provide. There isn’t enough room within the form factor – which aims to be slim enough to fit under your TV and on your AV furniture – to add a 6.5-inch or 8-inch driver you’d normally see in a subwoofer.
You also need to factor in that a bass driver needs a lot of space to perform within the soundbar’s chassis, and when you’ve got several drivers fitted into a metre wide of soundar, space is at a premium.
Sonos got around this with its Sound Motion technology that flipped the orientation of the driver to produce more bass. Marshall’s Heston 120 is another that delivers a wallop of bass, so the tide is turning in terms of delivering a decent amount of bass from a single-bar. For those who don’t have the room to include a subwoofer, or simply don’t live in a home where having a subwoofer would be prudent, models such as the Samsung HW-QS90H can deliver bass that does more than tickle the floorboards but without causing your walls to crack.
And listening to the Samsung HW-QS90H in person – both at its offices in Suwon City, Korea and at its First Look event in Las Vegas for CES, the bass performance is at a level where it’s good enough without a subwoofer. But the HW-QS90H does commit the same sin as a lot of all-in-one soundbars
No surround speakers
Here’s the thing about immersive soundbars. I’ve said it many times but to call immersive isn’t strictly true. For Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Eclipsa Audio which may make a bigger splash in 2026, true immersion comes with surround speakers. As an all-in-one system, the Samsung HW-QS90H can’t reproduce the effect of sound that comes from all directions, including the side and behind.
Truth be told, there’s only one soundbar I’ve heard that has achieved that sense of immersion, and it’s the Sennheiser Ambeo Max. It’s an absolute beast of soundbar in size and not something that most living rooms would be able to accommodate. But it does sound glorious.
Other all-in-ones are much, much slimmer but it’s the lack of surrounds that, to me at least, makes all-in-one models less enticing.
You can add speakers, if memory serves, the Music Centre speakers can be added to the HW-QS90H but while I don’t know how much this soundbar will costs, it’ll certainly be priced less than the Q990H but I suspect that once you add surround speakers, they’ll be similar priced.
An all-in-one soundbar offers convenience, for sure, but its still missing out on the true potential of immersive audio.
