Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Anker Nebula Soundbar Fire TV Edition packs 4K, HDR, and Alexa in a $230 speaker

Simon Cohen
By

Electronics manufacturers are beginning to see soundbars as the next category of device that should come with built-in smarts. The latest brand to pursue this strategy is Anker, which has just started taking pre-orders for its $230 Nebula Soundbar — Fire TV Edition, a soundbar that delivers 100 watts of power while enabling any HDMI-equipped TV with Amazon’s Fire TV streaming media software and its Alexa voice assistant.

Recommended Videos

On the video side of things, the Nebula Sounbdar impresses, with 4K resolution at up to 60 frames per second, and every major flavor of HDR including HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. In fact, this may just be the first soundbar you can buy with Dolby Vision built-in. Around the back of the soundbar, you’ll find a good array of connection ports including an auxiliary-in, USB, HDMI-ARC, and optical input.

Related

You get a full Fire TV remote, including a dedicated voice button that lets you direct Alexa to do your bidding. All of the usual Fire TV commands are available, such as “Watch The Expanse,” or “Search for Matt Damon,” but it’s also a full Alexa device, so smart home commands will work too.

Anker calls the Nebula Soundbar a 2.1 speaker, claiming that the two built-in subwoofers let it deliver the kind of “intense low frequencies” typically associated with home theater sound systems. We’re not sure that any soundbar can deliver true 2.1 sound without an accompanying — and separate — subwoofer, but if the Nebula indeed pulls off this trick, perhaps it should describe it as a 2.2 system. We’ll let you know once we have a chance to review it.

Surprisingly, for a soundbar, Anker hasn’t said if the Nebula supports any of Dolby’s audio formats. The absence of Dolby Atmos isn’t unusual for a soundbar at this price, but Anker doesn’t list Dolby Audio at all, which could mean this is simply a stereo speaker with enhanced bass.

The Nebula Soundbar is the first soundbar to include Amazon’s Fire TV platform, but we suspect it won’t be the last. Competition in this space is heating up. Roku recently launched its own $180 Smart Soundbar and partnered with Walmart to create a less-expensive version under the retailer’s Onn. brand.

Earlier this year, JBL released its $400 Link Bar, which runs the Android TV operating system and has Google Assistant built-in.

If the Anker Nebula Soundbar — Fire TV Edition sounds like it deserves a home under your TV, you can pre-order it now on Amazon.com for delivery starting on November 21.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
The hidden costs of buying a 4K TV are way higher than you think
Toshiba 55-inch-class C350 series 4K smart Fire TV on a gray shelf and light gray background.

There’s never been a better time to buy a 4K TV. Prices have continued to drop even as screen sizes and smart TV features have continued to grow. But now that 4K TVs are priced within reach of almost anyone who wants one, are you actually going to be able to enjoy all of the extra detail and picture quality that 4K promises? The answer is, sadly, not as often as you expect, and not without some considerable extra investment over and above the cost of the TV.

Modern 4K TVs are packed with a lot of impressive technologies that can make picture quality look amazing, no matter what you’re watching. With upscaling driven by complex algorithms and often aided by AI, even watching an old DVD on a 4K TV will look way better than it did on an HDTV from 10 years ago. But to truly get the best possible results, you need access to native 4K content, preferably with some flavor of HDR, like Dolby Vision, HDR10, or HDR10+.

Read more
Amazon debuts its first Fire TV soundbar and faster Fire TV sticks
Amazon Fire TV Soundbar.

At Amazon's fall event, it announced a new Fire TV soundbar, a new Fire TV Stick 4K, and a Fire TV Stick 4K Max with support for Wi-Fi 6E.

The Fire TV Soundbar is available starting today for $120 in the U.S. and Canada, and available for preorder in Mexico. It's expected to ship within a week. It's been designed as an easy-to-set-up companion speaker for all Fire TV devices and Fire TVs with Bluetooth, immersive sound, crisper dialog, and improved bass, according to the company, and has three selectable EQ modes: movies, music, and dialogue.

Read more
YouTube TV in 4K: Everything you need to know
YouTube TV 4K streams settings and user options.

When it comes to streaming live TV in the U.S. (or streaming any kind of video anywhere, for that matter), resolution and bit rate remain as important as ever. And you're now able to enjoy YouTube TV in 4K. Some of it, at least. And if it seems like it's taken forever for that to happen, you're not wrong.

The basic fact is that it takes a lot of bandwidth to stream video — and that's even more difficult when you're talking linear TV, (and more so still if it's a live event like sports). So it's not really that much of a surprise to learn that most live channels stream at 720p resolution — or maybe 1080p if you're lucky. (We'll leave frame rate out of the equation for a minute, but it's a thing, too, especially for sports.)

Read more