Upgrade your Christmas viewing experience with the Denon Home Sound Bar 550

If, like us, you’re planning on watching a veritable sleigh-load of movies this Christmas, don’t let your TV’s weedy built-in speakers spoil the party. Adding the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 to your setup will reap huge benefits, raise your viewing experience to dizzying new heights and truly make the most of the festive fare streaming to your screen.

Read on to discover four reasons the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 makes the perfect early Christmas present (to yourself).

1. Powerful, immersive sound

As flat-screen TVs have become thinner, the quality of their internal speakers has struggled to keep up with the advances in image quality. The reason? There’s just not enough room in those skinny frames to deliver the power, definition and dynamism great TV shows, movies and games demand.

Adding external enhancement is a must if you want to elevate your viewing experience, and the Denon Home 550 is absolutely built for this task. Despite its compact size (more on that below), it touts a powerful 4-channel amplifier and a driver array consisting of two soft dome tweeters, four full-range drivers and three passive radiators.

This unique arrangement delivers exceptionally immersive 3D surround sound, filling your room with crisp dialogue and explosive effects. It’s compatible with Dolby Atmos and DTS:X 3D out of the box, supplying you with a truly riveting audio performance to match the on-screen action.

2. It’s a joy to live with

At just 3.5kg and with a footprint of 650 x 75 x 120mm, the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 is conveniently compact and lightweight – even by sound bar standards. As well as saving space, it’s also something of a looker, with a clean and minimalist design that fits any style of room (check out that natty fabric wrap-around).

Setup is beautifully simple to boot: the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 connects to your TV via HDMI cable (supplied in the box) and to a power outlet – and that’s it. With built-in Wi-Fi, it’s easy to hook it up to your home network, and the companion HEOS app allows you to take control of everything – including adjustments to audio settings – through your smartphone.

The sound bar comes with most of the leading TV remote control codes built-in, so chances are you can use your main TV remote right away too. In addition, Denon includes a small dedicated remote control in the box, and the bar itself has a panel of touch controls on top for manually tweaking volume, hitting play/pause, skipping or restarting songs and muting Alexa.

Oh yes, that reminds us: it comes with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant built-in, so you can even control it with your voice.

3. It’s great for music too

Want some seasonal sounds to accompany your New Year’s Eve party? Already putting the final touches to the perfect Christmas dinner playlist? That’s great because the Denon Home 550 is designed for music playback too.

Through the HEOS app, it’s compatible with streaming services including Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music and Deezer, and you can also play music wirelessly from your computer, phone or tablet via Bluetooth or Apple AirPlay 2.

It’s built for discerning lovers of Hi-Res audio too, with support for studio-quality 192kHz/24-bit FLAC, WAV, ALAC and DSD files via its Ethernet or USB connections.

4. It can be upgraded down the line – no cables required

One of the best parts about the Denon Home 550 is its expandability. While it’s designed to work alone, it can also function as part of a wider wireless speaker system.

It’s compatible with the rest of the Denon Home range, as well as the Denon HEOS range, so you can expand and enhance your speaker setup by adding the Denon Home 150, 250 or 350 or any pair of Denon HEOS speakers as dedicated wireless rear channels, and/or a wireless Denon Home subwoofer to boost bass response.

Because these additional speakers are wireless, all you need to worry about is plugging them into a power outlet – just like the Denon Home 550, they’re low on cable clutter and big on sound quality.

So there you have it: all the reasons a Denon Home Sound Bar 550 is the perfect way to take your Christmas movie experience from 6/10 to 10/10. If you’ve been good this year, stick it on your list – or just go ahead and grab one yourself in the run-up to the big day. Your ears will thank you.