Roku Fills Out Speaker Line With Smart Soundbar and Subwoofer
Roku extended its speaker line Wednesday to a sound bar and subwoofer due to ship next month. It began taking preorders Wednesday at Roku.com for both products, each with a $179 MSRP. They will be available at Best Buy next month.
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The Roku Smart Soundbar features Roku Connect wireless protocol, Dolby Audio, Bluetooth, audio return channel via HDMI, compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and a voice remote. Customers can search across channels for programming based on price and use voice to launch and search for channels and control closed captions, said the company.
Roku billed the sound bar as a way to reduce clutter, while still giving users access to the more than 500,000 movies and TV shows available on the Roku platform. The sound bar's volume modes allow consumers "to reach for the remote less often," it said, referencing automatic volume leveling, night mode and a "speech clarity" setting. Automatic software updates will deliver new capabilities over time, it said.
The optional Roku Wireless Subwoofer, with a 10-inch driver, connects to the Roku sound bar without a separate audio cable. An upcoming software update will allow Roku TV Wireless Speakers connected to Roku TVs to be compatible with the subwoofer, said the company. Those speakers work only with Roku TVs.
It wasn’t clear Wednesday where the sound bar and subwoofer are being manufactured. Roku’s largest TV-maker customer, TCL, sources finished sets from China. Fifteen percent List 4A tariffs kicked in Sunday for TVs and speakers. Roku didn't respond to questions. Chief Financial Officer Steve Louden didn’t include potential List 4 Section 301 tariffs in Roku’s full-year outlook on last month’s earnings call (see 1908080008), citing “too many uncertainties related to the timing, scope and level of potential near-term changes.” The company and its partners were acting to mitigate potential adverse impacts, Louden said.