From TCL and Phillips to Hisense and Sharp, a good load of TV manufacturers now ship their digital displays with Roku’s streaming player built-in. It’s a great way to add value, after all, saving your customers from having to buy a separate box to get access to Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming channels. Problem is, many of those TVs come with less-than-stellar sound, a common affliction among modern TVs housed in pencil-thin enclosures. Well, the outfit is hoping to help bridge the gap with the Roku TV Wireless Speakers.
Designed to level up the sound coming from your TV, it’s a two-channel speaker that you can set up on either side of the panel, blasting the audio with “vibrant high-frequencies and rich bass.” Do note, the speakers are designed to work exclusively with TVs that have Roku’s streaming player built-in. Yes, they’re purposely limiting the potential user base for their speakers, since, from what we can tell, the goal of the speakers isn’t to conquer the market, but to augment the viewing experience for existing Roku users. Considering around 25 percent of TVs sold in the US now come with Roku onboard, it isn’t a small market segment either.
Each channel of the Roku TV Wireless Speakers comes with a quarter-inch tweeter and a 3.5-inch woofer, ensuring both high- and low-frequency sound are sufficiently handled. According to the outfit, the speakers will deliver multi-dimensional sound that can make both shows and games more immersive, all while providing greater stereo separation when watching concerts, music videos, and other music content. Automatic volume levelling raises the sound on quiet scenes and lowers it on loud ones in real-time, ensuring you can better hear those whisper-quiet conversations while avoiding the jarring noise of sound effects and loud commercials.
Built-in Bluetooth allows the speakers to stream sound from the TV wirelessly, so there’s no need to add to the cable mess in your home theater, all while coming in a reasonably compact size (7.7 x 4.9 x 4.9 inches, height x width x depth) for easy integration in your media cabinet. While it won’t pair with TVs that don’t have Roku onboard, it can be used with phones and tablets like other Bluetooth speakers, so you can use it to listen to music without having to turn on the TV.
The Roku TV Wireless Speakers come with one of the outfit’s Voice Remotes, which you can use to control not just the speaker, but also the Roku streaming player. It supports both traditional button control and voice commands, so you can simply say any action that you want done, whether it’s to launch the player (“Launch the Roku channel”), find movies (“Search for romantic-comedy films”), or adjust the volume. Aside from the main remote, it also ships with a tabletop remote designed for use in another room, for those times you’re using the speakers to listen to music and shows, rather than watching them. Both remotes require two AAA batteries to operate.
The Roku TV Wireless Speakers are priced at $199.