I’m not much of a home theater guy. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much time and energy fine-tuning my audio setup for music at home. Or because watching movies is something I only manage to squeeze in time for on weekends—and by then, I’m typically sick of staring at screens. So when the Sonos Playbase showed up at my house, I wasn’t holding my breath for a life-changing experience.

I should’ve realized that the Playbase was designed to try and reel in people like me. The Playbase, the latest in Sonos’s line of wireless home audio speakers, is essentially a home theater sound bar with a different design. Rather than being mounted on the wall, the flat, 58-millimeter tall speaker is meant to sit comfortably beneath your television, which statistics show you’re unlikely to have mounted on the wall anyway.

By itself, the Playbase (like its traditional sound bar counterpart, the Playbar) offers a dramatic upgrade from the sound coming out of your TV. Results will vary depending on what you’re watching, of course; I found myself adjusting my Sonos audio settings when switching between different types of programming, since shows and movies from different eras and production studios are all mixed differently. Is the improvement worth the $700 cost of the Playbase? That’s up for debate, depending on how much you watch and how important immersive, room-filling audio is to you. For more casual viewers, a much cheaper sound bar may well suffice.

What the company is really hoping, though, is that the enhanced sound of the Playbase (or the Playbar, for that matter) is enough to get you hooked. That’s because Sonos isn’t just a speaker, it’s a whole home audio system that works over Wi-Fi and that’s designed to pipe sound throughout the home, ideally using multiple speakers. In the home theater context, that means pairing other Sonos products like its Sub subwoofer and its entry-level Play:1 speakers to create a true surround sound experience.

Truth be told, the surround sound effect works just fine with a Playbase paired to two $200 Play:1s, especially since an impressive amount of bass comes out of the deceptively thin Playbase. This is the setup I used to test the Playbase.

Depending on how the programming’s audio is mixed, the presence of two rear speakers might not make much of a difference. But for most movies and modern TV shows worth watching, this trio of speakers will make you feel like you’re in a movie theater. The early scenes in Jurassic Park, for instance, practically shook my living room as velociraptors pounced on their prey and sent my cats scurrying frantically out the room. Naturally, the movie’s iconic theme song sounded all the more epic—but not overly loud—in this immersive setup. Indeed, the Playbase is optimized for programming that mixes dialogue, impactful sound effects, and music. If you watch a lot of sci-fi or action movies, for instance, a setup like this is worth it.