Samsung HW-Q990F

Introduction

Having decided a few years back that a genuine 11.1.4 channel count was plenty for a flagship soundbar, Samsung’s innovations with its annual soundbar refreshes have moved away from adding more channels to focussing on improved driver designs, an acoustic lens over the subwoofer driver, and general audio processing tinkering.

This relatively conservative – but nonetheless very successful – approach changes for the HW-Q990F. 

While it’s channel count remains the same, this 2025 flagship Samsung soundbar brings a radically redesigned subwoofer and new AI-boosted audio processing to the table.

So have these changes made the best soundbars in town even better, or should Samsung have stuck to its tried and tested formula?

Price

The Samsung HW-Q990F costs £1699.99 in the UK, $1999 in the US, $2199 in Canada, $2099 in Australia and €1650 in EU countries.

It is now available across all of those territories, following a staggered global roll out starting at the beginning of April 2025.

Design

• Four component system
• Crisp finish for all components
• New two-driver subwoofer design

As with previous Samsung flagship soundbars, the HW-Q990F is a four-piece system comprising a main bar component, separate subwoofer and two rear speakers.

While its core configuration is the same, it delivers three significant design changes from its Q990D predecessor.

First, it wears a lighter colour scheme, switching from the black tone of its Q990D predecessor to a dark grey. Second, the top edge of the main soundbar sports a horizontal striping effect in place of the more standard fine grille/hard mesh finish.

Lastly, the Q990F features a completely new subwoofer component that switches from the old upright, single-driver design to a cubic shape with active 8-inch drivers on two of the cube’s opposing sides.

The sub’s surprisingly compact new form makes it feel like a less imposing addition to your living room – especially as its smooth finish and rounded edges give it a softer feel than its more angular predecessor. The switch to two opposing drivers has the potential to deliver a smoother, more consistent, less directional bass sound.

The Samsung Q990F’s hefty main bar component with its angled-back (to support front-side channel delivery) ends features a handy LED display on its front edge that provides descriptions of information such as the input selected, the audio format received and so on, rather than just some obscure colour-coded LED light system many soundbars do these days.

The HW-Q990F ships with a slightly different remote control design to the one you got with the Q990D. The new one is longer with a slightly more polished finish, feels more comfortable and balanced to hold, and delivers a slightly more spacious button layout.

Features

• 11.1.4 channel count
• Dolby Atmos and DTS:X playback
• 4K/120Hz and VRR on HDMI pass-through

The main features of the Samsung HW-Q990F are its 11.1.4 channel configuration, support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound formats, and that eye-catching new external subwoofer design. A design, it’s claimed, can hit frequencies as low as 32Hz, and gobbles up 300W of the system’s 756W of total audio power.

The 11.1.4 configuration (via 23 separate drivers) comprises front left, front centre, front right, front side left, front side right, side left, side right, rear side left, rear side right, two standard rear channels, four up-firing channels (two in the main bar, plus one in each rear speaker), and the .1 subwoofer.

The idea behind so many channels is to better reproduce the three-dimensional sound spaces created by the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

The HW-Q990F’s also carries onboard processing that can upmix simple stereo music to take advantage of all the system’s available channels. Though you can choose to stick with pure two-channel sound if you prefer.

The Q990F’s connections pick up where 2024’s Q990D left off by including an HDMI pass-through system capable of handling the 4K/120Hz and variable refresh rates achievable by the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and premium PC graphics cards.

Both the soundbar’s HDMI inputs support the full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, while the HDMI output also supports eARC so that it can be used to receive audio from eARC-capable TVs.

The only other physical connection on the HW-Q990F is an optical digital audio input. There is support for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi audio playback from your network or smart devices.

Streaming services supported include Google Cast, Apple AirPlay, Tidal Connect and Spotify, while supported file formats include MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, ALAC and AIFF.

