There are a number of speakerbars making their way into the news lately, with products that are already available and those coming in the next month or two. One of these is BlitzWolf’s new 36-inch stereo soundbar (model BW-SDB1), one that is available now, and we have one sitting right here, so that we can tear into it to see if it’s worth spending your hard-earned money on.
You might be thinking that you have never heard of this company before. If so, don’t feel bad, as this is a new name to us as well. Thankfully, there is nothing we like to see more than good competition on the market, and this means finding new and exciting brands we have never heard of. Even better, we are going to be keeping our eyes on this one.
Their BW-SDB1 soundbar, as mentioned, is a 36-inch bar. There doesn’t seem to be any additional options just yet, but I’m sure you’ll see something in the future as they expand. It is available in just black (like most soundbars), and sports your typical rectangular design. There is a decent amount of weight to it, and the build quality is exactly what you’d hope for in a product like this. Truly feeling like you just spent $100 or more when you pick it up and observe its physical qualities, it doesn’t feel like it is going to disappoint you any when you power it up (but we’ll see).
Material-wise, the shell of the speaker is constructed out of plastic, with mesh grill both on front and on top. The sides are designed to look similar to the grills as well, but only in design as they are solid plastic. The plastic sections feature a glossy look while the grills are a flat black. This helps to give it a little presence in the room, while still maintaining a small profile.
All of your connection (inputs) are on the back of the speaker, dead center of the unit. Inputs are typical, with both optical and coaxial, as well as HDMI (ARC) for your digital options. There is also an aux input for a typical 3.5mm analog cable. It does come with a stereo RCA to 3.5mm adapter cable just for this, as well as an optical cable. There is no HDMI in the box, so you’re on your own on that one–and few people seem to make use of the coaxial option anymore thanks to HDMI becoming such a standard.
There is a USB port on the back where you can indeed slide a thumb drive into with a bunch of music on it. Switching it over from the remote to USB, you’d simply use the next, previous and play/pause buttons to control it all with.
Remote
The remote is quite simple. A small handful of buttons to get you started with, mostly having to do with your input selection. Beyond that you have volume, track control, mute, EQ and power–that’s it! It’s small in size, similar to remote that come with a lot of Android boxes, or a Roku, and quite light.
You can only control volume using the remote as the speaker doesn’t support learning from other devices, however if you had a universal remote that supports manual learning, you can simply point the two remotes together and learn its code.
Performance
On to the important stuff! How about what it sounds like? With all new brands, are expectations were kind of neutral. We knew that this could easily go really bad. Thanks to all of the copycat companies out there that just can’t seem to figure it out, it’s hard to expect if a new name is going to fall into that group or create something of its own and surprise us with something nice.
In this given situation, it seems we got the surprise. Blitzwolf really seems to know how to build a speaker. A perfect way of setting an impression on a bunch of audio nuts like us. Inside, it has six full range speakers and 2 diaphragms, totally 60 watts of power.
We threw a lot content at this to see if we can get it to disappoint us any, and we found it quite difficult to do. The BW-SDB1 soundbar is on the level of most of your major brands in stores, and in some cases, better.
First thing we came to notice was the shear volume you can get out of this speaker. It is average in size at less than 40-inches, but it doesn’t hold bad on sound. It can get pretty loud without distorting, allowing it to work out in just about any size of living room (at least in situations where you’re not looking for surround). If it ran smaller than the width of your TV, you’d never notice performance-wise.
The highs are crisp and clear, perfect for dialogue while watching TV and movies. There is also a lot of performance in your mids, with a decent amount of bass. You won’t get the performance of a sub out of this of course, but just enough to add something noticeable enough in the mix to earn a smile. This also means music sounds pretty spiffy on this as well. It honestly reminds me of the speakers on an old boxy CRT JVC TV I had years ago. It had a pair of external speakers that hung (attached) from the sides that really gave it presence, and kind of gave you a left, right and center effect before surround was even properly a thing. This soundbar won’t give you three channels (it is only 2.0), but it will give you a presence you might not expect at first. It makes for a real improvement on your typical flat screen TV’s speakers.
