That’s about the same as buying one of those high-end Sony OLED TVs I mentioned. All in, the bundle of products I reviewed would cost $2,349.97 before tax.

But to really, truly get the most from the HT-A7000, you’ll also eventually want the optional set of wireless rear speakers ($349.99) and standalone subwoofer ( $399.99 for 200W or $699.99 for 300W). This is for the sort of person already splurging on a Sony A90J OLED with enough disposable income to add Sony’s top-tier soundbar to their cart.

It’s not intended for home theater enthusiasts who want to carefully consider and piece together every individual component of their ideal surround system. The HT-A7000 is about as future-proofed and loaded with tech as soundbars come.

Adding subwoofer and rear surrounds gets wildly more expensive.

The soundbar also supports pretty much every home theater audio codec under the sun, including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. There’s a USB port if you want to plug in a drive that contains your FLAC collection or whatever local audio you feel like playing. You can pair a set of Bluetooth headphones to the soundbar and listen that way to avoid disturbing anyone. Bluetooth and a 3.5mm aux port really aren’t going to cut it for this much scratch, so you also get Chromecast, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, plus the option to integrate the HT-A7000 with your Google Home or Amazon Alexa systems. Sony has also stuffed this soundbar with practically every way to stream music you could possibly want. That’s something the Arc or lower-priced soundbars can’t do. If your TV cruelly only has a single HDMI 2.1 / eARC port, Sony’s new soundbar gives you an extra one. You can plug both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles into the HT-A7000 and enjoy their full visual fidelity - with one unfortunate exception that I’ll explain later. There are still very few soundbars on the market that are so well optimized for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S. The HT-A7000, which starts shipping in September, embraces gamers with two HDMI 2.1 passthrough inputs capable of 8K, 4K at 120Hz, and Dolby Vision HDR. So when designing its latest flagship 7.1.2-channel Dolby Atmos soundbar, the HT-A7000, Sony knew it couldn’t settle and had to throw in the entire kitchen sink to justify the steep investment.Īnd that’s exactly what the company tried to do. There will always be people that balk at the notion of spending so much money and not putting it toward a traditional surround sound system - and that’s especially true (and a fair argument) when you reach this price level. You can spend a fraction of that on a perfectly competent Vizio soundbar, and even premium options like the Sonos Arc cost hundreds less. A $1,300 soundbar doesn’t have much room for compromises.

Dolby dts sound bar