The Hisense HS5100 includes a somewhat limited selection of sound enhancements compared to higher-tier flagship soundbars. Accessing these features is strictly done through the remote; there’s no companion app. Room correction and adjustable levels for the various speakers aren’t on the menu. You can alter the EQ by cycling through presets: ‘Movie,’ ‘Music,’ ‘News,’ ‘Night,’ ‘Sport,’ and ‘Game,’ but you can’t fine-tune specific frequencies as with a graphic equalizer. Still, the remote has Bass and Treble buttons, which allow you to boost or cut each range up to five increments from neutral.

Press-and-hold the ‘Surr’ button on the remote for three seconds to select either ‘Pure Surround,’ which applies a virtual surround sound algorithm and upmixes all audio to 5.1 surround, or ‘Surround Pro,’ which plays back your audio’s channels correctly as mixed. If you turn surround sound off, it mutes the satellite speakers and sends those channels to the bar and sub-only, which can come in handy alongside the ‘Night’ mode, so you don’t bother the household when it’s late. The ‘News’ EQ works similarly to a voice enhancement mode by cutting bass and treble frequencies and making speech cut through.