Aego Sound3ar Review: A Sub £200 Soundbar That Really Delivers

Overview

The Aego Sound3ar is small in size but big on performance. While it might not fill larger spaces, this soundbar and subwoofer system will really deliver if you have a medium size room and are looking to jump up a level on your TV audio. This is an excellent solution that won’t break the bank.

It’s the latest iteration of Acoustic Energy’s incredibly popular Aego range, and it certainly adds to the distinguished heritage of this line of products.

Design

The soundbar comes in at a relatively small 70 x 500 x 70mm. This means that it can sit quite neatly under your TV. The Aego Sound3ar does not have wireless functionality, but if you are planning to have the soundbar sit right under your TV, we found you were able to hide the wires pretty easily.

We’re big fans of the looks of the sound bar. The aluminium case gives a stark contrast to the black mesh of the grill that is quite visually striking.

The sub-woofer is less impressive, being just a standard black box, but you will probably be sticking this out of the line of sight. Due to it not having wireless functionality, you can’t place it too far away – but, as discussed in the performance section, this system is really designed for medium sized rooms.  All the controls are located on the subwoofer which has a row of LEDs that show the selected connection and light up when you change the volume.

If you sit the bar on a flat surface, it angles up at 30 degrees so you get maximum sound projection. It also has a couple of holes around the back in case you want to wall mount it.

The build quality is perfectly solid for both the bar and the subwoofer. The only slight snag is the remote – it looks a bit cheap when compared to the rest of the system.

Sound Performance

£200, nice looks, and only 50cm long – the catch must be the sound, right? Well, the good news is that the Aego Sound3ar is no slouch in the sound department.

The midrange is fantastic, with a detailed sound that was able to clearly distinguish between background rainfall and foreground dialogue in our tests. If we were being really picky, we would point out that the foreground is maybe a little overrepresented (oops we just did), but this is really a minor niggle, especially in this price bracket.

Explosions blast out from the system with sufficient enough bang to make you really take notice, but we did find it lacked the last little bit of power that makes you really jump out of your seat. At least it won’t have you constantly worrying that you are annoying the neighbours.

However, a point to note is that its small size means that it cannot project too widely so will struggle in larger rooms, but is more than adequate for a medium size room.

We also found that it handles music really well, with precise detail and a bass that is strong without being overpowering. Built in Bluetooth means you can easily stream songs from your phone to the system.

Overall, it might lack the fully immersive quality and expansive soundstage that you get with the very top end models, but it will add a new level of immediacy, excitement and scale to your viewing experience.

Connections

Setup is fairly simple.

All the connections and the power are housed in the subwoofer, so it will need to be reasonably close to your TV and a power supply (again showing they probably had medium sized rooms in mind for this product).  Round the back, it has a 3.5mm aux cable connection and a digital optical connection. Both types of wire are supplied and can be used to connect up to your TV.

The soundbar itself needs to be wired to the subwoofer with the RCA analogue cable provided, but that is its only connection, which reduces the messy look in front of the TV.

The system does not hook up with your TV remote, which means you will always have to use the one provided by Acoustic Energy.

As mentioned above you can stream music to the speakers via Bluetooth.

Verdict