Sony HT-S350 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer: S350 2.1ch Sound Bar and Powerful Subwoofer - Home Theater Surround Sound Speaker System for TV - Blutooth and HDMI Arc Compatible Bar Black

First I've had very high end 7.2, dual sub, high end home theater systems in the past. This is definitely not that, but it also didn't cost $8k. I've had this system now for about 4 weeks. I have a 65 inch Samsung TV and was only using the built in tv speakers for sound. I searched and searched the reviews for a systems that would sound very good, especially compared to the tv speakers and be easy to install and operate....this ended up being the one. I'm glad I bought it,..... more everyday. I looked at hundreds if not thousands of sound bar reviews from Polk, Bose, Klipsch, etc.The install was super simple, if you have a HDMI ARC outlet on the back of your TV, it's honestly just plug and play. So keep in mind this review is with a TV that has HDMI ARC, check your TV to see if you have that. It will say "HDMI ARC" by the HDMI plug. HDMI is not HDMI ARC. All TVs these day have HDMI, some cheaper ones do NOT have HDMI ARC. The other connection option is optical cord (the optical cable is included, the HDMI cord is NOT included). Optical is considered slightly less optimal for sound these days (in my experience when compared to HDMI ARC) and has no actual link to control or work with your TV, optical is just sound from the TV. I do not know how optical would sound, but in my extensive "review of reviews"........I found that many complaints were people that had to use the optical cable because they had no HDMI ARC output on thier TV. With optical it seems the sound may have been less quality and they had annoying connection problems constantly. The truth is, you will get that with any sound bar using the optical cable only. With HDMI ARC the system works flawlessly with each other.The remote operation, to set things up initially, is a little complex but once you go though the manual and figure out all the features, it's not bad to learn. It has a ton of cool features. One that surprised me, was the IR repeater ...what the heck does that mean? Well if the sound bar is sitting too high in front of your TV and blocking the TV remote IR signal receiver, this sound bar can actually take the IR signal of your TV remote from the front of the sound bar and shoot it out the back of the sound bar, so it "repeats" to the front of your TV remote sensor. Pretty cool, but figuring that out, took a while and you have to press and hold a button on the remote for 5 seconds to get it to turn on. READ the MANUAL! There was no difficulty getting the sub to connect to the sound bar, it did it all automatically and continues to do so, every time I turn on or off the TV (again that's an HDMI ARC function, with optical you would have to turn the sound bar on/off and the tv on/off separately). This sub never loses Bluetooth signal from the sound bar, a big problem with other similar systems. It goes on and off when the TV does, automatically (again only HDMI arc, not optical)There's tons of features, you just have to look for them.Ok, now the big one, THE SOUND! Beacause the sub is only around 6 inches, I knew that the bass would not be the deep booming bass of a high end 10 or 12 inch subwoofer. This sub actually does a good job (if turned all the way up on remote .....read the manual, again...) for normal to high/mid range bass. For watching movies and TV, it's not going to have deep base, that shakes your entire house, but it does mix perfectly with the sound bar's lower range end, with mids and higher end bass. The actual bar really shines with clear highs and mids, even it very high volume. The system can get louder than you can listen to it and remains undestorted and clear, until about 47 of 50 level and up on volume (1-50 sound levels, manual again...). The Bluetooth to phone connection is easy to set up and music sounds really good. There's are many sound setting for different types of programs or music but I have found that "Auto Sound" is usually the best all around setting. The manual says auto sound is the setting where the system adjusts the sound to what your watching automatically. It seems to do the best job, to my ears.Overall, the sound is better than expected for a system of this size and cost. I am extremely happy with the sound out of this little system and I was very skeptical. It is not a high end sound system but it definitely sounds way better than the stock tv speakers and is packed with tons of extra features. I have no regrets and WILL update if I encounter any problems, big or small. Good luck on your search.Update #1 at 6 weeks. 12/12/21Update 2. 9/10/22.It's still going strong. No problems at all. Now after a move to a new house and new TV stand and everything is as good as new. I'm really glad I bought this little system. I would highly recommend this system for the type of situation I previously mentioned above. It's still very clear at really loud volume...even though I don't use it super loud often. It's a good one for sports, movies and music. I leave it set on Auto Sound and the sub turned up all the way.Hope you like it as much as I do.

It is great, have owned it for 2 years now still going strong butttttt there’s one thing I’ve noticed I just cannot understand. If you’re listening to tv it is a little quiet (still very good for most environments) but if you pair to Bluetooth for music or anything I swear it’s at least 35% louder. It is honestly far better for music than tv but it still handles tv amazingly. I will for sure buy more soundbars because this product was such an improvement to my home space but I wish I understood the Bluetooth thing.

In the past, Sony has been fairly reliable for quality and design. This sound bar is pretty good, maybe not the best, but overall we're not unhappy.I ordered this as a Christmas gift for my husband... but it arrived in a very clearly marked, incredibly odd shaped package right in front of him so installation was a bit earlier than expected. It seemed ridiculous to try to pretend it didn't arrive. Anyway, setting it up to our newer RCA 4K TV wasn't difficult. You plug the bar and subwoofer into outlets, hook the bar to the TV with a >>>NOT PROVIDED<<< HDMI cable, and the included optic cable if your TV doesn't have an ARC input. Then follow the set up guide to get it going. About that... no matter what your available inputs are this requires the HDMI cable, so it's really annoying that one is not included. We ended up taking one from a game system the kids don't really use so we could finish set up. I'd be really annoyed if this were Christmas day and we didn't have one. Anyway, make sure you have one.The sound quality is good. I can't say great because getting the subwoofer set isn't simple. It's still a bit overwhelming. The volume on the bar itself does not auto adjust, so if you're watching something and there's an unexpected explosion then the whole house knows there was an unexpected explosion. Super fun when you're asleep in another room at 1AM. I don't think the TV itself has an auto adjust for the volume, so that might not be an issue for every TV.But there's one "side effect" to this sounds bar that we really did not expect, and frankly still find perplexing. We have a 4 month old puppy, and set up her crate in the living room. The subwoofer sits to the side about 6 feet from her crate with a storage bin between them, and the bar sits overhead by about 4 feet and back by another 4 feet. Immediately after we got this working she freaked out completely. She began barking, howling, whimpering, and shaking throughout her entire body. She then peed and pooped several times in her crate before we could figure out what was going on. She has never acted like that before, she's actually pretty chill. We turned everything off, helped her and cleaned up, then sat with her on the other side of the room and tried again. And again she freaked out, nearly choking herself trying to get away. It was so sad! We still can't figure out what it is about this that she's reacting to. We removed the subwoofer, changed every setting we could, moved her to another room, it doesn't seem to matter. It's just a strange situation. She calmed down after a couple days and we've been able to use this, but she cannot be near it when it comes on. The best we can figure there's some kind of electronic frequency from the equipment that just is, something we can't adjust, that she can hear or feel. My husband has a recording studio so he tried to test the sound frequencies but the TV itself produces them and alters what he can record or test.So I guess it's just something to watch for if you have a pet. This isn't enough to send it back, and she's adjusted okay after a few days as long as we do our part and pay attention.And buy a new hdmi cable if you buy this.