Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was hesitant on spending this much money for a soundbar, but after doing research on soundbars Sony came close to all the features I was looking for and this is one of those times you pay for what you get. At the time, Samsung K950 was comparable in price point and a little cheaper including coming with rear surround speakers, but this soundbar had all the features I was looking for including 7.1, Dolby Atmos, BT, Chromecast and paired with my Sony 4K TV. I got it on sale, so the pricing between this and the K950 was now a toss up. Worse case, I would return it and go with the K950, but since purchased I never looked back. While it can't beat my 7.1 Surround Sound System and shouldn't be compared to one since soundbars are about ease of setup and wiring. These days, they do come close to sounding like a full surround system and this Sony soundbar won't disappoint. The wireless 800 watt sound woofer included makes positioning in a room easy and the weight alone tells you this isn't a passive system. This soundbar really was worth the price and it sounds amazing along with the easy to use onscreen menu interface. I was also able to view my playlist on-screen along with artist/song info and lyrics. The icing on the cake for me is the ability to receive and transmit BT. Paired multiple BT devices including my wireless Bose QuietComfort 35 without any issues and went directly to headphone mode the minute I activated my Bose headphones. Overall, this is a great soundbar with a lot of advanced features that won't disappoint and this is what you are paying for compared to cheaper and lesser ones out there with less features. Make sure you update the firmware to get the now supported DTS.

Great soundbar, little expensive (actually very expensive) but the sound quality is strong. Subwoofer is excellent and happy that the sub came with it for the price. I wish the Atmos effect was more noticeable

I have been having a hard time finding a good quality soundbar for the last 3 years. My old soundbars didn't play speech/dialog loud enough, had very week bass, and one even broke down 3 times on me. Right out of the box you can tell this Sony bar is built to last and of very high quality. It's a beast...bar weighs about 20 lbs and sub woofer is about 30 lbs. The sub woofer is so large that my old sub could fit inside it! The sound quality is excellent and exactly what you should expect from a high end expensive soundbar like this. Speech/dialog comes through very clear and is not drowned out by other sounds/effects going on. I suspect that the bar having 7 drivers plays a big role in this. Additionally this has a clear audio+ sound mode to further enhance dialog. My only (very minor) complaint would be on the remote this comes with. To be clear, it does not feel like a cheap remote, but at the same time it doesn't feel like a high quality remote you would expect this soundbar to be paired with. However it works fine and once you get all your settings adjusted, the only thing that you'll really be adjusting again is your volume...which can be done from your Sony tv remote if you have one.

Wow what an amazing sounds quality! Super easy to setup omg forget bose ! It worka well with my qled Sony tv. Great combo! Was A Bose friend but with this recent purchase, i am converted.You can configured to listen to sound from any blue tooth sources. It is that simple. Be warn , if you use full volume and watching twistet, your neigbor may start closing doors and windows

I’ll start by saying that this unit has phenomenal sound for a sound bar. Movies , tv shows & music alike sound great. Where it really shines is when it is fed Atmos source material. I also love the extensive settings allowed (as most Sony products do). Really nice to have an on screen menu (through ARC) where you can access these settings. I bought a Samsung Q90r soundbar system that after 3 hours & multiple calls to Samsung was still not working correctly (which reminded me why I hadn’t bought anything Samsung in 15 years). Took back the $1,700 Samsung, got the htst5000 and had it hooked up and working within 20 minutes. Now the reason I only give it 4 stars: This thing BEGS to be given the option for rear speakers. If Sony would make this possible in a firmware update I would buy them tomorrow, and it would probably be the best sounding sound bar I’ve ever heard. But all in all, very happy with this purchase. SONY- Give us rear speakers!!!

The Dolby Atmos is a nice addition to movie watching. This is a beast of a soundbar and weighs a lot. So this isn’t for a small TV stand. The built in Chromecast is super convenient.

