I just tested a budget soundbar and subwoofer with Dolby Atmos — although it forgot that there’s more to life than surround sound

The Ultimea Nova S50, on paper, has everything it takes to be one of the best soundbars without a shadow of a doubt. Dolby Atmos, a range of connectivity options and it’s less than $130? Take my money! Right?

Unfortunately, having spent my fair share of hours testing and reviewing soundbars, I know some promises are too good to be true. In fairness, the Ultimea Nova S50 does some things pretty well, but others… not so much.

The Dolby Atmos is alright for the price, and the soundbar + subwoofer combo is so small it’ll suit even the tiniest studio apartments. However, the sound quality flounders in bombastic action blockbusters, and musicals are tinny and lackluster. But it could be a worthy sacrifice for the space-saving 15-inch size and money-saving $129 price.

Is the Ultimea Nova S50 a worthy TV companion? Find out in this Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar and subwoofer review.

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A budget soundbar + subwoofer combo
• Who is it for? A TV speaker upgrade on a serious budget
• What does it cost? $129 / £101
• What do we like? The price is pretty nice
• What don’t we like? The sound peaks and pinches even at medium volume

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Specs

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Price & availability

The Ultimea Nova S50 is $129 from Ultimea U.S. and £101 from Ultimea U.K.. On Amazon U.S., it’s $119 and on Amazon U.K., it’s $149. This makes it one of the cheapest ‘Dolby Atmos’ soundbars I’ve ever tested — not even other sub-$300 soundbars like the Samsung B650 or the Sony HT-S100F claimed to have surround sound.

Speaking of sub-$300 soundbars, there’s also the Nova S80 5.1.2 at $299 from Amazon U.S., which has surround speakers and 3 extra center speakers. At the other end of Ultimea’s range, you’ll find the Poseidon D80 7.1 channel soundbar at $442 from Ultimea direct.

These prices seem a little too good to be true — the most impressive ‘affordable’ Dolby Atmos soundbar I’ve tested thus far is the 3.1.2 Polk Signa S4, at $399, and even that low price made me doubt the Atmos performance. I’m no stranger to bad soundbars promising too much: the $99 Majority Elias’ claims of Dolby Atmos fell awfully flat — literally.

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Design & controls

• Extremely compact, ideal for small homes
• Nice, sturdy remote with tactile buttons
• Soundbar itself looks pretty cheap… because it is

The first thing I noticed when unboxing the Ultimea Nova S50 was how compact it is. The soundbar is just 15 inches long and the subwoofer is only 10 inches tall.

Immediately, I was concerned that the Dolby Atmos wouldn’t be proficient given the small size — how would this soundbar manage to fill a room with audio when it’s so tiny? Things were not as they appeared, however; but we’ll get to that later.

Performance aside, the actual soundbar itself is pretty meh to look at. Although it’s remarkably tiny, it has abrupt angular edges and a plastic mesh casing. It looks cheap, because, well, it is.

Unlike the Sony HT-S100F’s utilitarian appearance, the Nova S50 looks cheap in a bad way.

The Nova S50 comes with a remote. Unlike the Bose Smart Soundbar ($499) remote, it’s pretty weighty and the buttons are all super tactile. There’s still a ‘cheap plastic’ feel to it, but it’s a far cry from the definitely-not-worth-$500 Bose remote or flimsy Majority Elias remote.

However, the play/pause button on the remote doesn’t work to actually pause the TV. I’m not sure what it’s there for at all, as it didn’t pause the audio either. It did work to change bass volume, and soundbar volume, just not pausing.

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Features & setup

• EQ ranges are relatively poor
• Easy setup, wired subwoofer — not wireless
• Dolby Atmos — surprising performance, well, all things considered

The Ultimea Nova S50 was very easy to set up. The subwoofer isn’t wireless, unlike the Polk Signa S4 or the JBL Bar 1300X. I connected the subwoofer to the soundbar with the provided thin wire, which is prone to getting tangled.

After connecting all the wires and power cables, I placed the soundbar on my TV stand and started watching. It automatically booted up when I turned on the TV thanks to the eARC connection.

In terms of features, there aren’t actually that many. I’ll discuss the Nova S50’s Dolby Atmos performance in the ‘Sound quality’ section below.

On top of Dolby Atmos, the Nova S50 has Bluetooth connectivity so could act as a secondary speaker at home, although the music didn’t actually sound good enough to justify that.

The Nova S50 has three EQ settings: ‘Movie, ‘Game’, and ‘Music’. Each EQ adjusts different frequencies: ‘Movie’ is bassier with a lower dynamic range in the higher frequencies. ‘Game’ reduces bass massively, and also background noise in turn. ‘Music’ seems to explode every frequency across the range, and is almost deafening unless you turn it down between modes.

A little point to note — which is even more confusing than it is irritating — is that every time you turn the soundbar off, it automatically mutes itself the next time you turn it on.

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Sound quality

• Dialogue and high-frequency sounds sometimes pinch
• Bass peaks in bass-heavy scenes with sub at max volume
• Dolby Atmos surround sound actually pretty decent

To test the sound quality of the Nova S50, I watched a series of movies (Ultra 4K HD Blu-Ray), TV on Netflix, and listened to music.

Movies

As with all my soundbar reviews, I watched ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ on ‘movie’ mode. I watched the movie with varying bass volumes: I tried ‘0’, ‘1’, and ‘2’, the maximum level.

In the opening scene, the bass peaked during jet engine takeoff and while ‘Danger Zone’ was playing.

In the scene where the admiral tells Maverick he’s being redeployed to Top Gun, the admiral’s speech clipped multiple times. The audio pinched, like it was being stretched and pulled upwards. This happened throughout the scene’s dialogue, and then again in the violin notes in the soundtrack.

