Devialet Dione Soundbar Review

The Devialet Dione is a soundbar with a unique design. It's mostly made of black plastic, with grey fabric covering the up-firing speakers on top as well as the front and the sides. There's a plastic orb that serves as the center channel, allowing the bar to adapt its acoustics based on whether it's wall-mounted or placed on a piece of furniture.

The Devialet Dione doesn't come with a discrete subwoofer; however, there's a subwoofer integrated into the bar itself.

The Devialet Dione is quite wide, so it doesn't fit between the legs of a 55" TV stand. If you place it flat on a piece of furniture, it isn't tall enough to block your screen. We tested the bar with it placed on two stands to mimic its performance when mounted on a wall, so our measurements represent the bar when it's in a mounted position.

The back of the Devialet Dione has an opening for the inputs as well as the power cable. There are also universal holes beneath the bar that let you mount it to your wall. The bar comes with lugs to attach it to your wall; however, you have to buy the screws and the dowels separately.

The Devialet Dione has a great build quality. Overall, it has a solid feel, with plastic and fabric that seem tight and durable. The center channel 'orb' is also made of plastic and is quite sturdy, so once you position it, you don't have to worry about it moving around. That said, if you brush your fingernails against the plastic top of the bar, it can leave marks behind. You should be able to wipe them away using a cloth, but it's unfortunate for such a premium bar.

• Manuals
• Wall-mounting template
• 2x lugs
• 4x rubber feet
• HDMI cable
• Optical cable
• Power cable

The Devialet Dione has a great stereo frequency response. It comes with a room correction feature, which automatically optimizes audio reproduction based on your room's unique acoustics. With it on, the bar has a bass-heavy sound profile that adds plenty of rumble to the mix. Vocals and lead instruments are still quite clear, though, thanks to the balanced mid and treble ranges. As a result, the bar's suitable for listening to most types of audio content, from vocal-centric TV shows to bass-heavy music genres. We tested the bar with it placed on two stands to mimic its performance when mounted on a wall; however, given that the sound was more clear and pleasant compared to when we placed the bar on the table. You can see the frequency response comparisons for bar in different positions here.

Note: Stereo content plays properly when the bar is set to its 'Music' preset. However, if you set it to 'Movie', it upmixes stereo content into 5.1.2 to play it (Devialet calls this their SPACE Technology). The resulting sound is more muddy, so vocals and lead instruments aren't as clear in the mix. The same issue is evident whether you place the Devialet Dione on your table or you mount it to your wall. It's not the best choice for listening to stereo content like music, but it does offer a more cinematic sound with movies.

Aside from its three EQ presets, there aren't any customization tools available to help you adjust the bar's sound. If you prefer a more neutral sound, you can use the Devialet Dione on its default 'Music' preset.

The Devialet Dione has a decent stereo soundstage. Whether you mount it to the wall or place it on your table, the soundstage is perceived to be about as wide as the bar itself. It has better focus when you place it on the table, meaning that it's easier to place sound effects to specific locations in the soundstage. When it's mounted to your wall, you notice some holes in the soundstage that make it hard to trace sound effects as they move from one position to another. Since the direction of the speakers changes based on how the bar's positioned, sound interacts differently with your room's walls and acoustics, resulting in the change in performance.

The Devialet Dione has decent stereo dynamics. It gets loud enough to fill up larger living rooms with sound, but unfortunately, there's some compression when you push it to max volume. You notice pumping and compression artifacts in your audio as a result, especially in the bass range.

The Devialet Dione has a great stereo total harmonic distortion performance. At normal listening volumes, it falls within good limits, so audio reproduction is clean and pure. While there's a small jump in THD across the range at max volume, it still falls within good limits. Your audio doesn't sound distorted as a result.

The Devialet Dione has a decent center channel performance. It's a 5.1.2 bar, so there's a discrete center channel included, which helps to more clearly reproduce dialogue in the soundstage. It's the unique 'orb' in the center of the bar, so in order to get the best-possible sound quality, you need to manually rotate the orb to the right position, then set the bar's orientation in the Devialet App. The channel's frequency response is quite bass-heavy, so dialogue is somewhat muddy in the mix.