There is an option on the remote (as mentioned) for switching EQ modes. It offers Music, News, Sports, and Movie modes. Music mode is like enabling party mode, Movie is for movies and TV, while News is a bit flat, and Sports seems to carry with it some ambient noise to it, which ‘can’ give you more of a live feel.
It is the length of a 40-inch TV, but really fits well with any TV within the 60-inches or under range. You can obviously do better within the 60-inch range, and especially larger, but it will still try to keep up nicely. We found that it worked best both audibly and aesthetically with the 40 to 50-inch range. Of course, it’s easy to assume they might roll out other sizes in the future to better accommodate these larger sizes with–not to mention adding features like wireless rear and/or a wired or wireless sub output capability.
That last part is a big one as it would be nice to have an option to include a sub (let it be a wireless one designed by them, or any other using a wired connection). Some of your more entry-level soundbars tend to be missing this option. I could say the same for this, but it’s hard to call this one “entry-level”. It’s more like a mid-level soundbar with near entry-level features.
Inputs
The optical, coaxial and analog inputs all operate as you’d expect. The HDMI connection makes use of your TV’s HDMI input that supports ARC (audio return channel), thus even though you are not on that input on the TV, you are still getting audio from whatever the TV is playing. This of course requires your TV to support ARC. Most moden models do by default now, and typically only offer one input that features ARC support (and they will typically have “ARC” listed on the back of the TV, next to that input).
The USB port (as mentioned) is for inserting a thumb drive loaded with MP3s. At first, we tried a drive with a bunch of music organized by folders. The HDMI doesn’t spit out any video from the soundbar, so there is no on-screen menus of any kind. We attempted to hit play, and made use of the next/previous buttons to hopefully move between folders, and couldn’t get anything to play in the end. We then dropped all of the files into the root directly (no folders) of the drive, and it started playing within just a few seconds of inserting it into the back. Not only that, but it was loud and demanding, making for quite the listening experience. So although you “may” only be able to play music off of a drive with all of the music grouped into the root directly (we might have been doing something wrong), it at least sounds great when it does get to playing.
Bluetooth performs just as well as the physical inputs, and has a fantastic range to it. With the distance we covered, I can confidently say that your average two story house won’t drive you out of range, unless you have bricks, metal or concrete in your walls. Stucco, drywall and wood? No problem. You more than likely won’t find yourself going out of range until you go outside to talk to your neighbors.
Display/Mounting
This model is specifically designed to lay flat on a surface, like an entertainment center or a shelf. It lacks any native support for mounting. This is unfortunate since it’s a blast mounting a TV to the wall when you have a soundbar. It really helps when it comes to minimalistic setups. If you were hard set on mounting it, you will have to start thinking up some solutions of your own to pull it off with–like a thin/long shelf you can throw together with some extra wood laying around (or use a series of thin arm brackets, in which case two or three would do fine). You just have to keep in mind that the power cable sticks out a ways, so there will be some distance between the wall and the front of the unit.
Random Thoughts
It would be nice to have some kind of display on the front to show what volume you are at. Even if it is something as simple as an LED clone of an old LCD display using lights from behind the grill (like the current status light). It’s just something nice to have, and a lot of your entry-level speakers seem to lack this (just a thought).
Our Conclusion
This is a fantastic soundbar solution, especially for $99.99. It may lack some of the features you find in other models, but it doesn’t have any trouble delivering when it comes to presence and volume. It sounds great, and it is a huge upgrade from what your TV has inside. It also has great range when it comes to Bluetooth connectivity. It would be nice to see sub support in future models, and the ability to mount the speaker on the wall. Beyond that, we found that we really enjoyed this speaker, and look forward to pushing its abilities in the future. We can say that we are quite excited to add BlitzWolf to the list of brands we will be keeping an eye on, looking forward to what they do next.
| Buy from Banggood | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $99.99 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
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Specifications:
- Model: BW-SDB1
- Material: Aluminum alloy+ PC
- Dimensions: 4*3.4*1.7
- Weight: 96lbs
- Power Supply: AC 100V – 240V 50 – 60Hz
- Power Consumption: 60W
- Audio Input Sensitivity: 500mV
- Frequency Response: 40Hz – 20KHz
- Impedance: 8 Ohms
- Bluetooth Version: 2
- Transmission Distance: 10 – 15m
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.
