You're probably wondering why RCA includes a built-in DVD player in its 37" Home Theater Sound Bar. After reviewing it, however, it isn't clear why. If you still use physical media, chances are you already have a DVD player (or a Blu-ray player, or even a CD player for just audio) at home. So the inclusion of this outdated technology feels misguided, at best. That said, this is first and foremost a soundbar, so the question becomes: For $149.99, does RCA make up for its perplexing design choices with solid audio performance? Well, the sound quality here isn't awful, but it's not great, with low overall volume levels and distortion on deep bass tracks. As long as you don't need the DVD player (which you almost certainly don't), you can get better audio for the price.

Design

Measuring 2.6 by 37.0 by 5.6 inches (HWD), the soundbar has a flip-top lid covering the DVD player, along with forward-projecting dual stereo drivers and a single woofer under the black cloth grille. Up top, near the DVD player, there are physical buttons for power, play/pause, stop, sound source, volume down and volume up. (These came in handy, as sometimes the remote control's volume buttons seemed unresponsive in testing.)

The back panel of the soundbar houses connections for an optical cable input, a 3.5mm aux input, the power adapter, an HDMI output, a coaxial input, and a stereo RCA input. None of the associated cables for these inputs and outputs are included (aside from the power adapter), which feels like an oversight even at this price—typically, you get at least an optical cable. In fact, other than the remote and its included AAA batteries, the power adapter is the only accessory that ships with the soundbar.

The remote is of the universal variety, and as such, it's packed with buttons. Typically, the remotes that are bundled with soundbars are smaller and less involved. The assumption is often that the soundbar may very well end up being controlled by another universal remote in your setup, and so the included remote is generally kept spare.But most soundbars don't feature a built-in DVD player, and so the inclusion here makes sense.

The various buttons on the upper portion of the remote handle basic DVD playback, with dedicated buttons for play/pause, stop, skip forward/backward, and more nuanced controls, for turning on subtitles, adjusting the audio settings, and selecting an audio mode (Standard, Music, Talk, or Movie). The central portion of the remote houses buttons for menu navigation with a central multifunction button. Below these, you can select sound source, and there are playback and volume controls for external connected devices, under which is a number pad for entering TV channels.

Connecting a mobile device via Bluetooth is a simple enough process. You can switch to Bluetooth pairing mode using the remote. Within seconds, we were streaming audio to the soundbar from a phone.

Regardless of our opinion regarding its inclusion, the DVD player works, and it plays CDs as well.

An LED readout would have helped the soundbar to feel more of its time. Instead, when you switch inputs, you must memorize color coding on a tiny LED indicator to know what you're connected to—Blue for Bluetooth, Red for Aux/Line Input, Orange or Optical/Digital Input, and Green for DVD. This, and the inclusion of a DVD rather than a Blu-ray player, make the entire experience feel dated.

Performance

Although RCA describes this soundbar as a 2.1 system, you'll be lucky if anything resembling real bass depth comes out of it. On tracks with deep bass, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the soundbar can only get a little beyond halfway up the volume scale before distortion starts to creep in. At top volume, the bass becomes a complete mess. On tracks with less deep bass, like Bill Callahan's "The Drover," things are slightly better, with no real distortion to speak of (though at absolute top volumes, things begin to sound fuzzy). At more moderate volumes, in Music or Standard mode, the audio sounds relatively clear and clean. There's some decent bass richness here for the price, but when you advertise a speaker as 2.1, people are expecting some real low-end, and that's not what you're getting.

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Furthermore, on movies from external devices, the maximum audio levels simply aren't terribly loud. We got far more volume out of an iPhone 8 streaming to the soundbar than we did with an Apple TV connected to a television (via HDMI) and then sending its audio to the soundbar (via optical), as the manual suggests for optimal listening. This means that on films mixed with a sense of dynamic range, where quiet dialogue and loud explosions coexist, the listening experience will suffer. The explosions never feel too thunderous, and the dialogue can often seem quiet, depending on the film.

Watching Blade Runner 2049, when Ryan Gosling's Lambo-like air vehicle is shot out of the sky, the ensuing crash and multiple explosions sound thin. It's a combination of the soundbar simply lacking bass depth, and also the limited volume keeping things tame. The best that can be said is that, in Movie mode, things are crisp and clear, and there's a semblance of bass. Things don't sound tinny, they just don't sound impressive, either.

The best sound you get here is with music that doesn't pack heavy bass, or films that the same can be said for. An older movie with very little dialogue, like Antonioni's The Passenger, will sound at home, as its crisp delivery favors foley and realistic sound design.

Conclusions

Who is the RCA 37" DVD Home Theater for? If there's an argument to be convincingly made for the inclusion of a DVD player, we can't think of it, but as mentioned earlier, its inclusion could be considered a moot point if it delivered otherwise impressive audio performance. It could certainly sound worse, but when there are 2.1 soundbars that sound much better for not too much more money, it's hard to make an argument for this one. Based on sonic performance alone, it sounds like a decent $100 Bluetooth speaker.

You'll get better sound quality from the Polk Audio Signa S1 and the more expensive, but still reasonably priced JBL Bar 2.1. True, those soundbars don't have DVD players built in, but that's not a great excuse for thin audio. The JBL Bar 3.1 and Sonos Beam are also standouts, albeit far more experience. No matter which you choose, all of these options offer a better user experience and more immersive audio performance.

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Further Reading

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