In terms of performance the DM 75 is in a different league to its rivals. It’s powerful, assertive and remarkably refined – all the ingredients for a hugely entertaining listen. Another minor bum note is Surround mode, which does little to enhance your enjoyment, aside from a gentle widening of the soundstage. It’s fine but you lose the directness of Stereo mode. So. When you turn this thing on you will see the source appear in the soundbar's display. If all is well, you will see flash up: 'D.V IN', followed swiftly by 'TV ARC'. This is great. But then you may turn your tv off or decide to watch something using a different hdmi source (like your blu ray player) and when you return you see that TV ARC will no longer display on the soundbar. However, the Voice mode helps by boosting dialogue so you don’t have to crank it up quite as much. Good job, too, as the tonal quality of its dialogue is top-notch. The combination of a solid mid-range, expressive treble and subtle bass depth makes speech sound almost life-like, particularly Joe’s narration. You can place TVs weighing up to 40kg on top, provided the stand fits well within the 545mm by 300mm surface area. If you have a TV over 50in, I’d recommend stepping up to the DM75 or DM100.

However audio quality via Bluetooth streaming is remarkably good through the DM55. It’s a lot better than I was expecting and streaming Deezer from my iPhone sounded great. Conclusion On hdmi 2 on the bar the blu ray player intermittently displays that horrible static image I sent a video of last time or Displays no image at all. The front mesh plays host to a bright blue LED display that disappears when idle. There are no buttons on the unit itself – everything is controlled by a stylish silver remote.Like the DM50 and DM75 before it, the DM100 is an outstanding performer. At first you might struggle to get your head round the sheer scale of the DM100’s sound, which doesn’t seem possible from such a slender unit. Another option not officially supported by Sonos, is to connect all your devices via their optical output to an optical switch. This can be advantageous since some TVs don’t pass through exactly what they are sent. For example they may downsample 5.1 Dolby Digital to stereo. If you only have a Sky box connected to your TV, I’d connect directly from the Sky box to the Playbar to ensure any 5.1 content is played correctly.

If anything, the DM100’s bass reproduction is too powerful. During Looper’s louder moments I found it a tad overpowering, boomy even, but after trimming the bass level to around -2 or -3 it sounded far more cohesive. On the front is a small LED display above a subtle Canton logo. The display only has room for three digits, which feels a little simplistic when dealing with some of the setup menu options but it’s fine otherwise. Thankfully it disappears when idle, leaving you with a blank fascia that doesn’t distract from the screen. Oh yeah some have complaints about the sub not having enough impact when watching anything in Atmos, which I agree isn’t as deep and booming as when watching something in DD 5.1/DTS but that doesn’t really bother me since I live in a semi detached (got to respect the neighbors) it’s decent but don’t expect the whole house to shake! which some people love. A helpful automatic on/off function fires up the unit when it detects a signal on the optical or coaxial inputs and shuts down after 30 seconds if there’s no signal. Simply turn off your TV before going to bed and the soundbase will automatically follow suit. A helpful automatic on/off function fires up the unit when it detects a signal on the optical or coaxial inputs and shuts down after 30 seconds if there’s no signal. That means you need only turn off your TV before going to bed for the soundbase to automatically follow suit.The beauty of having no HDMI ports is that it simplifies the setup process – just run an optical cable between the TV and soundbase and you’re pretty much good to go. I mostly use the iOS app to change settings but for some reason you can’t change the centre channel this can only be changed using the SK10Y remote. If you have th Android app it does have the centre channel setting.