 For as long as there have been audio files with high fidelity multi-speaker surround setups, there have been scrubs who are fully satisfied with the speakers that came built into their TVs. But then, in the early 2000s, a curious thing happened. A middle class appeared. The scrubs started buying soundbars. The first soundbar came about in 1998, and since then they've been gobbling up sales from other speaker categories at an ever-increasing rate with no sign of slowing down in the future. And in this installment of Why the F*** Advertiser Friendly Contenti, are you buying this? We're going to discover why. Why your TV speakers suck more now than ever before? And whether or not this best-selling $75 soundbar off Amazon.com can solve the problem. Speaking of problem solving, Colton solved our problem of not having a sponsor for this video with Thermaltake. Thermaltake's VU71 supports Mini-ITX, Micro-ITX, ATX and EATX motherboards with a variety of mounting options for your GPU and radiator. Check it out today at the link below to learn more. Unlike most technology trends, the speakers built into TVs have not been getting better and better every year. In fact, they've generally been getting worse. And the reason is that TV speaker quality is not something that people think about when they're buying a TV. With many customers wheeling their new set out of the local Best Buy without ever having listened to it. So since the mainstream mostly cares about screen size, picture quality and price, manufacturers that are trying to push price down without sacrificing picture quality while driving screen sizes up, naturally look to speaker quality as a logical corner to cut. But there's actually another reason that TV speakers are getting worse. TVs are getting thinner. Your dad's old CRT was big enough to crush a juvenile hippo. So there was lots of space for the sound coming out of proper speaker drivers to bounce around in. And the speakers could actually face the viewer, a fairly obvious advantage. But the design language of modern TVs dictates that bezels be as thin as possible. So speakers either have to fire downward at the TV stand or backwards towards the wall and then bounce back at the viewer, which is not ideal since the reflecting surfaces can color the sound dramatically. That is why you'll see people, even snooty elitist ones, recommend that you upgrade to just about anything other than your TV speakers. Which is exactly where this puppy comes in. At $75, it's unlikely that the two two and a half inch drivers inside the Vizio SB2920-C6, or as I call it, this sound bar, are much higher quality than what you would find already on board a TV. But at least they're actually pointing at you and the sound can resonate within its 29 inch cabinet. Setup is super easy. You just plug it into the wall and then, well, you could actually just stop there and use it as a Bluetooth speaker. Or you could use the included RCA, coaxial, or digital optical cable to connect it to your TV and you're done. This simplicity is one of the big reasons that sound bars have captured so much market share from home theater in a box solutions. I mean, just because I'm not satisfied with my TV speakers doesn't mean that I have the inclination, not to mention the space, to run a bunch of wires underneath my carpet or along my baseboards or whatever from my receiver to my satellite speakers behind the couch and yada yada yada. And some of them actually sound pretty good, like the Sonos Beam. Oh! Like the Sonos Beam. Oh! It's got four full range woofers and one high frequency tweeter. It's got voice control via ALAXA and soon the Google Assistant. And it's got support for the brand new Apple AirPlay 2 standard for synchronizing multiple speakers wirelessly. The This Soundbar has none of that stuff. But considering the price, another big sound bar advantage over multi-speaker setups, it's only really got one job. Be better than TV speakers. So let's see if it can do that. We're comparing our budget sound bar against the internal speakers of two displays that we had lying around. The Wasabi Mango UHD 430 monitor equipped with two down firing 10 watt speakers and the high end LG 65KS 9500 with two 20 watt speakers also aimed towards the floor. None of our solutions sound great. But this sound bar is a definite improvement over both of our displays in multiple ways. Fuller sound, deeper bass, and most of all, better clarity, especially when listening to low quality recordings of people with accents. The most interesting takeaway here though, at least from a normie perspective, is that this cheap sound bar achieves all of this despite being advertised as being way less powerful. Only five watts compared to the 20 and 40 watts combined of the displays. And this might sound a little unintuitive, but part of why it sounds better is due to the directional stuff we talked about earlier. And another factor, especially with the cheaper Wasabi Mango, is that the sound can be muddied by low quality chassis materials that resonate with the audio, playing along and reducing clarity. But with that said, low power is still low power. So while this budget bar is a worthy upgrade when watching TV, don't expect to be able to fill your house with your favorite tunes during a house party. This sound bar is not great at max volume. Not only does it not get very loud, but it can struggle to power itself, resulting in a skipping effect that is totally un-listenable. So, conclusion time. Should you join the throngs of people who have bought this sound bar? Well, if your hearing is going and everyone on TV sounds like they're mumbling, it will help a lot. And it even has DTS True Volume to help equalize the volume differences between, say, regular videos and freaking streaming ads. So it's not a bad buy. But if $75 is still too rich for your blood, well, you could always try sound scoops, pieces of plastic that you velcro to your TV in an attempt to redirect your down firing audio toward the couch. I am not even kidding. I mean, it's worth a shot, right? Do you want to see a review? Brandon, should we review that? No? Let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree with Brandon. He's saying no. I think we should. And on your way down to the comments, check out the link to Ting. Ting is the mobile carrier that does rates, not plans. You pay just $6 per phone line, plus the minutes, messages, and data that you actually use each month. Usage is shared across all your devices, so the more phones you have on one Ting account, the less you pay per phone. And with an average bill of just $23 a month per phone, Ting is the smarter choice for mobile. They offer service on two nationwide LTE networks, so the phone you already own will probably work with Ting. There are no contracts, no overage fees, and you can try it for a month with no commitment. So get $25 off your bill or towards a new phone in the Ting shop at linus.ting.com. We're going to have that linked below. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it's awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description, also linked in our description is our merch store, which has cool shorts like this one, and our community forum, which you should totally join. Oh, we missed a key benefit of the this soundbar. It's a lot lighter than the Sonos one. If someone drops it on your face. We should have worked that in there. I think we should have worked that in there. I think we should have worked that in there. Oh, oh, oh, so first you hit me in the nose, you make it swell up, then you make fun of me for it being big. Sure.