VIZIO M-Series Elevate 5.1.2 Sound Bar Review

VIZIO’s new M-SERIES ELEVATE 5.1.2 SOUND BAR brings quality audio and convenience to any flat panel TV with three discrete front channels and two Atmos height speakers in the main bar. A wireless subwoofer and accompanying surround speakers complete an immersive sound envelope. Easy setup and slick styling mean anyone can add decent sound to their media room with a minimum of fuss.

Long ago, VIZIO recognized that it is nearly impossible to enclose decent speakers in a flat panel TV. To this end, it has always marketed a complete line of sound bars ranging in price from under $100 to around $1,000. Fitting every budget, there’s something there for everyone.

For 2022, VIZIO has introduced a new 5.1.2 unit called M-Series Elevate. The main bar has three discrete channels, left, right, and center; and two height channels that emanate from the ends where two little vents open up whenever Atmos content is played. To complete the sound envelope, a wireless subwoofer and accompanying surround speakers are paired wirelessly with the bar. Keeping it all managed is one of the coolest remotes I’ve ever seen. It has its own internal menu system displayed on a little screen right on the handset. With quick and easy setup and audio quality to rival the best sound bars and home-theater-in-a-box products, the M-Series Elevate delivers a competitive solution to the problem of tinny internal TV speakers.

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The M-Series Elevate is anchored by a 42-inch sound bar. It has two integrated height channels which rotate upward when a Dolby Atmos stream is detected from your video source. You’ll know it’s operating when the two port covers extend from the ends of the bar. They’re backed by colored LEDs for a futuristic glow. You can change the color or turn this feature off if you wish. The rest of the surround envelope is covered by a subwoofer that plays down to 45Hz and two surround speakers that connect with wires to the sub.

The connection between front and rear is completely wireless. The first time you power everything up, it pairs automatically. The advantage to wiring the surrounds into the sub is that you’ll only need a single power cord in the back, plus the one up front for the main bar.

The coolest part of the M-Series Elevate Sound Bar is the remote. At first glance, it looks like any other handset with buttons to select inputs, surround effects, volume, and the like. But at the top is a tiny screen that shows menu information, much like an on-screen display would, but it’s in your hand so there’s no need to feed additional video information to your display. This is simply genius; one of those “why hasn’t someone done this before” things. The remote isn’t backlit, but the display shows white text on a black background and is easy to read in the dark.

The sound bar has discrete drivers for the left, right and center channels plus the two rotating arrays for Dolby Atmos. The bar is completely covered in fabric except for the ends which have caps that open when the height channels are active. Each channel has its own soft dome tweeter and racetrack woofer. VIZIO doesn’t specify a power rating, but the system will play up to 103dB which is much louder than anyone will need unless they live in an aircraft hangar.

The subwoofer has a single down-firing driver with a high-excursion foam surround and a port in the back. It’s a small cabinet that’s easy to hide behind furniture. The two surround speakers connect to it with included cables that are quite long. If you have a smaller space, the excess cable can be tidied with a couple of included Velcro strips, a nice touch. Also, in the box are mounting brackets for the surrounds and the bar. A quality HDMI cable is enclosed as well along with the appropriate power cords for the bar and sub.

I didn’t need any of the mounting hardware to set up the M-Elevate Sound Bar at the front of my theater on a pair of low speaker stands. It has rubber pads to protect furniture that are soft and non-marring. The cable connections are tucked into two cutouts that keep the wiring clean, routing it out the sides. Large removable decals indicate the HDMI ports. You can use a single cable for eARC-capable displays and there’s an HDMI input for a source device. I used an Apple TV 4K and routed the output to a small flat panel TV I had on hand.

The sub and surrounds went behind my seating with the sub on the floor and the surrounds on two more stands that placed them at ear level. They too have the soft pads to protect furniture. If you wall mount them, there is a small threaded fitting for a large-head screw that hooks into the tiny wall brackets.

Once you plug the bar and sub into power, they pair automatically. A light flashes on the sub for a few moments, then goes solid. This only happened once, the two units were paired from then on without intervention from me. The bar has a voice-guided setup that tells you when it’s looking for a source or display. The M-Series Elevate Sound Bar can also accept voice commands if you connect an Alexa or Google Home device to its Aux VA (Voice Assistant) input or via Bluetooth.

