Facepalm: If you’re the proud owner of a top-of-the-line Samsung soundbar from 2024, chances are you’ve had a pretty rough week. The company has admitted that a crappy software update has managed to brick “certain” models from last year’s soundbar lineup, turning them into pricey paperweights.
The confirmation comes straight from Jim Kiczek, the head of audio at Samsung Electronics America. In a statement to The Verge, Kiczek called it a “software update error” that impacted some of the company’s 2024 soundbars. He says Samsung is now offering free repairs for all affected units regardless of warranty status.
For some context, reports started flooding in last week about Samsung’s flagship HW-Q990D soundbar going haywire after a firmware update. Owners complained that while these premium systems did power on, they froze on the TV eARC input. They then became completely unresponsive and cut off from the Samsung SmartThings app. No amount of resets or reboots could revive them.
The issue isn’t just limited to the Q990D, either. There are many reports across Samsung’s community forums, Reddit, and AVSForum about the HW-Q800D and HW-S801D models suffering the same fate.
These reports also state that Samsung customer support didn’t have an answer. All they said was that the issue had been forwarded to the warranty team and that they were awaiting a response.
What makes this situation particularly painful is that a simple software patch doesn’t seem to fix it this time. It appears that these bricked bars require physical repairs to bring them back to life.
The buggy firmware update causing all this audio anguish appears to be version 1020.7. Many of Samsung’s high-end soundbars were set to install it automatically, which is why the issue spread so rapidly across multiple countries like the US, Austria, Malaysia, and beyond.
For those with working Samsung speakers, the advice is to immediately turn off automatic updates for now.
While software snafus happen, it’s still a lousy scenario for those who splurged on Samsung’s impressive 2024 soundbar lineup, like the well-reviewed Q990D. Instead of theater-quality sound, they get expensive silence.
