Majority Bowfell Halo Review

Design

• Compact
• Front-firing sub port
• Wired satellite speakers

Considering the price, it’s no surprise that the Bowfell Halo is rather nondescript when it comes to design. The main soundbar is compact – similar in size and shape to LG’s Éclair soundbar from a few years back. It’s a neat and tidy looking system.

The subwoofer is not too big either – slim and standing upright, this is a system conceived to take up as little space as possible. The surround speakers are small and circular in shape, connecting to one another via a cable (the main surround powers the other, meaning only one power cable is needed). This is a system for a small room.

You’ve got controls on the main soundbar for volume, source selection, and power (there’s a remote with those functions and more), plus the main bar has a display that’s bright though not large enough to read all the letters at once. The subwoofer has forward-facing port so ideally it can be placed wherever (though closer to the main bar for best bass integration).

The main bar, subwoofer and satellites all connect to each other via Bluetooth. It’s slightly tricky (at least I found) to get the speakers to link up. The instructions aren’t the clearest, nor are they on the page the manual insists they are.

Features

• Bluetooth 5.3
• Four EQ modes
• No DTS support

The Bowfell Halo is short on features. There’s no Wi-Fi but there is Bluetooth 5.3 (with SBC support). There is HDMI eARC despite the Majority website mentioning HDMI ARC instead.

The latter calls into question whether this is a ‘proper’ Dolby Atmos sound system. The logo is on the soundbar, so it must be, but there are no upfiring speakers (as far as I can tell), and confusingly the Bowfell Halo refers to itself as a 5.1 system, a channel count that lacks the immersive height channels.

The connections can be found in a recessed area in the main bar with an aux input, USB and optical output as the other connections.

There’s no info on the speaker set-up but there’s 300W of power running through the Halo’s speakers. Otherwise we’re left short on information.

There are four EQ modes but Majority doesn’t make it easy to figure out what’s what. I’ve sussed out that EQ1 is Music (surely Movie first?), EQ2 is Movie, EQ3 is News and EQ4 is Sports. And there’s not a massive difference between the sound of either of them.

Sound Quality

• Spacious
• Bass could be stronger
• Good dialogue clarity

Ransacking my film collection and running through various titles, it’s clear to hear what the Bowfell Halo is and is not.

Firstly, it’s not really a Dolby Atmos system. I can’t hear any sound in the height channels above the TV or pushed out from the speakers.

Secondly, it likes Dolby Audio but not much else. Watching Tenet in DTS, no sound came through the speaker.

There were a few gremlins to note as well. For a short time it wouldn’t play any audio from a Panasonic UB820 4K player but a Sony PS5 was fine. I couldn’t track down whether the problem lay with the Majority system or the Sony A80L.

Now onto the sound, and from the off the Bowfell Halo can sound unbalanced with bass. Watching Industry on iPlayer, male voices were especially bassy with some noticeable distortion. I had placed the subwoofer behind the soundbar but a move to its side seemed to solve the boomy sense of balance with voices.

That said, there was still some boominess to the low frequencies but clarity of dialogue did improve even if with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Predator: Badlands, there was some mild distortion.

The Bowfell Halo is solid in terms of overall clarity and detail. It sounds natural with dialogue, and activity in the rears is decent, filling the information behind the viewer, though the surrounds are more active (or just louder) in tying the front and rears together. It handles sounds panning across the soundstage relatively well, and handover from the front and rears (and vice versa) is present too.

I tested in a bigger room and despite the 300W of power, the Majority never felt it truly filled the space. The bubble of immersive sound wasn’t present, especially without any sense of height to the sound. This is a sound system where I found it sounds better with native 5.1 content than it does with Dolby Atmos.

A watch of F1: The Movie and the Majority offers a punchy, clean bass performance but it’s not the biggest. Tonally it sounds crisp and while all the speakers seem engaged for a spacious soundstage, I wouldn’t describe it as the most exciting performance.

With Dune (4K Blu-ray), the bass lacks depth and extension. The Movie preset is EQ2 in case anyone feels there’s some bass missing but activating that and the bass was still lacking.

There’s not much dynamism or intensity the Majority produces – in fact it sounds as if it needs more power and energy to hit the notes that a film like Dune demands.

I decided to rev the bass settings up in the scene where the Atreides family leaves Caladan but the result is a flat, indescribable vibration that constantly hums throughout the sequence. For all the 300W of power at its disposal, it’s not confident in using it.

With music over a Bluetooth connection, the Bowfell Halo sounds warm (the opposite of its TV tuning) and it’s ok to listen but not the clearest or most defined with vocals or instruments with the Music EQ turned on.

In fact, the Movie EQ makes music sound a little bigger, louder and defined than the Music EQ does, but bass is still a little light. It’s an ok performance, but like with its TV performance it can often sound on the mild side.

Should you buy it?