£4 69
denon.com70 T3 MARCH 2022
Tested
Drivers 6 (2 x 19mm tweeter, 4 x 55mm
full-range, 3 x 50x90mm passive radiator
Connectivity 4K HDMI (1 x eARC), Digital
Optical, USB, Ethernet, 3.5mm jack
input, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 3.0 Dimensions
650x75x120mm Weight 3.5kghe Denon Home 550 has
got a lot of the right
ingredients. It’s compact
and discreet, nicely made,
properly finished and better-specified
than many of its competitors for the
price you pay. But can it knock our
current favourite small-ish soundbar- the Sonos Beam Gen 2 – off its perch?
Let’s kick off with an additional
HDMI socket. Unlike the Sonos Beam
Gen 2, with its single HDMI eARC
T
A stylish, well-built compact sound bar that will power
up your TV audio with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X
Denon Home Soundbar 550
MMM DENON!
in dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and
it’s hard to know how much more
flexibility you could expect.
And that’s before you consider the
HEOS platform developed by Denon
and its Marantz sibling. As well as a
degree of control, the HEOS app allows
you to integrate streaming services,
TuneIn internet radio and local
network-attached storage devices.
No matter how you end up getting
the audio information onboard, oncesocket, the Home 550 adds an HDMI
input – so you don’t have to take up
one of your TV’s HDMI inputs if you
don’t need to. A seemingly obvious
course of action, but not as obvious to
some competing brands it seems.
The HDMI sockets support 4K,
HDR10 and Dolby Vision too. And in
the little recess at the back of the bar,
they are joined by a digital optical
input, an Ethernet socket, a 3.5mm
analogue input and a USB socket. Add