If you like to tweak, the remote has plenty of options for surround effects, channel levels, and more. You can scroll through the menus just as if the display were on your TV screen. The remote’s window is tiny and only shows a single line of text, but it’s extremely well designed and intuitive. This feature is something I’d like to see as part of many AV components. DSP programs include Movie, Music, Game, and Direct. Each has a distinct character and it’s easy to find one that fits your particular room. The Direct option will play two-channel material from just the left and right speakers.

Though it seems minimalist at first, the M-Series Elevate Sound Bar and its remote offer a wealth of options to tweak the sound. I’ve already mentioned the Direct mode, but my favorite feature was the ability to use the extra width/height speakers for all content, not just Dolby Atmos. You can leave them engaged all the time in either width or height mode, the difference being whether they are rotated forward or upward. Leaving them up in height mode was the best for everything, movies, shows, and music. In my opinion, this is the single best part about the sound.

You’ll probably want to tweak the sub and surround levels as I did. By default, the sub is quite loud and though its sound is tight and distortion-free, it’s way too much bass for my taste. I dropped its volume a few clicks and toned down the surrounds too since they were set only a few feet from my seat. Overall volume is more than enough for medium to large rooms.

I connected my iPhone, which is loaded with my entire CD collection ripped lossless, to the M-Series Elevate using the Bluetooth input. There’s a dedicated button for it on the remote. I wished it could be used as an Apple AirPlay device, but I realize this would add to its cost. Bluetooth comes with some compression which I could hear in classical music but not so much in the rock tunes I tried. Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape is an early release of theirs from 1996 but still has their signature sound. Layered guitars were presented clearly with good separation between instruments and plenty of clean bass. The vocals were well detailed and crisp.

Classical music was also sharp with detail and depth. I listened to bassoonist Matthias Racz expertly play the Bassoon Concerto by Henri Tomasi and enjoyed his big warm sound and his amazing technique. He was able to stand out from the orchestra when necessary and blend during the transitional sections. Using the height channels effectively widened the soundstage to fill my theater. Violins and other treble instruments were clear without sounding harsh or strident.

To check out the M-Series Elevate’s prowess with basic TV, I tried an episode of Michael Simon’s BBQ USA on Discovery+. Though the original audio is stereo, the upmix to 5.1.2 was effective in broadening the soundstage without making it diffuse. Dialog was front and center, as it should be, with good balance and depth that included Michael Simon’s distinct baritone quality.

Watching Formula 1 Drive to Survive on Netflix and Obi Wan on Disney+ proved the M-Series Elevate’s Dolby Atmos abilities. Both shows use the format well, especially Obi Wan which has a cinematic quality. Formula 1 is more dialog focused but the race footage had plenty of opportunities for speeding cars to move through the surround envelope, front to back and side to side.

For movie content, I stuck to Disney+ and first watched Encanto at the recommendation of VIZIO. They use this film for their product demos, and it was easy to see why from the get-go. Not only is the dialog almost mesmerizingly accurate, as if you’re being spoken to directly, the ambient detail comes from everywhere, above, behind, to the sides, even from below. This film really uses the Atmos format to its full potential.

I had a similar experience watching Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. As a Marvel movie, it’s pretty much one battle scene after another. Though their formula is getting a bit repetitive, it’s still some of the best material around to demo a rockin’ sound system. The M-Series Elevate rocked for sure as CGI monsters and superheroes zipped around the screen defying the laws of physics. This relatively small sound bar and its accompanying sub and surrounds truly create a large soundscape that fills the room and makes the speakers completely disappear.

The VIZIO M-SERIES ELEVATE 5.1.2 SOUNDBAR delivers a truly immersive audio experience with slick styling and easy setup for less than the price of a decent pair of bookshelf speakers.

For $699, it’s hard to imagine what VIZIO could do better here. The M-Series Elevate 5.1.2 Sound Bar delivers clean audio and a large immersive sound stage with just a few relatively small components. It’s easy to set up and the remote makes tweaking a snap. It brings high quality to music, TV shows, and movies and is a no-brainer addition to any flat panel. With simple and elegant styling, it can be practically invisible in any room. It will certainly have a high acceptance rate by our significant others.

If you’re thinking about budget, consider that $699 is about half the cost of a good-sized flat panel TV. On paper, this breaks the rule that says you should spend twice as much on audio as you do on video. Yet, the VIZIO M-Series Elevate 5.1.2 Sound Bar delivers a lot of the performance you can get from full-blown surround systems with large cabinet speakers and expensive boxes packed with amplifiers and technology.

For a practical solution to the built-in speakers that come with most televisions, the M-Series Elevate should be on your very short list. Highly Recommended.