I reviewed a soundbar designed to boost dialog for the hard of hearing, and the results impressed me

TechRadar Verdict

The Zvox AccuVoice AV855 soundbar is utilitarian in a lot of ways, but this isn’t about style. It’s about making dialog easier to hear, particularly for those with hearing issues, and the AccuVoice AV855 excels at making speech clearer even for the hard of hearing. I do wish the spatial audio was a little more pronounced, and that at least Bluetooth connectivity was included.

Pros

• +Extreme dialog boosting
• +Plenty of fine-tuning via the remote
• +Good port selection
• +Can get loud

Cons

• -Default audio sounds a bit mid-rangey / boxy
• -Spatial Audio is too subtle
• -No Bluetooth or Wi-Fi music streaming

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Zvox AccuVoice AV855 review

The Zvox AccuVoice AV855 is not my favorite soundbar, but it does something unique for the hard-of-hearing that will make it the ideal buy for some people. Just about every other soundbar has a dialog mode that can help boost that part of a movie or show, but none does it quite to the extent of Zvox.

It’s not the first soundbar I’ve come across for this purpose. The smaller Zvox AV157 that the company put out last year worked to achieve similar results, though the AV855 is better in every way (unless you want a smaller soundbar). Of course, it’s pricier, too.

As a regular soundbar, the Zvox AccuVoice AV855 checks most of the boxes, incorporating things like HDMI ARC (missing from that AV157 I reviewed last year), but comes a little short for those that don’t care about its voice-boosting “AccuVoice” feature. There’s no Bluetooth or WiFi Streaming, the spatial audio feature isn’t all that impressive, and, most importantly, the audio can sound a bit boxy.

But if you have trouble hearing dialog in your desired media, this soundbar may be the most extreme or robust solution out there. It may not be the best soundbar overall, but it’s tough to beat for vocal intelligibility.

On the aesthetics side of things, the Zvox AccuVoice AV855 is fairly utilitarian looking. Basically, it’s a black, rectangular box with minimal curves, notable mostly for the durable metal housing it’s in. That’s okay in my eyes, because this is a soundbar with a purpose (which I’ll get to in a bit).

Its height is a bit lower than some soundbars, measuring at just under two inches, making it slot under a TV a little easier than some other models I’ve tested.

What is somewhat exciting about its design is the fact that, along with its four front-facing drivers (two for the center channel), it has two upward-facing ones for adding height to spatial audio — though this comes with a major catch that we'll return to in just a moment. There also are bass ports on each side to help improve the low-end response.

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