Awesome soundbar that I have hooked up to my sony 55 in a8h model. It really is a very beautiful looking soundbar, especially when you remove the front grill cover! It has 4 HDMI ports with 4k pass-through, with one being the eARC port. Super easy to set up. I would just like to have the bass to be just a bit stronger but it definitely does sound acceptable, that's just my personal opinion. Other than that it's an awesome soundbar. One thing I want to mention is that some people complain about it not having rear speakers. It's only supposed to be a sound bar and that's it, there shouldn't be any complaints about it not having things that were not offered to begin with. Although if it did have an option to set up rear speakers it would make this soundbar top notch. Just an FYI for sony!

Great Soundbar and sound! It took about an hour to hook up. I was getting sound instantly, but no picture. This had nothing to do with the soundbar, but more the TV settings. My Blu-ray and Netflix sound amazing! It also enhances regular TV. The only problem I am having with it, is that when both the soundbar and subwoofer are left on for several hours, the subwoofer disconnects. It's pretty easy to reconnect it by pushing the on/off button on the back of the subwoofer for a few seconds- up too maybe a minute, then it reconnects. It seems to do it when the soundbar is less than 12 on the volume indicator. I think it's a minor thing. It's never happened when I have it cranked up to 25+. I think this subwoofer and soundbar definitely have the best sound out there. I also liked the $300 off sale price at Best Buy. Once again this is a great setup for a nice size living room. I prefer a wired surround sound for my home theater.

I bought this for the master bedroom since my family room/pseudo-home-theater has become the kid's TV now. On a positive note, these sound pretty good..much better than my Sony 77" a9g or any other output from TV speakers. But I docked one star because I was expecting a microphone calibration which it sorely lacks at this price point. Mic calibration would have improved the sound much better. The only fine-tuning control is in the setting where you can input your distance from your sitting position to the speakers, but only in 1 ft increments. I do like how it integrates very well with my Sony TV using only the TV remote. And my Amazon Fire Cube TV has no trouble controlling it either. If this was going into my home-theater room, I would have bought one with the microphone calibration.

This product is pretty great. It very clear and the bass from the subwoofer is amazing. Unfortunately, you will not get the full performance of this sound bar if you do not have the devices for that job. You'll want to actually have high-res music on your computer/phone/tablet or blueray movies at hand if you want to get the full effects that are advertised. Just know that normal music will sound weak once you've listened to the highest quality of music from this. You have been warned.

This sound bar sounds absolutely amazing in the lower level family room! I did not want to have a bunch of speakers with wires showing. This exceeded my expectations!

Very nice features and performance but again sound bars not as emersive as a home theater system

For this price range I think this is the best sound bar on the market. Crisp sound easy to use.

This soundbar is off the charts Awesome! For the Dolby Atmos watch the fight scene in the glassroom in John Wick 3! The sound movement and detail is insane at a reasonable volume with deep bass that hits hard. I am very glad I got this for TV and movies! Great job Sony!

Overall, we are pleased with the soundbar - so far. We purchased this with a 77" Sony A9G. We chose it because it was compatible piece to the TV. I was skeptical that a single bar could give us a true surround sound feel. I am from the old school where 5.1 sound requires 5 speakers and placement for back channel content. We are happy with the soundbar for regular watching. The bar does produce a booming amount of sound and has an impressive low end for big explosions and solid low frenquency bass. The voice quality is outstanding. The sound DOES sound wider than a single bar should. However, I am still not sure it gives me all the "wrapped in sound" I am looking for.

I literally use this soundbar everyday. I think the bass is underrated, but overall the speaker does well. I enjoy movies a lot more now with the Dolby Atmos . Definitely reconned for those that are just getting into the upscale speaker/soundbar scene.

