UPDATE: 2025-05-27 16:36 EST BY ANDREW HEINZMAN
Samsung Confirms It Bricked Soundbars
Samsung has confirmed toThe Vergethat a recent update bricked customers' soundbars. The company isoffering free repairsfor all affected customers, including those who are out of warranty. Evidently, this problem cannot be fixed without hands-on repairs.
Some Samsung soundbars are unresponsive following a recent v1020.7 firmware update. This problem primarily affects the HW-Q990D home theater kit, though it may also impact customers with other models of Samsung soundbars or speakers.
Reports of unresponsive or “bricked” soundbars began flooding theSamsung Support forumandr/Soundbars subredditon March 13th. Affected customers say that their soundbars turn on but cannot produce audio, connect to Wi-Fi, or switch away from eARC input. Attempts to trigger a factory reset by holding a soundbar’s volume buttons also result in failure, meaning that affected soundbars may be genuinely bricked.
The v1020.7 firmware update, which began rolling out on March 10th, appears to be responsible for this problem. Those who have disabled automatic updates in the SmartThings app, as well as customers with old or unsupported soundbars, say that they are not experiencing any issues. Oddly, customers who manually updated via USB also seem to be fine—the v1020.7 firmware may only be problematic when updating over a Wi-Fi connection, though we can’t confirm whether this is actually the case.
Nearly all “bricked soundbar” complaints come fromHW-Q990Downers. This may simply be a sign of the HW-Q990D’s popularity, although it’s possible that the HW-Q990D is the only model affected by the v1020.7 bug. Complaints aboutother soundbar modelscould stem from an unrelated bug or user error, although it’s hard to fully assess the situation at this time.
Samsung is yet to comment on the v1020.7 firmware bug. However, the company has told some customers to send in their soundbars for repairs. This is unusual, as firmware bugs are usually resolved through updates or rollbacks that customers can perform at home. If Samsung’s customers are forced to mail in their soundbars, they will be less trustworthy of the company in the future. Nobody wants to haul a big heavy soundbar to the post office.
We’ve reached out to Samsung for additional information and will update this article when the company responds. To reiterate, we still don’t understand the full scope of this situation, and it’s possible that Samsung will resolve the bug without blowing a fortune on shipping labels. A solution that works wirelessly or over USB would be ideal.
I should also note that firmware updates, while important, are often responsible for devastating bugs and bricked products. Samsung wasn’t born yesterday—the company has accidentally bricked customers’phones,Blu-ray players, andsmart washing machines, yet it continually fails to learn from its mistakes.
If Samsung believes that botched firmware updates are just a fact of life, then it should take steps to make firmware rollbacks safe and easy for customers. A fallback system that detects failures and automatically reverts to old firmware would also be nice, though I doubt that such a system would be 100% reliable, hence the need for increased user control.
You can check your Samsung soundbar’s current firmware version in the SmartThings app. If you want to disable automatic updates (although it’s probably too late for that), open SmartThings, go to Settings in theapp menu(not the devices menu), and scroll down to the “auto update devices and services” button. Just remember to perform manual updates every few months, otherwise you’ll miss out on important bugfixes and security patches.
