This gaming soundbar gives you Dolby Atmos for little money, but...

In case you can’t guess the name, the Panasonic SoundSlayer is a soundbar for gamers. Especially gamers who may live in cramped spaces but are not satisfied with their TV’s playful speakers or who want to purchase a potentially complicated setup.

Aside from its cheesy name, the whole gamut of the SoundSlayer is that it has three different modes depending on the type of game you’re playing. There is an FPS mode, a dialogue mode and an RPG mode, which were created in collaboration with Square Enix and optimized for Final Fantasy XIV (For other role-playing games, however, it is fine). Games aside, the “big thing” about this teenage soundbar is that it’s compatible with Dolby Atmos and costs just $ 300 ($ 426). That’s not exactly cheap for a 2.1 channel sound system, but it is is much cheaper than the average soundbar with Dolby Atmos. Also, at 17 x 2.04 x 5.25 inches, it should easily fit under most monitors, unless you have so little desk space that you barely have room for a keyboard, let alone a soundbar (too known as me).

Editor’s note: Find out about local rates and availability.

On paper, this seems pretty nifty – especially if your computer is mostly used to consume your media. In practice, there are some quirks with the SoundSlayer that aren’t necessarily deal breakers, but they may make you think twice.

The SoundSlayer is ready for immediate use. When you want to use it with your TV, simply plug the HDMI cables into the desired location, adjust your TV’s audio settings accordingly, and you’re done. It’s much easier than setting up the Sonos Arc, which involves tuning the soundbar to the acoustics of your home, pairing it in a companion app, and creating a Sonos account. The SoundSlayer also has 4K HDR passthrough, which is useful for set-top boxes like Apple TV that only have a single HDMI port.

For connectivity, the SoundSlayer supports optical digital audio, HDMI input / output, HDMI ARC for 4K HDR passthrough and Bluetooth. There is also a USB-A port for updates.

What can I say about the design? It’s a harmless box-shaped black box. It just blends in on my TV console. I would forget it’s there if not the LED indicator lights on the front that you can use to find out what mode the SoundSlayer is in. I know it’s low profile so if your TV has blunt legs and should fit under most monitors again, it won’t interfere with your view.

Foto: Victoria Song / Gizmodo

The SoundSlayer also comes with a small remote control. I hate every fiber of my being. Not only is it easy to lose, but it just simply didn’t work together when tested multiple times. As soon as the soundbar could no longer be switched on or off. Another time the volume controls just didn’t work. It broke the bed one more time when it came to switching between different sound modes which was frustrating because that’s the only way you can do it. The problem usually resolved itself when I turned the soundbar off and on again, but that was annoying. I tried swapping the coin cell battery that came with the remote just in case that was the problem. No It’s possible I have a Wonky remote, but there are at least buttons on the left side of the soundbar for physical power, volume, and input / bluetooth pairing. I just wish there was a toggle button too.

In terms of performance, I’d say the SoundSlayer is somewhere between “incredibly good” and “huh, that’s not too shabby”. It includes a built-in 80W subwoofer and two tweeters in a soundbar that are more than capable of filling a small or medium-sized room. I live in a 550 square foot studio and it was more than enough to submit the whole apartment.

However, whether you like the SoundSlayer will likely depend on your preferences and what you plan to use the soundbar for. If you want it to replace your gaming headphones, it does a great job. Full disclosure, I’m not what they call a “hardcore” gamer, but to test the SoundSlayer I let my husband play both of them for hours Halo 2: Anniversary and Final Fantasy XV.

Without Dolby Atmos, Final Fantasy XV sounded good. Audiophiles wouldn’t like it at all, but it was infinitely better than what it sounded like on my TV speakers. I can’t really understand the point of Final Fantasy XVbut the car these four emo backstreet boy wannabes were driving around in was doing just fine. The bass was pretty good too. Explosions rumbled. in the Halo 2My husband, who went on the bench with his plasma gun, sounded sharper than he did on the Sonos Arc. That’s impressive considering the Sonos Arc sounds pretty good and costs $ 300 ($ 426) more. There was a noticeable improvement after activating Atmos, but here the limitations of the SoundSlayer also became more apparent.

