Samsung HW-Q990F

It’s easy to understand why soundbars are so popular. Even the most basic models solve that eternal struggle between improving home entertainment sound quality without wrecking your decor. The Samsung HW-Q990F, though, is anything but basic. In fact, if you care about a true surround sound experience for your movie nights or Dolby Atmos music mixes, the Q990F takes the ‘big sound from small components’ ideal further than any other soundbar in town.

Sound quality

For at least the past handful of years, Samsung’s flagship soundbars have looked pretty much the same. They’ve all comprised a fairly (but not excessively) large main bar with a pair of compact wireless rears and a tall, rather ungainly wireless subwoofer fitted with a substantial side-mounted driver. There’s been the odd tweak to the components’ colour and finish here and the addition of an acoustic lens over the subwoofer driver there - but the core Samsung look has stayed more or less the same. 

For 2025, though, Samsung has decided to ring the hardware changes.The HW-Q990F package swaps that trusty but clunky-looking old upright, single-driver subwoofer design for a much more stylish and compact cubic design with large active drivers on two of its opposing sides. While this new sub fulfils the ‘minimal impact on your decor’ part of the soundbar brief substantially more effectively than its predecessor, the concern has to be that the new sub design might compromise the immense and beautifully balanced sound that’s made Samsung flagship soundbars so popular for the past half-decade.

It is with more trepidation than usual, then, that I set the Q990F to work on a pile of my favourite Dolby Atmos and DTS:X movies - and for a moment or two I feel justified in my concerns, as the new subwoofer’s bass contributions feel slightly baggy and uneven. Fortunately, though, a quick visit to the Samsung ‘SmartThings’ app to activate the system’s automatic sound-management feature soon has things fixed right up. In fact now, with movies at least, the new subwoofer actually sounds better than its less aesthetically appealing predecessor.

Low frequencies sound less directional than those of 2024’s Q990D flagship soundbar system. Bass just seems to magically exist throughout your room, rather than you having any sense of the location of the speaker that’s delivering it. Even better, the new sub’s opposing driver design helps the Q990F system tackle even the most enormous dollops of bass the more bombastic sound mixes throw at it without any hint of distortion, crackling or drop-outs. It takes everything in its stride as if churning out the deepest, darkest, most fundamental elements of a modern action movie soundtrack is the easiest thing in the world. 

The new sub hits frequencies at least as low as those achieved by the previous Samsung soundbar flagship subwoofer design without ever sounding muffled or as if it’s bottoming out, too. And perhaps most importantly of all, once the auto-calibration system’s running, the new sub attaches to the lowest frequencies of the sound coming from the Q990F’s main bar pretty much perfectly, with no sign of a tonal gap or any sense that the subwoofer is operating in its own little separate world.

Having established that the new subwoofer design not only doesn’t harm the Q990F’s sound with film soundtracks but actually improves it, I can get on with explaining why the rest of the system continues Samsung’s seemingly unstoppable run of flagship soundbar glory.

The first thing that hits you is how powerful it is. Each component can hit volumes capable of filling large rooms without any speaker or channel starting to sound harsh, hard or strained. Even better, despite how loud they can get the Q990F’s drivers also have enough power in their locker to project sound effects clear of their bodywork, ensuring that the epic soundstage never lacks impact and is packed with even the finest of audio details - all of which are placed around the soundstage with a precision the vast majority of other soundbars can only dream of.

The precision of its soundstage creation extends literally all around you too, thanks to the wireless rear speakers. These each contain three separate drivers in their startlingly compact forms: one firing forward as normal, another firing out of each speaker’s outer side, and a third firing upwards at a slight forward angle to deliver Dolby Atmos’s overhead channel effects. These up-firing rear speaker channels join above you with two other up-firing drivers positioned in the top of the main soundbar, while the side-firing speakers in the rears meet up with front side-firing drivers in the main soundbar to create a seamless sense of sound down each side of your seated position. The result of the 16 real audio channels working in concert is simply the most complete hemisphere of sound around your seated position for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks that I’ve ever heard from a soundbar.

 If a car overtakes down the left hand side of a surround mix, you hear its sound move seamlessly from front to back on that side, with no hint of a gap in its transition. If a helicopter circles overhead, that’s exactly what its sound does too, again with no holes in the sound’s movement that might break the sense of immersion such fluid soundtrack moments create. There’s really no overstating how effective the seamlessness of the Q990F’s soundstage is in keeping you locked in whatever film or TV show you’re watching. So three-dimensional and substantial is the soundstage it creates, in fact, that you completely forget where the physical speakers are.