Note: The Devialet Dione seems to have a fuse in place to prevent volume damage, so we had to estimate the max volume using CTA files for the center, surround, and Atmos channels. However, it's really important to note that we only experienced this issue with the sweeps and not with real-life content—so you aren't likely to experience this issue in the real world.

The Devialet Dione has a middling surrounds performance. There are side-firing speakers built into the bar that simulate a phantom surround. However, the resulting sound isn't as clear or as real as the experience with dedicated surround speakers. Sound effects seem like they come from speakers placed in front of you rather than from speakers placed all around you. Unfortunately, you can't add on separate rear speakers to improve its performance.

The Devialet Dione uses up-firing drivers built into the bar to ricochet sound off the ceiling and back down towards you, creating the illusion of height. These channels have a fairly neutral frequency response, but the lack of rumble in the low-bass means that you don't feel the excitement in action-packed scenes like helicopters or explosions coming from above.

Its soundstage with Atmos content offers a fairly immersive listening experience, especially if you mount it to the wall instead of setting it on a table. When it's mounted, you feel more rumble in the bass range, so action-packed scenes seem more clear and real, and you feel the punch in the bass from your couch like you would in a movie theater. The bar can simulate height pretty well, too, and you get the feeling that sound effects are coming from above you and all around you in sync with the action on your screen. The Devialet Dione does a good job for a standalone bar.

The Devialet Dione has a disappointing selection of sound enhancement features. There's a room correction mode that automatically calibrates the bar based on your room's unique acoustics, but otherwise, there isn't much else available. You have three EQ presets: 'Movie', 'Music', and 'Vocals', which doubles as a dialogue enhancement mode. Compared to other premium bars, you don't have a real ability to change its frequency response, which is unusual for its price. There's no remote, either, so aside from a few basic controls on the bar itself, you need to use the Devialet App to access the few features it has.

You can connect the Devialet Dione to your TV using its HDMI or Optical inputs, and both cables are included in the box for easier setup. However, you won't find a Full HDMI In port, so you can't use the bar as a hub between different devices, like your TV and your PC, for high-quality passthrough.

The Devialet Dione supports many of the common audio formats, including Dolby Digital, which is the most frequently-used 5.1 surround sound format on Blu-rays and many streaming platforms. It also supports some lossless and object-based formats, like Dolby Atmos. There's no DTS support, though, and while this format isn't that common on its own, it's often the fallback for higher-quality DTS-HD MA Blu-Rays.

The Devialet Dione supports Dolby Digital via Optical. You're likely to come across this format on most streaming platforms and Blu-rays. However, there's no DTS support.

The Devialet Dione has fairly high latency over its ARC and Optical ports, so you notice a bit of a delay between the audio you hear and the video you see on your screen. It's most noticeable with dialogue-centric content like TV shows, where you have some lip-synching issues. Unfortunately, the app doesn't have any tools to help adjust this issue, but your TV may have some features on hand. Some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, too, so your real-world experience can vary.

The Devialet Dione lets you wirelessly stream audio from your mobile device to the bar over several different formats, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Apple AirPlay 2. The manufacturer says there's Spotify Connect support as well.

There's no display, but the Devialet Dione has a small light that changes color depending on the source. It also flashes when you change the volume. You can change the LED status in the app if you want to turn it off.

There are some touch-sensitive buttons on top of the Devialet Dione to let you control its basic features. You can adjust the volume, play/pause your audio, activate Bluetooth, and mute and unmute the microphone. There's no voice assistant on hand, but these microphones are part of the bar's room correction feature—if you leave it muted, the feature is disabled. Finally, the Devialet Button lets you switch between HDMI and Optical inputs, and you can press it for seven seconds to enter standby mode.

The Devialet App acts as a remote and lets you control all of the bar's settings, including those you can't adjust using the buttons on the bar. For example, you can access room calibration, change the EQ presets, activate Night Mode, and change the bar's position. You can also change the LED status, so if you find the light distracting, you can turn it off. Overall, the app is intuitive and easy to use.

The Devialet Dione has a standby mode, but to activate it, you have to hold down the Devialet button for seven seconds. You have to remember to turn it on manually since it doesn't activate this feature automatically. To wake up the bar, you can press any button. Also, there's HDMI CEC support, so you can use your TV remote to control some of its basic features.