The HW-Q990F can receive Dolby Atmos soundtracks wirelessly from compatible Samsung TVs, as well as being able to share speaker duties with them (rather than the soundbar just completely overriding the TV speakers) courtesy of Samsung’s Q Symphony feature.

While the HW-Q990F naturally provides the facility to manually balance its many sound channels, it also includes Samsung’s SpaceFit Sound Pro auto calibration system. This can constantly monitor and manage the general soundstage and, thanks to an AI-driven dynamic bass control system, the way low frequencies integrate into the mix.

Personally I found this auto-calibration system left the rears sounding a little too loud, but that took minimal manual intervention to rectify – and other than that, the system works well.

AI also plays a part in the Samsung Q990F’s Adaptive Sound setting, which analyses the incoming sound and calculates the optimal volume, clarity, directionality for that particular content’s audio profile.

The Active Voice Amplifier can listen for increases in ambient noise in a room and automatically increase the volume of dialogue so you can keep hearing what people saying.

The HW-Q990F’s appeal to gamers extends to a Game Pro sound mode that increases the directionality of the multi-channel sound – this makes game environments feel more intense and three dimensional, as well as helping you more accurately place where enemy attacks are coming from.

As with most AV products the Samsung Q990F offers a variety of different ways to control it. The most obvious and probably the most heavily used will be the provided remote control, but you can also tell the soundbar what to do by talking to it, or operating via Samsung’s SmartThings app on your Android or iOS phone or tablet.

This app offers a helpful visual interface, as well as providing access to a couple of features you can’t get to via the remote control.

One last handy feature of the Samsung Q990F is that you’re not limited to using its speakers in just their default surround sound configuration. You can use the rear speakers in a ‘private listening’ mode where all the sound is streamed to them alone.

Or you can group the speakers across different rooms to play the same music from the ‘rears’ in one room that you’re playing on the main soundbar in another.

Sound Quality

• Phenomenal full surround Dolby Atmos staging
• Outstanding combination of detail and power
• Good for music as well as movies

With the main bar and rear speakers of the Samsung Q990F system seemingly unchanged from the Q990D, the big question is whether the surprise introduction of a completely redesigned subwoofer has upset the brand’s usually immaculate combination of soundbar power and balance.

Fortunately, it has not. While the new subwoofer component isn’t a completely unmitigated success, it is on balance even better than its already outstanding predecessor.

For one thing, the depth of bass it can produce is prodigious – as deep as anything I’ve ever heard from a subwoofer that’s part of a soundbar package. There’s no distortion or sense of the sub’s low frequency response bottoming out even during the most extreme movie bass drones or drops either.

On the contrary, it always feels like it’s got more left to give if a soundtrack decided to take its bass to ridiculous levels. 

Having such a powerful and deep foundation instantly gives big action movie soundtracks a sense of heft and sense of scale that’s hard to believe is built upon such a compact and stylish bass speaker.

The smoothness with which all of the subwoofer’s epic bass rolls out across your room is hugely impressive too. There’s no sharpness or gruffness to its tone, and it spreads non-directionally all around your room even more effectively than the bass from the Q990D’s acoustic lens-equipped single-driver subwoofer does.

These improvements are delivered without compromising Samsung’s traditional expertise when it comes to ensuring the subwoofer’s bass attaches seamlessly to the lowest frequencies of the main soundbar.

This means there’s no sense of any gaps anywhere in the soundbar’s massive frequency range, and the subwoofer never draws too much attention to itself. Its presence is powerful, but it only uses it in service to the overall sound.

The other components in the Q990F package work as expected – which when you’re talking about a Samsung flagship sound bar is very good news.

The main bar in particular delivers a fantastic combination of brutal power, phenomenal channel projection, huge impact, stellar detail and uniquely precise staging and effects placement that few other soundbars can match – especially with the new subwoofer interjecting bass so smoothly and cleanly.

