Big Sound, Small Price

DOLBY ATMOS, once a costly premium, is enjoying a surge of popularity across a range of new audio gear.

- Rob Sabin

In particular, very good Atmos soundbars from capable audio brands are becoming common and less costly. These are made even more attractive today thanks to Dolby's support in developing an immense catalog of evergreen music for spatial audio. When I tested the Sonos Arc with the Era 300 speakers for Sound & Vision a while ago, I was shocked to find my Tidal account had sprouted dozens of Atmos album titles across every genre, and it's been a thrill rediscovering much-loved music through new immersive mixes. So when I see an affordable $499 bar like Klipsch's new Flexus CORE 200, I see the potential for a real, high-quality Atmos experience reaching the masses.

The CORE 200 is one of two new Klipsch bars with a "Powered by Onkyo" tag, a reference to the famous AV electronics maker that has been a sister brand since 2021. From Klipsch's own website, "This collaboration with Onkyo infuses hundreds of years of expertise, innovation, and extensive testing protocols. The integration of Onkyo technology into the Flexus Sound System represents a deliberate stride toward perfecting every aspect of sound reproduction within our soundbars." Whether that's just marketing or whether Klipsch really needed Onkyo's help to perfect the soundbar is neither here nor there. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, which we'll get to shortly.

The Flexus line starts with the CORE 100, a $349, 2.1-channel model that sports a front-firing pair of 2.5-inch aluminum cone drivers and a pair of top-firing 4-inch paper cone woofers to support the claim of usability without a subwoofer. It's touted as a Dolby Atmos bar, but with no up-firing height drivers, it relies instead on virtual Atmos processing.