Philips Fidelio B5 vs Creative SoundBlasterX Katana

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.

While the device seems small, it can actually get really loud, without distortion. It uses good quality speakers and external components to maintain this quality. The soundstage is quite good and the subwoofer provides a deep rumble.

As a PC-oriented soundbar, the Katana has an optical input, a USB input for external storage, a micro USB port, and a microphone and headphone port.

To take full advantage of this soundbar's capabilities, when it is connected to a PC via USB, it bypasses the computer's onboard soundcard.

This soundbar has a programmable lighting system called Aurora Reactive, which features 16.8 million colors.

If the soundbar is connected with a USB cable, you can use the downloadable SoundBlaster Connect software to tweak with some sound enhancing settings. You can choose from different presets or manually control the equalizer. The soundbar's RGB lighting is fully controllable via the app, letting you choose between various effects and more than 16 million colors.