Particularly striking compared with other soundbars is how clear and well-placed the height and front side effects are with Atmos tracks. This contributes to a much more compelling sense of 3D sound space in front of you than the vast majority of other soundbars achieve.

There are rivals out there that deliver some of the elements of a really full front soundstage as well as the Samsung Q990F, but putting them all together to deliver the front half of a true three-dimensional movie sound space that’s both as accurate and powerful as it is unique and spectacular.

Particularly striking compared with other soundbars is how clear and well placed the height and front side effects are with Atmos tracks, contributing to a much more compelling sense of 3D sound space in front of you than the vast majority of other soundbars achieve.

The Samsung Q990F doesn’t stop with its front sound stage. Unlike many of even the best Dolby Atmos soundbars, the Q990F ships with a pair of compact but still powerful multi-channel rears.

And the up-firing, side-firing and front-firing drivers in these rears do an exceptional job of extending Dolby Atmos film and music tracks to create a pretty much flawless hemisphere of sound, with no obvious ‘gaps’ that puts you at the heart of the action more effectively than any other soundbar.

Even the tone of the rear speaker drivers feels perfectly in balance with the main bar, despite the rears’ compact size.

It’s not just the seamlessness of the three-dimensional sound space the Samsung Q990F creates around you that impresses so much, either. The way it’s able to adapt the scale of its sound to suit the environment shown in the film or TV show is also outstanding.

The great outdoors feels like the great outdoors, shots in a lift feel like shots in a lift, and everything else in between also enjoys a completely convincing sense of space.

Just as importantly, the sound never feels too far removed from your seating position; you always feel at the heart of the action rather than as if it’s just happening somewhere off in the distance.

Really the only negative thing I can find to say about the Q990F’s film and Dolby Atmos music playback is that while the new subwoofer delivers some palpable improvements over its predecessor, it doesn’t adapt its frequency response quite as effectively to every given soundtrack moment as its predecessor, so that sometimes bass feels a little less ‘tight’.

The improvements to the tone of its sound ensure that this slight reduction in responsiveness never really leaves the subwoofer sounding too exposed.

While Samsung flagship soundbars have long ruled the roost where movie playback is concerned, last year’s HW-Q990D finally delivered a truly outstanding music performance; this mostly continues with the Q990F, despite the new subwoofer design.

The essentially unchanged main bar continues to provide a startling combination of refinement and raw power with straight stereo playback.

It portrays a wide but controlled two-channel experience within which specific track layers and instruments sound beautifully balanced and accurately staged, without that slightly clinical or over-aggressive timbre that used to characterise music playback on Samsung soundbars.

Vocals, in particular, sound perfectly staged but also slightly above the rest of the mix, without either sounding too bright or being dragged down into any sort of mid-range mush.

While purists will always want to stick with the HW-Q990F’s Standard setting for a native stereo performance, Samsung is arguably the best in the business when it comes to upmixing stereo music to take advantage of the package’s full speaker count.

The way the processing figures out what sound elements to send to which speakers at which volumes is remarkably intelligent, creating a full surround mix from the two channel source that’s often so convincing it’s hard to believe you’re not listening to a professionally produced original multi-channel mix.

The new subwoofer continues to impress again with music for the most part, again typically tying itself on to the bottom end of the main bar’s frequency range seamlessly, and often adapting its weight in the mix slightly more effectively than it does with movie soundtracks.

Its timing sometimes feels a touch off, though, and while it’s very good at knowing how to comport itself with regular pop and dance tracks, it can sound a touch forced with guitar-led rock music, and a little too ‘in and out’ with relatively ambient tracks.

Happily, manually adjusting the subwoofer’s relative volume usually solves any issues you might have with a particular album or genre. It would be better if the HW-Q990F’s automated bass management could be a little more adaptive with music, saving you the bother of any manual intervention.

But if any soundbar is good enough to justify a little bit of manual tweaking from time to time, it’s the Samsung HW-Q990F.

Should you buy it?

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