LG SK10Y Soundbar Review

The LG SK10Y is a very long bar with a slightly premium feel thanks to the nice metal grill that wraps the front and the sides. The rest is made of solid plastic except for the two round metal grills at the top that cover the two up-firing speakers.

The sub is made of good quality plastic and metal. The front and the sides are covered by a mesh-like fabric that can easily get dirty or damaged. The port is located on the back.

This soundbar setup doesn't have any satellites.

The LG SK10Y is very wide and it won’t fit between the legs of any 55" TV stands as it's wider than the TVs themselves. You might even need a larger table to place it on. We had to put rubber feet under the bar so that it would sit properly on our table. On the upside, it’s not too high to obstruct the view on the bottom side of your screen, unless your TV is sitting flush on the table, like the Sony A9G.

The SK10Y sub is about the size of an average desktop PC. You should have no issues placing it next to the TV table or anywhere else in the room as it can connect wirelessly to the bar. All you need is a power outlet.

There are no satellites with this soundbar.

The back has three openings, but only the middle is for the input ports. The other two seem to be for combining with another device/TV but we can't be sure. In any case, they aren't visible from the front. If you want to wall-mount the bar, you have to use the two holes found on the underside, along with the wall-mounting adapters that you'll find in the box.

The subwoofer's back is plain. The port is on the lower side and the power cable connects right above it and on the left. This is a little odd, as the cable is more visible when connected at this height and you will have a harder time trying to hide it. There's also a pairing button and an accompanying LED to show the status.

There aren't any back satellites with this soundbar setup.

The LG SK10Y's build quality is great. It's made of solid plastic and metal and feels slightly premium. The entire build is robust and you shouldn't have any issues with it. The only thing that might trouble you is the mesh-like fabric that surrounds the subwoofer that can get easily damaged or dirty. Other than that, the SK10Y is very well-built.

• Remote
• Power cable
• Optical cable
• Wall-mounting brackets
• Tie-wraps
• Manuals

The LG SK10Y has a good stereo frequency response, which is largely due to its great low-frequency extension. This results in most sounds being played by the bar, including the deep punch and rumble of bass, which is great for movies. However, the sound isn’t necessarily neutral, as it has quite a lot of error compared to our flat target. As the graph shows, the bass is overemphasized by quite a bit and there's a lack of detail in mid and high-treble. This gives an overall muddy sound profile to the bar, which is tuned with Meridian Audio.

When listening to the LG SK10Y, the soundstage is just okay, which is slightly disappointing. Although the bar is very large, the stereo speakers are positioned way in from the sides of the bar, which makes the soundstage narrower than the bar itself. Additionally, soundstage's focus is slightly diffused since the soundbar's sound profile is muddy, making it a bit harder to pinpoint objects in the soundstage.

The SK10Y's dynamic performance is good. This bar doesn’t compress at its max volume, but unfortunately, it seems the bar is being limited when it comes to volume. This bar doesn’t get as loud as other similar models like the Samsung HW-Q60T and won’t be a great option for a large room or crowded environments.

The THD performance of this soundbar is decent. At a normal listening volume, the THD amount is slightly elevated, but stays within good limits, for a fairly clean and pure sound. However, when pushing the bar to max volume, there’s a jump in THD throughout the range, which isn’t good. However, this will more than likely be barely audible to most people.

The LG SK10Y soundbar setup has a great center channel performance on surround content. Due to its 5.1.2 configuration, it has a dedicated center speaker, which results in a clearer and more accurate audio reproduction of dialogue in movies.

The LG SK10Y's surround performance is okay. The bar has side-firing speakers, which reflect sound off the walls to give you the impression of a wider surround sound. However, this also means this setup won't provide the most accurate and clear representation of surround objects in the soundstage, and it won't feel as real as discrete surround like with home theatre speakers. It also results in a slightly dark sound profile and the error compared to our neutral target curve is quite significant.

The LG SK10Y supports Atmos, but its performance is sub-par. The bar has up-firing speakers that bounce the sounds off the ceiling, giving you the impression of height. However, the localization of objects is diffused and doesn't sound as real as a discrete localization provided by down-firing speakers. Also, the sound profile changes drastically and becomes fairly bright with a lower amount of bass.