You don’t get that much surround sound even though this is an Atmos compatible soundbar. The Sonos Arc isn’t perfect, especially without satellite speakers, but you get a pretty clear sense of how cars zoom left and right, and when there’s dialogue you can feel a sense of depth and distance depending on where a character is stands. Even without a ceiling speaker, it has speakers pointing upwards do get the feeling that the sound is coming from above. Spatial audio on the SoundSlayer is rather confused. You get the general direction – like a spaceship is flying overhead, or slapping an enemy on the left side of the screen – but there isn’t that Dolby Atmos bubble. Again, there are no upward facing speakers or satellites behind you, but the SoundSlayer is meant to be a single soundbar solution.

Likewise, if you expect to be amazed by the different game modes – don’t be. There are audible differences between each one, but they are subtle. The claims that FPS mode will improve your steps or that RPG mode is more immersive speak for marketing. The music is a little louder in RPG mode. The voices and music are definitive much louder in voice mode for dialog-intensive games. Ambient noise is more noticeable in FPS mode, but everything else sounds flat. For most people, I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference in terms of gameplay. My husband died in gloriole just as often in FPS mode as in the other two – the Master Chief’s groaning was only louder in voice mode.

The same restrictions apply to TV and movies. It’s definitely better than not having a soundbar at all, but I didn’t get that immersive feeling while watching Dolby Atmos movies. I plugged the SoundSlayer into my Apple TV and watched all of the spaceship battle scenes in both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The last Jedi via Disney +. The Dolby Atmos icon was present on the Disney + app. The audio settings on the Apple TV confirmed that I was indeed Atmos-enabled. So I double checked and triple checked so I did knows I got Atmos. And yet my directional sound was nowhere to be heard. Spaceships appeared on the screen, but I didn’t really hear it overhead. At the Battle of Crait, I saw the seedy rebels in rickety fighters zooming from the right side of my screen to the left across the salt fields. I could sort of hear that, but again there wasn’t much depth or sense of 3D space. Explosions when Finn and Rey escaped Jakku didn’t sound quite right – both muffled and slightly distorted. These are busy scenes with a lot going on. Quieter scenes, like when Rey spotted through ruins at the beginning of the year Force Awakenssounded clearer. The dialog was decently clear too, especially if you enabled the Clear dialog setting, but otherwise? It was okay, not mind blowing.

Again, this could be due to the lack of satellite speakers. But the Sonos Arc is also meant to be a standalone Atmos soundbar, and while it didn’t quite work properly, it did a much better job of creating an immersive environment. (To be fair, it has 11 speakers to the three SoundSlayer.)

The sound stage of the SoundSlayer performed better with music. While I found the spatial audio to be somewhat poor for both movies and games, the soundstage when listening to my music was decent. It was very easy to tell the different instruments apart and where they were during Gershwins Rhapsodie in Blauand it handled the switch between quiet and loud without distortion. However, I wasn’t a huge fan of the way the SoundSlayer emphasized highs over mids and lows – Jurassic ParkThe theme song sounded clear, but not as majestic and soaring as it should. Mitskis Your best american girl sounded thinner than a rock song should be. The SoundSlayer with bass was fine here too. The extremely busy bass lines in Thundercat’s Uh Uh and It’s Strange (feat. K. Flay) by Louis the Child sounded clean – but I didn’t really feel like it was as rich as it could have been.

Getting Dolby Atmos for $ 300 ($ 426) is hard to beat, especially if you don’t want to spend more than $ 500 ($ 710) and don’t need a separate subwoofer for space reasons. For this reason, the SoundSlayer is best suited for your desk or in smaller rooms. If all you want to do is replace your gaming headset without sacrificing audio quality, this is more than enough. I also found that sitting near the speaker rather than on a couch a few feet away is also easier to forgive the cluttered directional audio. But its limitations are one of the main reasons I wouldn’t choose this living room soundbar for the movie night. As for the single Dolby Atmos soundbar, the Sonos Arc is better suited to give you an immersive experience and play music, although it costs an additional $ 300 ($ 426). The only reason to make the Panasonic SoundSlayer a cheaper 2.1 or 5.1 channel game is that you can get Dolby Atmos for an above average price. If you’re not into Atmos at all, or want a premium Atmos experience, this is probably not the soundbar for you.

Read me

• A small standalone Dolby Atmos soundbar valued at $ 300 ($ 426) … for gamers!
• Definitely a step further than your TV’s speakers, but there are better sounding speakers out there.
• While you get a feel for directional sound, it’s messed up for busier action scenes.
• Supports optical digital audio, HDMI input / output, 4K HDR passthrough and Bluetooth.