Vizio V51x-J6 36-inch 5.1 Channel Home Theater Soundbar System (Renewed)

The sound quality is good, and the price was reasonable. I bought two other no name units and returned them because of the sound quality . Vizio remote works great, its clearly labeled and even came with batteries. 100 percent would buy again, I know there are better units but this would be hard to beat in this price range.

I had been tracking the previous Atmos soundbars from Vizio. They are relatively expensive at $900 and $500 - still much cheaper than top of the line LG and Sonos'. Sometimes I would see the smaller version go on sale for $300. Then I saw a very favorable review for this unit on RTINGS.com. Even better, the refurbished unit was only $175. I ordered it and low and behold, it's good.Pros:Very, very easy to set up.Very clean and loud sound with a surprisingly good little sub. I own an 8 inch B&W, a 10 inch ELAC and a 10 inch SVS so I am used to deep bass.The soundbar is also slimmer than any of the other Vizio soundbars I own and just slightly taller than the Yamaha soundbar it replaced.There's a cool feature where a smart speaker can be connected to a separate line or Bluetooth connection. When the the smart speaker wants to "speak", the soundbard will reduce the main source volume and then bring the volume back afterwards. It actually worked.It does accept an Atmos bitstream..The surround is typical Vizio good.Part of the remote is backlit.ARC works from my TCL TV.Very good features and value for the money.Cons: (These are all minor)For a soundbar with such good dialogue clarity, there's very little "air" and imaging in the front, even at close range. the Surround and Virtual Surround help but there's still a lack of focus.Atmos sounds different but I couldn't detect any height. My main system (Yamaha, Monitor Audio, Definitive, SVS) is hyper-focused and Atmos is obvious.The remote is a little hard to use. Not terrible but not something you will pick up in the dark to make a quick adjustment.No ethernet or wifi streaming.Typical crappy, Vizio LED status display.Overall, Vizio makes good soundbars, especially since there are so many refurb units out there. None of the ones (5) I have purchased have every failed and Vizios are just shy of audiophile quality. Most soundbars are FAR inferior to the typical Vizio.Highly recommended

Works fine with tiny issueOne problem for me: it gets muted on its own when I turn on TV and I need to change volume on its remote in order to hear sound. So I always need to keep this soundbar's remote close by, which is a small inconvenience. Hence 1 star off.

I bought the Vizio sound bar to replace my Samsung H550. I didn’t need (or have the space for) a full receiver and 5.1/7.1 speaker system and after reading several reviews I felt the V51x would be a good match. I bought the product renewed from Amazon and set it up the same day it arrived. The speakers are small but sound clear and I haven’t had any issues with dialogue (a common problem with most budget sound bars). In fact Vizio even provides the ability to increase dialogue volume (the defaults were fine for me). There is a night mode that suppresses some of the lower frequencies and it is easy to adjust the subwoofer level, surround, and center levels. The subwoofer is pretty small (half the size of my Samsungs) however the bass is well pronounced and more than sufficient for small/bedroom use.One good thing about the setup is that the subwoofer has its own power cord and is used to drive the surrounds, since the subwoofer and center talk wirelessly, it’s easy to put the surrounds in a more ideal location without having to run wires from the front center to the back/sides where the surrounds normally would be. So far the wireless connectivity has worked without issues (my Samsung would occasionally have pairing issues), if I do run in to issues, I’ll update my review.I had bought the sound bar renewed and unfortunately the “renewed” quality cannot be trusted, my system came with an obviously faulty remote. The remote with this system has a LCD screen at the top, the screen is critical in controlling subwoofer, center, dialog volumes and other settings. Unfortunately my remotes LCD didn’t work (the LCD panel showed some sort of a dark leak, see picture of working and no working remote). Fortunately Vizios warranty support is superb and after describing the issue they sent me a new remote (I had a replacement within a week). My only minor grip is the need to keep the sound bar remote, I would have preferred if you could control the other settings (besides volume, Bluetooth and input selection) from the sound bar as well. I typically don’t use the sound bar remote as the TV remote allows me to control volume along with all other TV/channel controls. This means that there is a chance for the less frequently used sound bar remote to get lost, ideally a user should be able to make all changes without needing the remote.

I have been looking at this product for a long time before I finally saw a refurbished option that was like $40 less and decided to give it a try. I paid less than $160 for a refurbished one. The setup was pretty easy (literally just plugging unless you want to try other fancy stuff like connecting it to home assistance).Connecting to Alexa was a bit of challenge. And even after I connected it, the voice coming from Alexa was WAY too small (I couldn't even hear it when I left it at its usual sound level). I had to either crank up the speaker volume (which then wouldn't been idea when I'm using it for something else) or Alexa's volume (which if the speaker for some reason turned off would be way too loud). I gave up on using it for alexa.Otherwise the product give good sound quality and i don't notice any kind of latency from it being cordless! and that helps so i don't have to wire along the ceiling like at my prior apartment which was a mess.