Although this wasn’t all the time, it happened enough to make me wince.

After ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, I played ‘The Wild Robot’. Immediately the Universal intro clipped and peaked, as with the Top Gun dialogue pinching — again, this made me wince.

Likely due to ‘The Wild Robot’s less bass-heavy soundtrack, I was more impressed with the audio performance than with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. The dialogue was clear, with none of the haziness I experienced before. The Dolby Atmos performance was also surprisingly good, which I’ll go into below.

Finally, I watched ‘La La Land’ on Blu-Ray. I wanted to test the musical genre in both ‘Movie’ and ‘Music’ EQs. Like the high frequency sounds in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, higher voices grated and pinched in ‘La La Land’ too.

However, the sound was generally decent considering the price. Some songs were tinny and some dialogue was a little hazy, but as a whole, I enjoyed ‘La La Land’ the most out of everything I watched.

After watching ‘La La Land’ in ‘Movie’ mode, I switched to ‘Music’ mode for direct comparison. ‘Music’ mode, however, is incredibly poor.

‘Music’ mode seemed to heighten every tinniness issue that ‘Movie’ mode did its best to alleviate. Emma Stone’s vocals were crackly (and not just her natural voice), and every sibilant note pinched my ears. I can only recommend ‘Movie’ mode for optimal playback.

Dolby Atmos

Considering this soundbar is just $129, I had my doubts about its ability to actually create Dolby Atmos-sound.

One of the main requirements for ‘Dolby Atmos’ is height channels, as surround sound speakers use height to decode Atmos sound. However, the Nova S50 doesn’t have upfiring speakers, so everything I was hearing was more ‘mind-trickery’ or ‘psychoacoustics’ than true Dolby Atmos.

Obviously a 2.1 channel setup will never reach the Dolby Atmos heights of a 11.1.4 channel setup, like the JBL Bar 1300X. The 360° sound decoding on the Nova S50 can never be ‘true’ Dolby Atmos.

However, I was still pleasantly surprised with the Nova S50’s Dolby Atmos performance.

In ‘The Wild Robot’, there are plenty of swimming scenes that really excel with a good soundbar. In the first swimming scene, as the goose character moved across the water, I could feel the splashing moving across the room.

There’s another moment where three bullying geese encircle the main character. I could hear their voices surrounding me, which is really impressive considering this soundbar is just 15 inches long, compared to the Polk Signa S4’s 41 inches.

In general, I was impressed by the Dolby Atmos performance considering the price and size of the soundbar, but the disappointing audio quality means I still wouldn’t recommend this as a fantastic soundbar overall.

TV

To test the Ultimea Nova S50’s performance with TV, I watched ‘Cunk on Earth’ and ‘Inside Man’ on Netflix.

‘Cunk on Earth’ is a documentary series with a pretty stellar soundtrack, all things considered. I never struggled to hear the interviews and the soundtrack added to the experience rather than overpowering dialogue like in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.

While, no, there isn’t as much sonic depth as one would like, this is much less noticeable for generic TV watching. Still, I’d recommend watching with the ‘Movie’ EQ enabled, as ‘Game’ removed all bass and ‘Music’ was aggressively tinny.

‘Inside Man’ is a grippy crime drama that starts with a scene on a subway train. The train sounds didn’t overpower the dialogue, however in the following scene fan and metallic sounds were a little too loud to be heard over the subdued dialogue.

In general, the dialogue was better via the soundbar than the TV speakers, but so incrementally. It was bassier moments like soundtracks and action sequences that shone.

As a result of the Nova S50’S impressive TV performance, I’d recommend it as a step up from TV speakers, but I wouldn’t recommend it for movie lovers.

Music

There’s no smart connectivity, so if you want to play music through the Nova S50, you’ll need to use a music app on your smart TV or connect to your phone via Bluetooth.

As I stated above, the ‘Music’ mode is incredibly poor. It’s basically a one-way ticket to Tinny City, and I will never recommend you listen to music in that mode. I’d stick to ‘Movie’ mode, as it’s the only EQ setting with actual bass.

On Qobuz, I listened to ‘Feel Good Inc’ by Gorillaz using the soundbar’s ‘Movie’ mode with the subwoofer on 2. The bass crackled in the kick drum and the nuance of the treble was lost. I lowered the bass to -2, which just made the track tinny.

Next, I played ‘Royals’ by Lorde. I immediately remarked that I’d never heard the song like this before: so lacking in bass that it sounded like just Ella’s voice and an occasional finger snap. I upped the bass back to 2, which brought back some of the song’s layers, but I still wouldn’t call it good.

Finally, I played Britney Spears’ ‘Womanizer’, which probably sounded the best out of all the tracks I played — still wouldn’t call it good though. The bubblegum pop track held its own with Britney’s recognizable vocals and limited bass, but I’m not rushing to listen to music on the Nova S50 again.

I would not recommend this soundbar as a good device for music playback, unless you want to be disappointed.

Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar review: Verdict

The Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar is probably the cheapest way to get something akin to Dolby Atmos. However, that doesn’t make the Nova S50’s surround sound true Atmos.

While not being true Atmos, and nowhere near good enough to impress movie enthusiasts, I still enjoyed the surround sound experience. Considering this speaker is just 2 channels, I was really surprised by how good it sounded.

Unfortunately, the bass peaked and the treble pinched even at medium volumes, so I wouldn’t recommend this soundbar for challenging blockbuster movies.

In fact, I wouldn’t recommend this for movie enthusiasts — it’s just a step up from TV speakers, and it won’t be able to hold its own against multi-channel speakers with true height and the capability to decode Dolby Atmos signals.

However, for just $130, the Ultimea Nova S50 soundbar and subwoofer is a blazingly cheap way to upgrade from TV speakers.