When Sky announced the Soundbox earlier in the year, it generated a surprising amount of interest. Not because this was (and is) the first time Sky has ventured outside its core TV product, but because of who it was partnering with to produce it – and the price.
That firm is Devialet, a French audio company that made its name, not in soundbars, but from its pricey audiophile Phantom wireless speakers that start at around £1,400 and get more expensive from there. The Soundbox benefits from much of this high-end audio expertise and yet it costs less than £300 for Sky subscribers.
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Sky Soundbox review: What you need to know
With the pedigree of Devialet, it’s not hard to see why so many people are excited by the prospect of the Sky Soundbox. This is a speaker Sky is “discounting” from the £799 it'll cost for non-Sky customers to £299 for subscribers, and to an even more reasonable-looking £249 for those with Sky Q multiroom packages, and yet it's a speaker that inherits quite a bit of its audio technology from the pricier Phantom speakers.
Not that it looks like it from the outside, though. Unlike its glitzier, unusual-looking cousin, the Devialet-made Sky Soundbox is a bit of an unassuming black brick. Its footprint is slightly larger than the Sky Q box itself and it's shoebox-tall. It’s wrapped in speaker cloth around the outside, with the Devialet logo adorning the front left-hand corner and the Sky logo is embossed in the centre on the top, but there's no indication there's any special about this speaker at all.
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It is solidly made, though. Underneath is a rubber foot, designed to isolate the speaker from vibrations and to prevent it from sliding around on the top of your AV cabinet, and when you pick it up it's surprisingly heavy.
The only problem I can see from a design point of view is that the box itself is taller than most soundbars, so much so that at the demo Sky had to raise the Samsung TV it was using as part of the demo setup on a plinth. Of course, if you have your TV wall-mounted this won’t be a problem, but if you have it sat on top of an AV cabinet you may well have to pop the Sky Soundbox on a lower shelf.
Sky Soundbox review: Design and features
That’s an odd bit of design because the SoundBox is intended to be positioned and connected exactly like a regular soundbar – in series between your source (Sky Q box) and TV. Around the back in a small cubbyhole, there are two 4K UHD capable HDMI ports to enable this – one input, one output – plus an optical input for hooking up other sources.
That’s all you get in terms of audio-visual connections, though, and to my mind, it’s also a little restrictive. I’d like to have seen at least one extra HDMI input here if only to keep things as uncluttered as possible. Still, the Soundbox does have that optical input, so you can route other sources such as games consoles or Blu-ray players via your TV if need be.
If the Soundbox looks simple from the outside, though, there’s lots going on under the hood. The Soundbox has Bluetooth support so you can play tunes directly through it from your smartphone (there’s no Wi-Fi or multiroom audio support, though), and Sky has implemented a whole bunch of clever automated sound processing techniques as well.
The first of these is AVL (automatic volume level), which adapts the intensity of the sound automatically, dropping the volume subtly when action scenes kick in – a rapid burst of gunfire, for instance – the idea being you don't have to continually reach for the volume control while watching a film. It worked well during the demo, but can't be disabled, so this is probably not a speaker for the purists.
The second is something Sky is calling Q Sound; an automatic EQ mode that senses the content type and adapts the sound profile accordingly. This is enabled via the Sky Q accessibility menu (press the “?” button on the Sky Q remote) and it applies specific profiles when it detects you’re watching football (accentuating crowd noise), F1 (boosting the engine noises), cricket, boxing and movies. For all other content, it falls back to its default mode.
Finally, you get a short selection of the sort of sound profiles many soundbars offer – night mode (reduces bass), kid mode (limits volume – this thing goes seriously loud) and speech enhance – that you can layer over the top of the Q Sound processing.
It's all clever stuff and again seemed effective during the demonstration up to a point. While the football match I was shown sounded more atmospheric with Q Sound enabled, the Formula 1 clip wasn't quite so successful, with the commentators' voices sounding a touch muffled once the processing was enabled.
It is worth noting, too, that although AVL can't be turned off and is applied to all sources, both Q Sound and the audio profiles only work with content delivered via a Sky Q box.
Sky Soundbox review: What does it sound like?
Not that this is anything to be particularly disappointed by because the Soundbox sounds great in its default mode. Behind the scenes are six woofer drivers in what Devialet calls a “push-push” configuration and three full-range drivers, one facing the front and the other two facing rearwards. And this setup delivers the sort of sound pressure I’d more regularly associate with a speaker and subwoofer set.
It’s both detailed and aggressive, digs deep, goes extraordinarily loud and has the sort of even-handed delivery that sounds fantastic with movies and music alike. Despite its size, the Soundbox also presents a pretty wide soundstage, although here we’re talking something more akin to a single soundbar rather than the depth and breadth of a full-on surround sound system. That's mainly thanks to the rear-facing full-range drivers, which fire sound backwards, bouncing it off your walls and furniture.
There are some caveats here, though. Although good, the bass isn’t quite as deep as you’ll get from a dedicated subwoofer. Devialet says it goes all the way down to 35Hz, which is plenty enough to deliver onscreen explosions with scale and power, but when it comes to really deep bass throb and rumble it will likely struggle to reach the depths a subwoofer-equipped system – the excellent Samsung HW-K850, for example – is able to reproduce.
The Soundbox is also only natively compatible with Dolby Digital Plus and not Dolby Atmos, which is odd considering Sky has recently added Atmos to its Premier League football broadcasts.
Sky Soundbox review: Early verdict
So, the Sky Soundbox is a peculiar product. Viewed from some angles, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense. It’s not the most practical size or shape – owners may have to raise their TV or place the speaker on a lower shelf to accommodate it – and from what I’ve heard so far it isn’t the best AV system you can buy for £799. At that price, this isn't a speaker I'd recommend to a non-Sky customer.
On the other hand, if you're a Sky customer it's a much more tempting proposition. For the discounted price of £299 or even better at £249 for Sky multiroom customers, it sounds utterly amazing and looks like it's going to be an absolute steal.