For the most part the Q990F builds on Samsung’s new affinity for music that began with 2024’s HW-Q990D. Again the raw power that’s always been a star attraction of Samsung soundbars can also be channeled into crafting genuinely musical toning and staging, even if you’re only listening to a stereo mix in its native two-channel form. Vocals are clean but not clinical, as well as being placed at the heart of the mix without becoming lost within it; left and right steering is precise and emphatic without becoming too extreme or forced. Different layers of sound are delivered with immaculate balance and timing.

This excellent balance and timing mostly applies to the musical contributions from the new subwoofer, too. The only exception involves fast-paced rock tracks - it becomes a bit hard-edged with its low frequencies, as if the drivers can’t quite respond fast enough to retain their usually strikingly smooth sound.

 And the Q990F is as fantastic with Dolby Atmos music mixes as it is with Dolby Atmos movie soundtracks. And finally - and I know this won’t appeal to music purists - the way its processing can ‘remix’ stereo tracks to take advantage of all the system’s channels is the most enjoyable and intelligent such feature I’ve heard from a full surround soundbar to date.

Living with the Samsung HW-Q990F

The fact that the Q990F ships with four components inevitably makes it slightly more of an imposition on your room than most other soundbars. The main bar is slim and narrow enough to fit under most modern TV screens, though, while the rears take up no more space than a typical photo frame - and the new cubic subwoofer manages to look almost glamorous by subwoofer standards.

All four components communicate with each other wirelessly, and my test system makes and retains all these wireless connections without any manual input required. 

The system can be controlled using a sleek, well laid-out remote control, or via a mobile device using Samsung’s latest ‘SmartThings’ app. Or you can control it just by talking to it if you’d rather.

The Q990F’s connections are excellent - particularly in their inclusion of an HDMI loop-through system with two HDMI inputs that’s capable of passing through the 4K/120Hz gaming feeds now available from the latest flagship consoles and PC graphics cards. The HDMIs can also pass through both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ premium HDR formats, plus there’s support for Bluetooth and wi-fi content sharing including integrated Apple Airplay, Spotify, GoogleCast and TIDAL  Connect streaming options.

If you partner the Q990F with a recent Samsung TV, you can send Dolby Atmos soundtracks from the TV to the soundbar wirelessly, while Samsung’s Q-Symphony feature lets the speakers in the soundbar can join forces with those in the TV to create a more detailed soundstage, rather than the soundbar just doing everything by itself. 

Conclusion

Concerns that Samsung radically revamping a key component of its latest flagship soundbar might spoil a long-winning formula are quickly put to bed by the Q990F. In fact, in almost every way the system sounds even better for both movies and music than its already class-leading predecessor.

Test samples

Blade Runner 2049 4K Blu-ray
The massive bass drops and soaring synths of Blade Runner 2049’s Dolby Atmos soundtrack present an epic challenge to any home theatre sound system. The Q990F system, though, makes them sound easy. In fact, they almost feel like they were made to showcase the seemingly impossible frequency range this compact set of speakers is capable of.

‍Sigur Rós Atta
While I know spatial audio music isn’t everyone’s thing, for me the choral elements and soaring ambience of Sigur Rós’s latest album enjoy a whole new level of power and emotion in Dolby Atmos. Especially when delivered by a system as capable of creating a full hemisphere of sound with Atmos tracks as the Q990F soundbar is.

‍The Invisible Man (2020) 4K Blu-ray
Leigh Whannell’s remake of The Invisible Man on 4K Blu-ray delivers a masterclass in how to use Dolby Atmos’s three-dimensional sound to create atmosphere, an eerily accurate sense of space and, best of all, sofa-breakingly potent jump scares.

If you want a soundbar that can deliver a full surround sound experience, the power and precision the Samsung Q990F manages to get from its 16 channels of sound is simply as good as it gets in the soundbar world. It’s a particular no-brainer if you happen to already own, or are intending to buy, a recent Samsung TV able to unlock Samsung-exclusive features such as Q Symphony and wireless Dolby Atmos transmission.

Samsung makes TVs as well as soundbars, so not surprisingly it’s developed a few features for its soundbars that are only unlocked if you partner them with a reasonably high-spec Samsung TV (such as an S95D or Q90D). Q Symphony, for instance, lets a Samsung TV’s speakers join forces with the speakers in the soundbar, and it’s also possible to control the soundbar using a Samsung TV remote. Premium Samsung TVs can even transmit Dolby Atmos sound wirelessly to the Q990F.

The Q990F’s HDMI 2.1 inputs mean you can also run even an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 through the soundbar and still get the best graphics the consoles can output, rather than having to rely on the sometimes laggy eARC route to pass your game sound to the soundbar via your TV.

Finally, you definitely want to attach at least a Blu-ray player, ideally a 4K Blu-ray player, to the soundbar so that you can enjoy its full capabilities, rather than always relying on the compressed form of Dolby Atmos output by streaming services.