Majority Elias soundbar review | Tom’s Guide
Growing up, adults often told me, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Unfortunately that’s the case with the Majority Elias soundbar. A £99 soundbar with Dolby Atmos? If the Elias lives up to Majority’s claim, it could storm to the top of our best soundbars list, I thought.
That’s not to say the Elias is an inherently terrible soundbar. If you’re just a casual watcher and you can’t bear your TV speakers any longer, but don’t want to drop hundreds on a soundbar, the Elias could be an acceptable answer.
Just don’t expect the Elias to meet the grandiose expectations made by its manufacturer. The Dolby performance was lacking, and the bass is almost nonexistent. For an immersive home cinema or TV experience, the Elias is lacking. I’ll go through everything in this Majority Elias soundbar review.
Majority Elias soundbar review: Cheat sheet
- What is it? A simple 2-channel soundbar with a range of connection options and Dolby Atmos
- Who is it for? People on a budget or just starting out in home AV systems
- What does it cost? £99
- What do we like? ‘3D’ mode produces very good sound for TV
- What don’t we like? Music and movies sound lackluster
Majority Elias soundbar review: Specs
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Price |
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Connectivity |
Bluetooth 5.3, HDMI ARC, EARC, aux, Optical, USB (playback only) |
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Weight |
6.6 pounds |
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Dimensions |
24 x 3.9 x 2.7 inches |
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Colors |
Black |
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Subwoofer |
No |
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Dolby Atmos |
Yes — ish |
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Frequency response |
80Hz-18KHz |
Majority Elias soundbar review: Price & availability
At time of writing, the Majority Elias soundbar is only available in the U.K., having been recently withdrawn from the U.S. market. It’s available for £99 at Amazon U.K.. I’ve reached out to Majority’s representative for information regarding the Elias’ wider availability, but am yet to receive a response.
The RRP of £99 places the Elias as one of the cheapest Dolby Atmos soundbars. In fact, our best budget Dolby Atmos soundbar, the Yamaha True X Bar 40A, is £549. Snagging a Dolby Atmos soundbar for just £99 feels almost criminal — but the Elias doesn’t offer the performance of other Dolby Atmos soundbars, so no proverbial laws have been broken here.
Majority Elias soundbar review: Design & controls
- Sleek and monochromatic design
- Up-firing speakers
- Flimsy remote
One of the best aspects of the Majority Elias soundbar is its appearance. It’s sleek and monochromatic, with buttons on the top side. These on-bar buttons control volume, power, and mode. If you want to control treble, bass, and more, you’ll need to use the remote.
The Elias is a 2-channel soundbar with up-firing speakers. 2-channel sounds super high-tech, but it’s actually the most basic form of soundbar. 2-channel means it has two speakers: one on the left, and one on the right.
In practice, this means it has stereo sound, but cannot translate audio into full, immersive surround sound. For that, you’d want a central speaker and separate channel speakers.
Up-firing speakers reflect sound off the ceiling to provide a surround sound experience. However, these speakers will never be able to do the legwork of a multi-channel multi-speaker setup. You will need a collection of speakers for a full cinema experience, like the Polk Signa S4 (£399).
Majority Elias soundbar review: Features & setup
- Easy setup
- Range of outputs
- 3D mode good, but not ‘true’ Dolby
The Elias is wall mountable, but I just placed the soundbar on my TV stand. I don’t think this negatively affected the quality of the sound, as the up-firing speakers still had room to send sound skyward. My actual house was the problem with the up-firing speakers, as I discussed in the previous section.
I connected the Elias to my Toshiba LCD Color TV. Setup was incredibly simple: I literally plugged one end of the HDMI ARC cable into the soundbar and the other end into the TV. From there, I turned on the Elias using the provided remote and it automatically switched to ARC.
You can also connect to the Elias using optical, aux, USB-A flash drive, and Bluetooth. The soundbar does not come with an optical cable or aux.
In theory, this would be good for parties (if you don’t have a speaker), but I found the sound too tinny to do justice to music. I wouldn’t recommend the Elias as a TV and music audio device — music is less forgiving for mediocre sound quality than movies.
There are a range of listening settings on the remote: ‘movie’, ‘music’, ‘news’, and ‘3D’. I used ‘movie’ for ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, ‘music’ for streaming our Tom’s Guide testing playlist on Spotify, ‘news’ for the reality TV show ‘The Traitors’, and ‘3D’ for everything else.
‘3D’ is the Dolby Atmos mode, but I didn’t notice much of a surround sound experience. ‘3D’ was audibly the superior listening mode, but it was not full surround. I will discuss the sound quality further in the ‘sound quality’ section below.
That’s not to say the Elias’s sound quality is awful for TV. While watching The Traitors I was actually quite impressed with the sound. However, music and action movies fared less well.
