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LG strikes a strong balance between capability and affordability with its S70TY soundbar. This $349.99, 3.1.1-channel sound system is one of the least expensive we’ve tested with an upward-firing driver for spatial audio, and it comes with a beefy wireless subwoofer. Its audio balance is excellent and it handles movies and music with aplomb. It doesn’t have many extra features like Wi-Fi connectivity, and its single height channel limits just how precise its sound field can be, but it’s an excellent package for the price, earning our Editors’ Choice award for midrange soundbars.
Design: Small and Unassuming
The S70TY is a simple, blocky 2.5-by-37.4-by-4.5-inch (HWD) black bar of sharp angles, softened only slightly by a raised contour that bisects the front panel horizontally. That panel is an edge-to-edge metal speaker grille holding the three front-firing drivers for left, right, and center channels. The top and sides are completely flat matte black plastic, interrupted only by a small circular speaker grille in the middle of the top panel for the upward-firing driver. A small row of touch-sensitive controls sits above the grille, with icons for power, input, volume up/down, and Bluetooth pairing barely visible in dark gray against the black chassis.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Two deep recesses on the back of the soundbar hold the speaker’s wired connections. The left recess has an HDMI input, HDMI output, optical audio input, and a USB port, and the right recess has a port for the power cable. Four small holes on the bottom of the soundbar enable wall-mounting with the included brackets, and small rubber feet keep it from shaking if you prefer to use it on a table.
The front-firing subwoofer measures 14.8 by 7.9 by 11.2 inches and looks like a plain black box with a fabric grille cloth covering the front panel. The back holds a bass port, a connector for the subwoofer’s power cable, and a wireless pairing button.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
With a long, skinny, slightly curved profile of mostly glossy black plastic, the S70TY’s remote looks very similar to the more button-laden Magic Remote included with LG’s smart TVs. Its most prominent feature is a circular navigation pad near the middle, which is an odd control for a soundbar with no on-screen interface and a mere three indicator LEDs behind the front grille instead of an alphanumeric display. The pad lets you adjust settings by following the soundbar’s voice prompts, and it also skips tracks forward or backward when playing music over Bluetooth. The two buttons below the pad are for Sound Tuning (Bass, Center, Mid, Subwoofer, and Treble levels) and Settings (Auto Power, Display, Night Time, and Surround mode toggles).
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
The controls you’ll more commonly use are the volume rocker and mute/input buttons (also oddly a rocker rather than two physically separate buttons) near the top. They’re joined by power, EQ preset, Bluetooth pairing, and signal information buttons.
App and Connectivity
LG’s Soundbar app focuses only on the S70TY, while the ThinQ app is for all of LG’s smart home devices, but both offer the same controls for the S70TY on your Android phone or iPhone. Either app is necessary to update the soundbar’s firmware and offers sliders for tweaking the aforementioned Sound Tuning settings. You also get a drop-down menu for switching between the soundbar’s eight EQ presets, but you don’t get a custom EQ beyond the three-band bass/treble/mid-tone sliders.
(Credit: LG/PCMag)
Regardless of which you use, the app controls the S70TY through a Bluetooth connection because the soundbar doesn’t have any Wi-Fi features. You can’t stream higher-than-Bluetooth-quality audio from your phone to the soundbar over Apple AirPlay or Google Cast, and there’s no voice assistant like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. If you want features like those, you’ll have to pay more for a speaker like the $499 Bose Smart Soundbar, which lacks a subwoofer.
The LG S70TY is a 3.1.1-channel soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X spatial audio. The system is expandable to 5.1.1 channels with the $199.99 LG SPT8-S wireless rear speakers. It is intended to be connected to a TV over HDMI eARC, and optical audio is also available, though without spatial audio.
Performance: Booming, Balanced Sound
Thanks to its subwoofer, the S70TY can put out impressive bass. Streaming our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the sub started to noticeably shake the walls at around 80% volume, with no sign of distortion. It’s clearly much more powerful than the smaller sub you get with the $169.99 Vizio 2.1 Soundbar. Oddly, the audio first seemed tamped down when I played the track at high quality via the YouTube Music app on a connected Chromecast With Google TV, but streaming from my TV’s built-in Google TV interface or over Bluetooth from my phone immediately brought the thunder. This seems to be an odd quirk of my current combination of devices, the app, and the soundbar, and not indicative of a consistent problem.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Yes’ “Roundabout” sounds excellent on the soundbar. The opening acoustic guitar plucks have plenty of low-frequency resonance and strong string texture in the highs, with a slight drop-off in the highest frequencies that doesn’t detract from the detail. When the track properly kicks in, every element of the busy mix gets equal attention and can be clearly heard, including the bassline, drums, guitar, and vocals. Though balanced, the audio is slightly sculpted in the high-mids and highs, with a frequency response clearly tuned to specifically bring out dialogue more than delicate treble.
Without side-firing drivers or rear satellites, the S70TY’s spatial audio imaging capabilities are limited but still benefit from its single height channel. In the opening chase scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the sounds of rubble flying get a good sense of verticality, expanding the sound more than stereo or left-right-center channels alone can do. Those three horizontal channels still produce a very large sound field, giving a good impression of space even without giving a very accurate impression of where individual sound effects are coming from within that space. It’s still definitely a spatial audio soundscape and very immersive, considering the soundbar’s price.
(Credit: Will Greenwald)
Verdict: A Strong Soundbar for Spatial Audio and Subwoofer Power
The LG S70TY is a great way to get the benefits of spatial audio without spending a lot of money. It’s one of the cheapest soundbars available with a height channel, and its subwoofer doesn’t skimp on the thunder. You don’t get rear satellites, and the single height channel limits just how precise its spatial audio imaging can be, but for $350, it’s a very compelling package if you want a more immersive viewing experience than your TV alone can provide. It’s the best soundbar we’ve tested in this midrange price bracket, earning it our Editors’ Choice award.
The Bottom Line
The LG S70TY is one of the most affordable soundbars available with a height channel for spatial audio, and it offers all-around excellent sound quality and booming bass.
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About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
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