Samsung admits it may have bricked your soundbar, offers free repairs

Samsung's flagship HW-Q990D soundbar is one of several models affected by a serious software update issue, Samsung has admitted.

It has also confirmed that the problem cannot be solved with another update, it needs an in-person repair instead.

It emerged last week that some Samsung soundbar owners with automatic firmware updates enable, found their devices were effectively "bricked". They were no longer controllable via SmartThings, didn't respond to the remote, and couldn't be factory reset, either.

According to posts on multiple sites, including Reddit and Samsung's own user forums, the flagship soundbar wasn't the only affected model. Its HW-Q800D and HW-S801D bars were having the same problems.

Samsung said last week that it was investigating, and US audio head Jim Kiczek has now confirmed to The Verge that there was indeed a problem with the firmware update.

Can you trust automatic updates?

All credit to Samsung, it has moved quickly on this one. The company rapidly confirmed the cause of the problem and has provided affected customers with a solution. You can get a free repair irrespective of warranty status.

However, it's still an embarrassment for the tech firm, because it suggests that Samsung's testing setup isn't as good as it should be. Given that we're talking about a soundbar that's at the high end of the market, problems like this shouldn't be making their way to customers' devices.

This isn't a disaster on the scale of last year's (and still ongoing) Sonos app problems, but it does suggest that it might be wise to disable automatic updates on your everyday devices. You can never be sure what issues they might create.

This is common practice for people who depend on devices for work. For example, music producers don't update macOS X until they're absolutely certain it won't introduce bugs to their music software or create conflicts with their hardware.

For me, it's just as important if you want to be sure your soundbar will work for the series finale of Severance.