Majority Elias soundbar review: Sound quality
- Disappointing Dolby
- Tinny music playback
- Decent news & TV sound
To test the Majority Elias in its intended environment, I watched a lot of TV over the weekend before writing this review. I watched ‘Inside Out 2’, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, ‘Life On Our Planet’, ‘The Traitors’, ‘Borat’, and ‘Bridgerton’.
Movies
I found ‘Borat’ and ‘Inside Out 2’ sounded the best through the Elias soundbar. ‘Borat’ is, undoubtedly, a movie without the lofty production value of the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise, so there’s no doubt in my mind the production style befits the Elias — there’s simply less clarity to be muddled in the first place.
‘Inside Out 2’ is obviously made for children, so the voice actors will be enunciating their words properly. While watching ‘Inside Out 2’, I had no problem hearing dialogue, even the whirlwind cadence in which the ‘Anxiety’ character speaks.
However, I struggled to hear the dialogue in the action scenes of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, despite listening in ‘movie’ mode. The climax of the movie was busy and muddled, and I found myself having to rely on memory to decode the actors’ lines. The bass was tinny during fight scenes, yet also overshadowed dialogue.
As I found a lot of the dialogue in ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ to be muddled, I wracked my brain for the clearest speech I could think of. The ‘Bridgerton’ cast’s posh tones came to mind, so I promptly watched the first episode of the regency drama in ‘3D’ mode. I was able to understand everything the actors said. The Elias isn’t terrible for audibility, but it struggles with overpowering OSTs.
Dolby Atmos
To test the Dolby Atmos, I watched ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on Disney+ Premium. From the 20th Century Fox intro alone, I was disappointed. The guitar sounded stretched and pinchy, like the Elias was struggling to translate the sound.
In the famous Live Aid scene, the clapping of the crowd almost drowned out the music in some parts. I was actually surprised that something managed to make Queen sound lackluster. That’s a talent in and of itself, in my opinion.
The dialogue was decent, but the music sounded so flat and uninteresting, I could hardly believe I was listening to Freddie Mercury’s vocals. I would not recommend this soundbar for serious movie lovers.
TV & News
I watched ‘The Traitors (U.K.)’ and ‘BBC News’ on ‘News’ mode. ‘News’ mode softened the treble, which meant less sibilant hissing during speech. I kept the Elias in this mode while watching ‘The Traitors’ and the results surprised me. I didn’t notice the soundtrack was affected negatively, and speech sounded softer, yet still audible.
For such an affordable soundbar, the TV playback actually impressed me. If you only watch TV series on the best streaming services like Netflix, I think this would be a good budget option. And I mean only.
Music
After completing my TV testing, I wanted to check out the Elias’s ‘Music’ mode. I connected my iPhone 11 using Bluetooth, which was instant, and set the soundbar to ‘Music’.
While it’s nice to have the option to connect to my phone or laptop via Bluetooth, it’s definitely not worth it, unless you’re desperate. I amped the bass up to max and played ‘Heat’ by Tove Lo and SG Lewis, which is a synth-heavy house track.
Let me tell you, there was no bass to be found anywhere. It’s an occupational hazard for a speaker without a woofer. However, the vocal was clear and audible, but that’s because Tove Lo has an alto voice, so not really indicative of the Elias’ performance.
I listened to a lower vocal track — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘Red Right Hand’. In contrast, this string-led instrumental sounded much better than Cave’s deep tenor voice, which was almost unintelligible. In general, Cave’s catalog of tracks sounded flat, tinny, and uninspiring.
I would not recommend using the Elias for music at all — you’d be better off checking out some of the best bluetooth speakers if you need something to listen to music with.
Majority Elias soundbar review: How does it compare?
- Not the best budget option
- Skip the Elias and get a little pricier option
- Recommend the Polk Signa S4 or Samsung B650D
While I wouldn’t claim the Elias is one of the best cheap soundbars, it’ll do in a pinch. However, it obviously wouldn’t hold up against more luxurious options like the Sonos Arc Ultra (£999), or the Vizio 2.1 soundbar, which is currently just £246.
However, if you have the capacity to save up a little extra money, but you don’t want to splurge, personally, I’d skip the Elias and get the Polk Signa S4.
Majority Elias soundbar review: Verdict
The Majority Elias soundbar is an acceptable basic soundbar for the money, but it will not hold up for those who want a properly good soundbar. The bass is poor and some dialogue was muddled in loud scenes. Softer noises were lost in the mess of action scenes, and sometimes the soundbar turned itself off for no reason.
I would recommend this for a starter soundbar only for users who watch reality TV or series’. True movie aficionados, or those wanting to build a home cinema system, would be very disappointed.
But then again, are TV viewers fussed about a soundbar in the first place? I wouldn’t have thought so. As a result of the mediocre sound quality, I can’t recommend the Majority Elias for anyone other than those desperate for a soundbar with a small budget. It’s better than TV speakers, sure, but I don’t think enough to justify $100 — I’d bite the bullet and get something like the Samsung B650 D or the Polk Signa S4.
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