Fantastic sound, great connectivity, looks great under the bravia TV. Great price for the volume. Compact nut has good quality bass and great at virtual surround.

After trying various soundbars for my bedroom and being dissapointed in different ways, I came across this one. I have its big brother the A7000 and love it, I had also recently upgraded its rear surround speakers from the SA-RS3S to the SA-RS5’s (for the upward firing speakers in them) so this meant the RS3S speakers were sat in the cupboard being wasted. I had no issues pairing them to this soundbar to make it a true 5.1 surround, this had to be done using an app though. When paired they have a clean connection, no background noise at all and are in perfect synch with the soundbar (should be expected with how much they are valued at).This leads me to the soundbar itself, the remote only has a few buttons, input, power, AE on/off, voice, night, volume, mute and bass up down. Everything else has to be controlled using the app such as rear speaker volume, speaker setting, HDMI settings, system update, surround mode and more. Without the app you only have very basic controls. For surround mode settings you have Sony’s Vertical engine, Dolby’s virtual speakers surround and DTSX. Personally I prefer Sony’s Vertical engine, as it appears to sound cleaner, clearer and more pronounced than the other two offerings. There is no 360 spatial feature on this soundbar, that is reserved for its bigger brothers. Interestingly the supplied remote does not appear to be infrared, it uses a wireless system that does not need line of sight to operate the soundbar (unlike its bigger much more expensive brother). It must be bored that unlike it’s bigger brothers, this soundbar has a slightly annoying problem where it can take up to five seconds for sound to come out between playing content, it’s not a total deal breaker, but still annoying.When surround speakers are paired you can adjust the volume of them individually in the app which is ideal for me since my right ear is perforated so is not as sensitive as my left, so I can balance the sound via the software (app) for my listening. You can also adjust the speaker distance settings such as left surround, right surround and the soundbar itself, personally I do not notice what exactly this is doing but I have adjusted the settings based on my setup anyway.Other than turning the bass up or down, you do not have any control over equalizer, nor do you get any choices for choosing different ones, just default as Sony has set it. Surely Sony could have implemented it since the app is depended on so much. When turning bass from low to mid there is certainly a difference, immediately there is a punch to the bass and it is surprising room filling. Going to max and I find it to distracting, sometimes the bass does not respond exactly as you would expect and can seem a little excessive, it’s not a terrible implementation, but not as accurate as its big brother.Enabling night mode the sound is more balanced and compressed, as in quiter sounds are boosted and loud sounds balanced to prevent sudden volume differences. This setting is just right for those night time viewings of centent without surprise disruptions to people in the next room. Voice mode does as expected, it boosts the volume of speech out of its dedicated center speaker channel ensuring dialogue is heard clearly. I have this enabled all the time since it does not interfere with the stereo or surround effects.The soundbar is not big, it falls well short the length of my 55′ TV, so the stereo field is not particularly wide, it is noticable but fairly narrow. For me it is boosted more by the distance of my rear speakers which I have further out to the sides. Without them the stereo field would be fairly narrow, even when enabling any of the Surround boosting features.The unit does have a display on its front, this only gives basic info such as the input (TV, Bluetooth etc) and status of rear speakers when it is turning them on. It will display basic info when your adjust bass levels to, but no info on the audio type or quality (this is displayed within the app).Overall I will certainly be sticking with this soundbar for my bedroom, it lacks a number of features of its bigger brothers, but that is to be expected at its price range. Being compatible with the rear speakers I had laying around doing nothing is particularly what won me over. Ultimately for the bedroom the sound quality is good overall and suits where it is for bedtime theatre viewing. It is unfortunate that it relies so much on an app to configure a number of settings and to update the soundbar firmware rather than having any onscreen interface, my guess is that is a cost cutting measure, but I guess setting how you want it and leaving it that way makes it less of a pain. This is a somewhat budget entry into Sonys soundbar selection that is modern, in some ways it shows and considering that price is more than doubled when paired with the SA-RS3S surrounds, it does beat some of its rivals for quality, but price for the whole setup is down to personal preference. I am just glad I already had a spare set of speakers waiting for it.Basically it is fine on its own, just about fine value wise, you would need the surround speakers to get the most out of it. As for the app, set it up and then forget it unless you really want to be messing in an app on your phone to constantly change things.

Great sound from such a neat box

Bought to complement a new Sony Bravia tv. Frustratingly, as for the tv, no written instruction manual! You have to download from Sony website. So you need a pad or smartphone with the download to follow the step by step guide. They want you to sign up to MySony and find out all about you. This is just data mining in my opinion, and really puts me off buying anything else Sony. Having said that, the soundbar has some auto setup features and these help. Overall, the product is fine, but really, really frustrating for an 80-yearold non-technical person to have to mess about with. All my BOSE stuff is much simpler to set up – just plug in and play!