Compact and portable. A good fit for smaller spaces and TVs. Acoustic music sounds loud and distinct. Excellent room adaptation using AI.

Surround sound was lacking. Some music sounds washed out and muddy.

Living in a small space has some challenges, but poor cinematic sound doesn't need to be one of them. For those in an apartment or who have a smaller room for watching television and listening to music, the TCL A65K Soundbar is not a bad option among the best soundbars out there.

Priced at $499 on Amazon (the list price is $699), this pencil-shaped soundbar is about 35 inches long and stands two inches high but packs 460 watts of power. With the included sub (which measures about 14 x 14 inches square), you can blast the latest Netflix movie or crank up any one of the three new Drake albums at high volume. Dolby Atmos support, a brilliant room adaptation feature that uses AI, and a compact design are the main highlights.

Call it a niche product if you want, but judged as a compact audio product, I liked the features and design of the TCL A65K even if the actual audio quality can’t compete with the Sonos Arc Ultra or even come close to the Focal Mu-So Hekla. Audiophiles should definitely take a pass, but the rest will find a lot to like for the price, the small size, and smart design.

Setting It Up

One of the TCL A65K's smart design choices has to do with the product size. The A65K soundbar weighs only 2.5 pounds so I found I could easily hold it with one hand. The sub, which is designed to face toward you, weighs almost 12 pounds. But it's also not a back-breaker. Compare that to something like the Focal Mu-So Hekla soundbar at 34 pounds and the A65K feels featherlight.

I like that TCL includes a basic wall mounting kit, which consists of two brackets and screws. I skipped that to make the soundbar more mobile and moved it from my family room to my office a few times. Placed on a TV stand, the all-black A65K looks comically small given that the television I own is a 65-inch model. I put the sub on the floor and went through the app setup, which was surprisingly easy since it mostly involves connecting over Bluetooth and choosing a sound mode, such as movie or music. You can also plug in a phone using the USB port, go with HDMI from your TV, or stream over Bluetooth (but not Wi-Fi).

I used HDMI and Bluetooth for my testing and tweaked a few settings on the TCL Home app. The USB port is nice, but it’s of the older USB-A type, which is disappointing, since most of us have moved to the world of USB-C almost entirely. You can skip the app entirely if you don’t want to adjust settings. You can also skip the included remote (which has a nice layout and lets you switch inputs quickly, but is otherwise pretty basic) and control music from an app like Qobuz or use your TV remote.

One configuration step was critically important, though. The TCL AI Sonic feature can help adapt the A65K audio for your room size. I listened to music before and after and it made a big difference, which I’ll touch on later. The process is straightforward. The app prompted me to turn my iPhone around so the microphone faces the speakers. I held it a few inches away from the speaker at first, then sat down on my couch for a second test. The AI adjusted the sound to be fuller and more spacious, although movies and music never filled the room.

That’s one compromise with a smaller soundbar—the diminutive cabinet just isn’t big enough to produce those massive explosions or drum fills on a Radiohead song that you’d get with a larger soundbar. Knowing this, and that the price is a few hundred less than full-size soundbars, I dove into testing.

Movies and Surround Sound

The TCL A65K soundbar has up-firing audio drivers, making it seem like a plane or a spaceship is flying around the room. TCL partnered with Bang & Olufsen for the sound design. There are nine dedicated speakers in the soundbar, including the center and side channels. The upfiring height channels support Dolby Atmos or DTS:X. Unlike some Sony soundbars that use virtual surround sound and not actual drivers angled to the ceiling, the dedicated audio drivers in the A65K should be more convincing when, say, a helicopter rises above the tree line.

In practice, the TCL A65K is too small to make the surround sound that convincing. It’s a nice idea to pack in so many speakers with so much power. In the movie Unbroken, which I use for testing all surround sound products, the planes and gunfire didn’t fill the room enough. I used the AI Sonic room adaptation feature, but it didn’t help the surround sound that much.

One of my favorite sound design tests is in the movie Predator: Badlands when the main character extends both ends of a spear, the tip pointing to the sky with a sudden clank. I loved how the Focal Mu-So Hekla made it seem like that clank sounds like it’s coming from the ceiling. Not so much with the A65K soundbar. However, at $499, I wasn’t expecting sonic perfection. In the sci-fi series The Boroughs on Netflix, a muscle car rumbles by and the sub makes it sound loud and powerful— even if we’re not talking movie-theater-quality sound at all.

In the sci-fi movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, I noticed the music overwhelmed the voices at about 50 minutes into the movie (about a time traveler bent on saving humanity). Playing around with a few more custom sound settings in the TCL Home app, I increased the center channel, lowered the "front top” audio and sub, and enabled a voice enhancement option. It’s a pain, and I wish the A65K adjusted itself automatically, but it was effective. That’s why my take on the sound quality for movies is “not bad” for the price and size of the soundbar.

Music Quality

The theme here so far is—you won’t compete with your local cineplex for home theater sound, but it’s passable. The small size won’t fill the room, and the up-firing audio is not super convincing. However, at the price, there are plenty of high-end features.

I’m a die-hard music fan, so I ran through a battery of tests. I started with the new live album by Manchester Orchestra called Union Chapel, London, England. This stripped-back concert featuring mostly acoustic guitar, light piano, and vocals was an excellent match for the A65K soundbar. Songs like “The Deer” and “Capital Karma” had a warmth and resonance. On that last song, the vocals hit a high pitch while the lower register of the guitar rumbles along. Everything sounded distinct with the more minimalistic instrumentation and had an organic feel.

One of my favorite indie artists is Snail Mail. Her latest album has uplifting choruses meant to fill the room with lush guitars and strings. Due to the A65K being so small, most tracks sounded muddy because of the multiple instruments playing all at once, but the synths were distinct. In the song “Light on Our Feet” the strings were clear but did sound a bit digitized at times. (You can tell from the live performance at 54:47 that there’s an actual cello involved.)

The overall power output is not bad, though. On “Want Want” by Maggie Rogers, I was impressed by the grungy, guttural sound thanks to the sub. On “So Neurotic" by the band Ex-Vöid, I was expecting total mush as the guitars intersect, but it’s loud, jangly, and clear. “Spangled” by the band Fust had bone-crunching bass coming through the sub as well.

Gaming, Sports, and News

For video games, the lack of room-filling surround sound became even more noticeable. Similar to movies and shows, the game Forza Horizon 6 is supposed to blast you with engine sounds and exhaust, but it all felt too thin and not spacious enough. Granted, that game doesn’t take advantage of Dolby Atmos enough, but I was not impressed with overall oomph.

That is until I tested Halo: Infinite. Laser blasts, screeching aliens, and loud explosions at least seemed to come from a few different angles in the room. I still missed the cacophony of Atmos-powered sound coming from higher-end soundbars like the Sonos Arc.

I switched to sports for a while, catching up on the NBA playoffs using the YouTube TV app. The broadcasters were easy to hear, but the crowd noise was more like a low murmur, almost like using a noise generator. What you want is to feel like you’re at the game and can hear people screaming and shouting during the live broadcast. A news program on my local Fox station sounded clear and distinct, though. That’s not surprising because the A65K certainly has enough power and distinct audio drivers, even if the surround sound is just so-so.

In the end, I felt the TCL A65K matched my expectations. It's small enough to fit on a kitchen counter or near a smaller television. It’s priced much lower than the high-end models that actually deliver room-filling home theater surround sound. Many of the tracks I played to test music sounded pleasing enough if not thunderous and room-filling. If your goal is to save space and not pay an exorbitant sum, the TCL A65K is a compact and feature-rich choice.