Sony HT-ST7

Good sound, maybe not worth the price – After some extensive research I found that at the price range this was the most full-featured soundbar I could find, much better for movies as it supports DTS (Sonos don't!) so Blu-ray titles so anything with good surround could be taken advantage of. Also it has great connectivity, supporting high resolution sound for Bluetooth, 3HDMI in, 1HDMI… Read more

-ARC in/out to TV and an optical in. Plugging in the Blu-ray you can hear a really good wide room filling sound and if you have a room that's a rectangle you do get a sense that there's more sound sources in the room than just the bar itself. It also supports HDMI-CEC so any of those names like bravia link, Anynet+ etc all work without issue meaning anytime you switch to say bluray the audio source will follow without touching soundbar remote.

On the apple tv, the surround effect is less noticeable however still very good and vastly better than relying on just the TV speakers (just a shame the apple tv doesn't support CEC so it won't automatically switch to it forcing you to grab the soundbar remote)

Bluetooth audio (if you have one that supports APT-X) is fantastic and is able to produce good quality sound. However music specifically is where this starts to fall down, the stereo effect is almost inaudible, while the sound is clear it's missing that extra little bit in tracks that have any crossfade effect. If music is really important to you go into store and I Strongly recommend you test this out with Pnau's "journey agent" or Eagles "Hotel California" etc. What I heard was a wide full sound but no ability at 4m away to hear the stereo separation or very weak at least. Also due to it's setup to be mostly for movies the sound was a little bright in spots for music.

Finally after un-packing the sound out of the sub is a bit boomy and voices come out highly pronounced over the general sound of a movie, after a few adjustments I managed to get it closer to what I like but found myself constantly fiddling as I changed movies or sound sources. I like the sound out of it just trying to dial it in had me pushing buttons for quite a while.

In short it's a major step up from the TV speakers but it's hardly a replacement for a good stereo setup and if you already have rear speakers you really will have a hard time moving to one of these. Now the reason I mentioned price is that at $1250+ you're getting close to some of the entry level Bose systems with the tiny rear speakers which will do much a bit better service for surround sound movies and be much better at music.

The reason I settled on this was I didn't want to punch holes in my wall for cables to speakers to get a "proper" surround-sound setup but this is defiantly a compromise. So if you're like me and want something that can be set up in 10 minutes, wall mounted under the TV or sat on the TV stand and you're done, this is a great system and does enhance movie watching. Maybe just wait for a sale to get it's price far away from other solutions. Connectivity options, very low standby power, room filling "wide" sound, easy to set up, Clean crisp sound Price, music performance only decent, no ability to see what sound source is coming in eg stereo/7.1 etc, difficult to get it "just right"