Glow Glee: Speaker Base puts powerful sound under your TV

Instead of going through the whole Design, Features, Performance dance, there are times in my career as a reviewer when I feel like just typing “Buy it” 500 times and pressing publish. On those rare occasions I like a product so much that it’s hard to write anything at all, and just instead wave my clenched hands together in a Wallace and Gromit moment of pure glee.

You can probably guess that this is one of those times.

Like the Pioneer SP-SB23W sound bar before it, the Pioneer SP-SB03 Speaker Base has recast the mold on a category of speakers, redefining how they should sound. Both were designed by Andrew Jones, whose track record of delivering excellent sound for a modest price is entirely justified, in our experience. The SP-B03 is huge and costs a bit more than some competing pedestal-style sound stands, but it’s worth it.

The SP-SB03 offers excellent sound for both movies and music plus build quality the bomb squad would be proud of. It has all the features you need at this price — one-cable connection to a TV, Bluetooth — and the only “frivolous” extra in a wide cinema sound mode…that actually works! Sure, it doesn’t look like much, but then again neither does Bob Dylan.

The only “issue” I have with the Speaker Base is that it isn’t as accomplished at music as its SP-SB23W Speaker Bar predecessor, which is a more traditional “bar plus subwoofer” combo. But for a one-box system that you can plonk your TV on and forget about, there’s simply nothing else I can recommend more strongly at this price range right now. It’s available for $ 350 in the US; and while UK and Australian pricing and availability has not been confirmed, that price translates to approximately £215 and AU$ 390, respectively.

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Design

A sound stand is basically a speaker shaped like a pedestal and designed to support your TV. They all owe a huge debt to ZVOX, even the Pioneer, for while this speaker’s a cut above everyone in terms of audio quality it doesn’t really do much different in terms of design: it’s a large, black box.

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Little touches show care in its construction. The Speaker Base has a composite wood housing, not plastic. There’s a fifth foot raised slightly off the ground in the center of the box designed to take the weight of particularly large TVs. The front is protected by a mesh grille which doesn’t obscure any of the readouts or functions. The Pioneer isn’t fancy, but certainly looks the part of a proper piece of home theater equipment.

Compared to the Pioneer, the Vizio Sound Stand and others in this price bracket look like toys.

This speaker is a colossus, measuring 28 inches wide (71cm), a significantly tall 4.75 inches (12cm) and 16 inches (41cm) deep. While Pioneer doesn’t specify a weight limit for the TVs it supports, the company specifies that it “accommodates most TVs 55 inches and smaller” and that you should allow “at least 1 inch [2.5cm] of clearance surrounding the stand.” The stand of the 83.8-pound (38kg) Panasonic TC-P55ST60 fit without issue, and yet despite the higher-than-average weight, the middle support foot still didn’t touch the table.

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