Panasonic slips out the skinny SC-HTB490 soundbar

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If you’re in the market for a soundbar, chances are you’re not looking for something the size of a railway sleeper. If you had that much space to play with you’d just go for a full-on surround-sound system, so Panasonic’s new SC-HTB490 (£349) might be just the noisy cuboid you’ve been looking for. Inside you get two full-range, forward-facing drivers and dual bass reflex ports – and despite its slimline dimensions it still packs in 160 watts of audio-pushing power, which is doubled to 320W by the similarly punchy wireless sub. There’s HDMI (ARC) and an optical input onboard for getting the sound out of your TV, but you can also connect over Bluetooth if you want it to double up as a long, thin stereo.

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Stuff's second Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.