Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Mini Soundbar Review

As its name suggests, the Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Mini is a smaller version of other bars from the manufacturer like the Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus. It has a simple all-black design with a concave top, giving it a unique look.

There are two woofers built into the bar itself. You can connect up to four dedicated subwoofers if you purchase them separately from the manufacturer.

The Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Mini fits between the legs of most 65" TV stands. It isn't very tall, so it doesn't block your TV screen unless your TV sits flush on the table.

You can mount the bar to the wall, though you'll have to purchase the mounting accessory from the manufacturer separately. It's compatible with this soundbar as well as the Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus.

The Sennheiser AMBEO Mini has great build quality. Overall, it has a good, solid build. It's mostly made of plastic, and the speakers are covered in a tight mesh to protect the drivers inside. Rubber feet on the bottom of the bar hold it in place. You can see the IR receiver on the side here.

• Remote
• Power cable (6.3 ft / 1.9 m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.5 m)
• Manuals

The Sennheiser AMBEO Mini has a decent stereo frequency response. It offers a pretty neutral sound, especially in the mids, where most voices and lead instruments are reproduced. Like most standalone bars, it lacks low bass, so you don't notice as much thump and rumble in tracks like EDM and hip-hop. If you want a more weighty, low-end response without a separate subwoofer, check out the Klipsch Flexus Core 200. We tested the bar on its default Adaptive preset, which automatically analyzes the type of content you're listening to switch the bar to the relevant preset (so when you watch movies, for example, it switches automatically to the Movie preset.) You can see how it compares to the other preset modes and our target or reference response here.

It's also worth noting that while the manufacturer advertises this bar as a 7.1.4 setup, we can see from the exploded view here that the bar is a 4.1 setup in practice. This is consistent with our subjective impressions of the bar, too. The manufacturer likely advertises the bar in this way because of its sound processing technology called AMBEO Virtualization, which is meant to mimic additional speakers in the space around you.

This soundbar doesn't have traditional bass and treble adjustments, but in the app, you find a 4-band EQ to help customize its sound. If you prefer a more neutral sound with stereo content, we recommend setting the Foundation to +5dB and the Low-Mid to +2dB.

The Sennheiser AMBEO Mini has a fair soundstage performance. The soundstage is perceived to be about as wide as the bar itself, and at times, it extends a tiny bit further. It's a bit disappointing that it doesn't do more, especially considering the bar has side-firing drivers and competing products like the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) perform better. That said, focus is still good, so it's easy to pinpoint sound effects to exact locations in the soundstage.

This bar gets loud enough to fill larger and more open rooms with sound. However, as you push it to max volume, there's quite a bit of compression, especially in the bass range.

This soundbar lacks a discrete center channel to improve vocal clarity in the mix. Instead, it uses its left and right stereo channels to simulate a phantom center. The frequency response on this channel is still quite even, so dialogue is reproduced with clarity and detail.

Side-firing drivers built into the bar itself are used to simulate a phantom surround with 5.1 content like Dolby Digital. It's not as life-like as what you get with discrete surrounds. The channels' frequency response is rather uneven, so sound effects aren't reproduced as accurately.

This soundbar uses its side-firing and front-firing drivers to simulate height in the space around you when you listen to content like Dolby Atmos. Its AMBEO Virtualization sound processing feature is meant to create the illusion of additional speakers in the space around you, too. The frequency response on these channels is rather uneven, though, meaning that sound effects aren't as accurately reproduced.

Additionally, we take a subjective evaluation of the bar's soundstage performance with Atmos content. Overall, it does improve the breadth of sound in all directions, especially horizontally. Details are clear, though it lacks a lot of rumble in the bass range. Unfortunately, it doesn't bring a lot of height to the soundstage, especially compared to other setups with up-firing drivers. For example, in the opening scene of the movie Gravity (2013), you don't get the sense that space expands all above your head. Instead, it seems more concentrated in the space in front of you.

The Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Mini has a decent selection of sound enhancement features. The 4-band EQ in the app lets you customize its sound to your liking, or you can opt for one of its preset modes, like Adaptive, Music, Movie, News, Neutral, or Sports. The Adaptive preset is designed to automatically analyze the content you watch and adjust to the relevant preset, which is cool. There's even a room correction tool to optimize the bar's sound based on the unique acoustics of your listening space. If you add a separate subwoofer, you can adjust the subwoofer level, too.

You can connect the bar to your TV over HDMI. There's also a USB port, but it doesn't seem to allow for audio playback, so it's likely only for service updates or charging devices like a smartphone. Without a Full HDMI In, though, you can't use this bar as a hub between different devices like a TV and a gaming console, and it's worth considering a bar like the Sony BRAVIA Theater Bar 8 if passthrough is important for you.

The bar supports lots of audio formats, including common 5.1 surround sound like Dolby Digital and DTS. It can even playback lossless and object-based formats like Dolby Atmos.

This soundbar has relatively low audio latency over an ARC connection with common audio formats like Dolby Digital. The audio you hear is largely in sync with the visuals on screen, making it more than suitable for watching movies and videos. You can manually adjust any delay with the Sennheiser Smart Control app, which is a nice touch. Note that we couldn't test the bar's performance with PCM 2.0 or PCM 5.1 content due to an issue with our Murideo testing device, which made it impossible for us to gather data for these audio streams. The bar can still play back PCM content, so you shouldn't run into any issues with real-life use.

It's easy to wirelessly stream audio to the bar over lots of different platforms.

While there's no display, a light bar on the top of the bar indicates the bar's status. It shows if a specific codec like Atmos is playing on the bar and when AMBEO Virtualization is activated.

A few buttons on top of the bar let you control its most basic settings. You can adjust the volume and hold down both volume buttons at once to activate the room correction tool. Plus, you can change the source, mute the microphone, and activate Bluetooth pairing. The multifunction button lets you play/pause music and skip to different tracks, too. If you set up Alexa, the playback controls are disabled, and the multifunction button activates the voice assistant instead.

The bar comes with a remote. You can also use the Sennheiser Smart Control app to adjust its settings from your mobile devices.

Alexa is built into the bar. You can also use Google Assistant, but you need to connect a third-party Google Assistant device to the bar to use it.