For Better TV Sound, Add a Bar

And the price is right: $499 is a decent value. Competing sound bars can run double that. So far, so good.

What you don't get: A truly great TV sound experience.

I know I am a tough customer, but these entry-level sound bars have limitations. I will spare you the full geek logic here, but thanks to the idiocy of the television industry, surround sound is not a properly deployed, standards-based technology. Surround-sound quality varies not only by show, but by commercial. And the digital-signal processing these sound bars depend on to create the illusion of a sound behind the viewer struggles with that variability. So, yes, the Z-BASE can produce good sound for a Giants game. But when the Bud Lite ad comes on, watch out. That ad is using a different flavor of surround sound. And it can sound simply awful.

Also, believe it or not, $499 buys a whole heck of a lot of traditional 5.1 surround systems. So much so, that suddenly maybe a little clutter is not such a bad thing.

Bottom line: Clutterbugs -- and significant others -- may rejoice over the idea of a sound bar. And the Z-BASE is a solid value. But sound bars can sound awful as a product class. So be sure they meet your audio needs before investing in one.