The LG SK10Y has decent sound enhancement features, but unlike the LG SN8YG, this soundbar lacks a room correction feature, meaning it might sound different depending on your room. The adaptive sound control helps make voices clearer and it also has a night mode to normalize the level of different types of content. Also, you can adjust the amount of bass coming from the sub, and you also have the option to play with the rear level, although this setup doesn’t come with included rear speakers. However, you can purchase separate rears that are compatible with this setup.

The LG SK10Y is equipped with the most common set of inputs. The Optical Audio In can help connect to older devices, whereas the HDMI ARC or the Full HDMI In ports, are more versatile and are intended for use with modern game consoles or Blu-ray players. The Analog 3.5mm jack can be proven handy with older media players that only have audio out. Finally, the SK10Y has an Ethernet port ready to connect to your home network.

Just like most soundbars, the SK10Y supports Dolby Digital and DTS for 5.1 surround sound on streaming platforms; like Netflix, or on Blu-rays. The bar also supports Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos and can offer a great object-based surround sound experience. Unfortunately, it won't playback lossless formats like 5.1 PCM over ARC, but can do so over its Full HDMI In ports.

The LG SK10Y can deliver almost any audio format via its Full HDMI In port, which is excellent. You can decode 5.1 surround sound from Dolby Digital or DTS on streaming content or video games that support it. The LG SK10Y can also deliver object-based surround sound thanks to Dolby Atmos support and allows you to play lossless audio via 5.1 PCM or Dolby TrueHD from a PC or a game console.

The SK10Y supports both Dolby Digital and DTS through its Optical port. So, as long as the content supports it, you shouldn't have issues decoding a 5.1 surround sound. Blu-rays and streaming platforms, like Netflix, have a lot of content with these audio formats available. DTS is usually found as the fallback of the higher-end DTS-HD MA widely available on recent Blu Ray discs.

The LG SK10Y can pair up wirelessly in many different ways, so you can enjoy your content. It can connect via Bluetooth to your phone or tablet, or it can connect to your Wi-Fi or play content wirelessly using the Chromecast built-in. Unfortunately, this soundbar is not compatible with AirPlay.

If you connect the SK10Y between your TV and a game console or a PC, you can play 4k content at 60Hz without any issue. It can even display 4k @ 60Hz @ 4:4:4 properly, which means that text on your TV will look clear. Finally, the SK10Y supports HDR10, and can passthrough 4k @ 60 Hz @ 10 bit, which can be useful for those with the latest-gen gaming consoles.

The subwoofer connects wirelessly to the bar with the aid of the small button on the back. The only wired connection to the subwoofer is its power cable.

There are no satellites for in this setup.

The SK10Y has a plain interface. It has a simple LCD screen that is clear and easy to read, albeit being behind the grill. It can display the input in use, or the volume level when you change it, or even which sound effect is on.

The controls on the bar are touch-sensitive and fairly simple. They can do pretty much the same functions as the remote. The button with the 'F' symbol is used for selecting the input source. You can also play/pause, skip, change the volume, or power off the bar. There's also a button to switch to Wi-Fi.

The remote that ships with the LG SK10Y is small, but can control most of the soundbar's features. The 'F' button is used to switch inputs, but you can also mute, play/pause, or skip tracks, etc. with this handy little remote. It also has a sound effects button, that can perform various actions to alter your sound experience, like toggling the surround sound or varying the volume of each speaker individually.

Update 12/22/2021: Added additional information about third-party voice assistant support.

The LG SK10Y doesn’t support any voice assistants natively. You can, however, connect using Bluetooth to your phone or tablet, and you can use Google Assistant. In this case, the sound will come out of the soundbar. You can also connect a third-party Google Home device to the bar for voice assistant support.

The LG Wi-Fi Speaker app is fairly plain. It can act as a remote but with limited capabilities, as it's lacking the sound effects controls, but can play music from a media server on the network which is neat. Another nice feature is that you can create playlists.

The LG SK10Y turns on when a recognized input is in use and will turn off if it's idle for a while or if you disconnect the source. The SK10Y supports HDMI CEC, so you have limited control of the bar with your TV's remote.