For a soundbar costing £1300, it's pretty poor and is likely to be returned.
Out of the box experience
Let's start with what the experience is like when you unbox. It's decently packaged and everything looks like it's really well made. The system is supposed to be pre-paired, no luck there and needed to manually pair; not the last time you'll be doing that either, but more on that later.
Room adjustment
For the most expensive system on the market, you'd think there'd be more useful features. There is no room adjustment here, this would be so easy to undertake with the Smart Things app. Sonos does a great job of it and was expecting something similar, especially given this is an Atmos system where the sound is reflected from the surfaces of the room. Very basic volume and EQ adjustments don't help much here either.
Only 2 HDMI inputs
Given the biggest feature is the individual speakers for Atmos, only the very latest Samsung TVs support it. This means you have to connect Blu Ray players and other devices such as Apple TV direct to the soundbar. You only get 2 HMDIs... I f you then want to use the smart TV apps, you have to use WiFi or optical in. You end up switching between sources on the soundbar and multiple remotes which is simply just frustrating.
While it's great marketing to say "hey, our latest panels support it natively", forking out £3k just to get Atmos is crazy talk. Thinking about the upgrade experience for current customers upping the inputs to 4 would have made life much easier; especially now that Netflix and Amazon Prime TV are on Apple TV.
Wireless
After using the system now for 3 days, every time it powers up the rears and sub have become unpaired; talk about annoying.
Updates
Stuck saying there's an update available, yet it runs through the update process on the Smart Things app then says there's no update. 1007.9 126R is the reported version.
Incredibly poor rear speakers
The 13w speakers are underwhelming to the extreme. In order to get any sort of balance, you have to reduce the main soundbar volume substantially and max out the rears. Even then, they still don't perform.
I listened to a Sony product that absolutely blew the socks of the Q90R, even though it was using audio trickery to achieve the Atmos effect rather than individual speakers. The Sony product is half the price...
Unless there's imminent good news, this setup will be packed up and returned this week. Pretty awful for a premium product. Going back to my HW model.
