Philips Fidelio B5 vs Sonos Playbar

This Philips soundbar is a stunning performer with an overall clear and balanced sound coming from its high quality speakers. The subwoofer can produce deep, rumbling bass and the highs and mids are well balanced and sound natural.

On each side of the soundbar there are removable speakers that, once detached, can act as rear wireless surround speakers, allowing you to enjoy real surround sound. The speakers can work wirelessly for 8 hours and they take about 2-3 hours to fully recharge. Each of the rear speakers can be used separately as a Bluetooth speaker for music streaming, without having to use the soundbar itself.

The subwoofer has a 6.5-inch downwards firing woofer that can produce frequencies between 20hz and 150hz, allowing for a much wider bass response than many of its competitors.

The soundbar automatically switches between surround and stereo modes, depending on the speakers being detached from the rest of the system or not.

This soundbar has HDMI, optical connection, coaxial, a 3.5mm jack and an RCA input to choose from, so the vast majority of devices can be connected using at least one of these inputs.

Signal processing offers many enhancements including treble and bass control, auto volume level, listening modes, and voice clarification.

With 210W of power (90W just for the subwoofer), its capable enough to use in a large living room.

The system is easy and quick to set up, since the rear speakers and the subwoofer are wireless. You only need two power cords and a signal wire to connect to your TV. The easy-to-use remote lets you easily calibrate everything, as well as change the sound properties, sound modes, sync time and rear volume.

This soundbar comes with preset modes for listening to music or watching movies. There's also a night mode that decreases the overall loudness for when you don’t want to disturb the neighbors.

The Fidelio B5 has a near listening mode where you can place the surround speakers near you and sound will play only from them, disabling the main unit.

Philips provides software updates that can be installed via USB.

The soundbar comes with included wall mounts. The rear speakers are completely wireless and have holes in the back that allows them to be easily hung on the wall.

This unit has a cloth finish that is dust and liquid resistant, with a brushed metal stripe in the center that gives it a premium finish look.

Both the soundbar itself and each detachable speaker can be connected to other devices via Bluetooth. The soundbar supports NFC for easy Bluetooth connection and aptX standard that allows high-bitrate audio streaming using this protocol.

The Fidelio B5 has two HDMI 1.4a inputs that can passthrough signal to the TV, and one HDMI ARC output that can receive sound and remote commands from the TV.

The remote is easy to use and clearly labeled. It has convenient dedicated buttons for each input.

A dimmable front display provides all the necessary information regarding input, sound mode, volume, and sound levels.

It’s possible to automatically calibrate the soundbar, depending on speaker spatial placement, with just the press of a button, on the remote.

The separate rear surround speakers create a full surround cinematic effect that is much better than the virtual surround created from soundbars without rear speakers.

It doesn’t have a central speaker, but it can emulate it pretty well, for clear dialogue and accurate positioning.

This system's combination of nine individually amplified speakers creates a very detailed and clear sound. It has great soundstage and instrument separation, which is quite beneficial for music listeners (and also film watchers too).

This soundbar is wall mountable and has a position sensor to recalibrate the soundbar if the position is changed from horizontal to vertical.

The Sonos supports digital surround signal, like Dolby Digital.

Most people will find this soundbar’s audio output to be sufficient, but if you want to add extra bass or surround sound, it’s possible to do so by adding Sonos speakers. Furthermore, setting them up is easy to do, as the Sonos mobile and PC applications will recognize the new speakers and will automatically recalibrate everything for optimum sound quality.

This soundbar is made for simple use, with a very straightforward setup. It has just one optical input port for sound and two Ethernet ports for network use. All you need to do is connect the optical cable to your TV, an Ethernet cable to your router and install the Sonos Controller app on your smartphone or a PC. The app will help you go through all the necessary steps to pair your TV remote with the system, add additional speakers, sort your music library in the network or connect the soundbar to an existing Sonos multi-room setup.

The Sonos supports Wi-Fi, for music streaming.