Best for tight budgets, newer TVs
Yamaha SR-C20A
View details
Best dialogue for movie fans
Bose Smart Soundbar 600
View details
Not all TVs have great speakers, and that can seriously hinder your viewing experience. On top of that, sometimes you can barely hear the dialogue in shows or movies, with the volume cranked up only for music and sound effects. If you constantly find yourself adjusting the volume while watching your favorite shows, investing in a soundbar makes sense. There are plenty of other helpful tips and tricks to get better TV sound, but nothing works as well as adding a proper soundbar to your TV. It can seriously improve dialogue clarity, as well as provide more immersive sound and better audio quality overall for everything you watch.
Many soundbars today come with a dedicated speech mode, although some do it better than others. One company that stands out is Zvox. It specializes in dialogue, and most of its products have at least one voice enhancement mode (and some as many as 12). Another brand that has a focus on voice is Polk, with its excellent VoiceAdjust feature. Yamaha makes an affordable soundbar with similar options, too.
A soundbar can cost a lot less than some other home theater systems but can improve your TV’s sound just as much. Whether you’re looking for a budget speaker or something a little more premium, these are the best soundbars for dialogue.
If you’re looking for a soundbar that offers plenty of bass as well as crisp dialogue without using a subwoofer, the Zvox SB500 is a great buy. Even better, the company has added more levels of sound enhancement since I reviewed the SB500, which should make it even easier to dial in the dialogue the way you want it.
The Polk React is a follow-up to the Command Bar — the first soundbar that had Amazon Alexa on board — and it offers an excellent mix of features and performance. Polk’s VoiceAdjust is one of the better dialogue enhancement systems, and it’s put to good use on this speaker.
The Zvox soundbars are great, but they lack HDMI connectivity. The compact Yamaha SR-C20A not only offers the ease of HDMI ARC hookup — which is found on most newer TVs — but also has a dedicated Clear Voice mode to make dialogue a little easier to understand. It’s also the least expensive option on this list.
The Bose Smart Soundbar 600 is a compact Dolby Atmos speaker with dedicated height speakers in a compact soundbar, and its sound quality is top-notch. Especially for dialogue-heavy movies and TV shows. The soundbar also adds features such as multiroom music and the Alexa voice assistant.
