The 32-inch, Dolby-compatible soundbar will go on sale later this year for $180, and it packs four 2.5-inch speakers along with the guts of a Roku Ultra — quad-core processor and all. Unlike last year's Smart Speakers the Soundbar is meant to drive your television by itself, and thanks to those borrowed components, it can handle streaming video playback at up to 4K resolution. In other words, the soundbar isn't meant to augment the Roku players you already own as much as replace them outright. The soundbar isn't alone, either. An additional $180 will also net you a wireless subwoofer that — appropriately enough — looks like a Roku Ultra that went through a late growth spurt. Aesthetics aside, it packs a single, downward-firing 10-inch woofer and its output peaks at 250W.

So, how do these things sound? Well, it's far from other-worldly, but the soundbar produces surprisingly rich audio with respectable bass. I'll admit that I showed up to my early morning meeting with Roku still partially asleep, but that didn't last long once the company's spokespeople turned up the volume — clips from Blade Runner 2049 shook me up with near-room-filling audio, and bass-heavy tracks pulled from a Spotify playlist felt appropriately punch and aggressive. That's especially true when you have the sub wirelessly connected to the soundbar. During my demo, the sub was placed on the ground and well to the right of the television, but still pumped out resonant lows without going overboard.

Since the soundbar uses the same chipset and internals as the Roku Ultra, there's more processing power here than one might expect, and the company's clever audio software puts it to good use. I'm the sort of person who usually has to watch TV with the subtitles on, and not just because my hearing is sort of terrible. I don't want to wake up my upstairs neighbors (and their kids) just because I need to turn the volume up to hear conversations that tend to get lost in the mix. Enter Night mode, which attempts to level out your content's aural peaks and valleys so loud scenes aren't overbearing and quiet ones get a notable boost. And more importantly for people like me, a Speech Clarity mode does an admirable job of honing in on dialogue and making it louder without making everything else louder at the same time.