Great sound and no feedback noises! My first sound bar. Doesn’t quite give the same noise as an old school surround sound but still love it and the base is awesome! One thing to note is I got this open box for under 900. Not sure if I would pay full price for It though

I recently purchased a Sony Bravia 75Z8H TV and after several days of trying to tweak the onboard speakers on the TV, I decided that we needed something better than the in-frame speakers that came with the TV. They sounded tinny and flat. I did some research on several units because my wife is adamantly opposed to wires, satellite speakers, subwoofers, etc. so in my narrowed search, I came across the Sony HT-ST5000 and saw several good reviews online and several positive YouTube reviews as well. I also read some things in the reviews that concerned me, but, knowing how sometimes people tend to exaggerate or lend overt bias to reviews, I chose to overlook the negative reviews. I’m warning you - DO NOT overlook the negative reviews because every single issue that I found in them occurred with this unit. I have had the HT-ST5000 for ten days, as of today (10/19/20) and I’ve already initiated a return for the unit due it being defective. I will not be replacing it with another one as I have no faith in this product based on what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced. Roughly 5 days after setting this unit up with my TV, sat box, 4K Apple TV and Sony 4K Blu-ray player, I began to have the first sign of trouble. When my wife turned on the TV that morning, she said there was no sound. I had the system set to default to turning on the external speakers (ST5000) once the TV or another input was powered on. I could see by pressing the ST5000 remote that the volume was going up or down on the soundbar, but there was nothing coming out of the TV. I tried switching it to TV speakers and eventually I got them to come on. However, switching back to the external speakers resulted in no sound again. I tried multiple inputs and the result was the same. Nothing. I tried turning the TV off and then back on again and this still didn’t work. I wasn’t able to get the sound to come back on through the soundbar through any means I could discern. It just seemed to come back on but it took a good ten-fifteen minutes to do so. Since that first incident, the sound dropping out completely has happened two other times. The last time this issue arose, it was during a playback on Netflix. I had paused a show momentarily and when I resumed playback - no sound. So this was extremely frustrating. Another issue I had with this unit was the frequent (it’s happened five times) disconnect between the wireless subwoofer and the soundbar. I would just notice the sound would be less deep and pronounced and when looking at the subwoofer front, I’d see the light was no longer amber (meaning connected), but red. Again, no amount of tweaking through settings would reconnect the speaker. The fastest way to get the speaker reconnected with the soundbar was to go into the settings menu on the ST5000 and sync the sub and the speaker again. This involves pressing a sync button on the back of the sub, waiting for the amber light to flash, and then hitting the connect button onscreen on the TV. The whole process would take about two minutes, but it’s fairly frustrating in the middle of a movie or program to have to pause everything and then go through this, essentially, set up process. This occurred just last night for the 5th time and it really sealed the deal for me with regards to this unit. One thing that I had seen mentioned in other reviews that I can confirm is the issue with difficulty in hearing speech/voices during playback. I don’t care which mode I used (standard, 3D surround, movie, etc.), it was difficult to hear voices of actors in movies/TV shows. There is a VOICE setting on the remote that you can toggle through. The first setting is UP 1 (which brings speech more to the front of the soundstage - theoretically) and UP 2 (which is a step up to bringing speech more clearly forward) and then off. I could never discern a difference between UP 1 and UP 2. They sounded identical to me. There was a slight difference between the UP and OFF for VOICE, but in the end, I had to watch Blu-rays, streaming, TV with a remote in my hand to modulate between background music (especially during action movies), sound effects, and dialogue. I would have to run the volume up for moments when characters were speaking and then quickly try to decrease volume during any action sequence, again, particularly if there was music accompanying it. Theoretically, this would be great if it actually worked, but I found that not to be the case. The subwoofer is very stylish with a glossy black top and it doesn’t take up too much space. It does add a level of depth and dimension to the sound system that far exceeds the sound of TV speakers alone. It does not sound fantastic as far as subwoofers go, though. For instance, the opening scene of Star Wars where the Star Destroyer comes across the screen pursuing Princess Leia’s ship was not impressive at all. I cranked the settings up to provide what should have been a decent accompanying rumble and it just wasn’t there. So this unit will never replace, say, an SVS subwoofer’s sound. That being said, I really wasn’t expecting it to. If the issues with the sound cutting out completely and the disconnect between the subwoofer and the soundbar hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have looked to replace this unit. This was a far improved sound over the onboard speakers on the TV and that was really what I was looking for. We needed something that didn’t sound so thin and metallic. So for what it is, it could be a very good solution for someone not wanting a full surround system. That being said, I can’t recommend it since there are obvious frequent problems that others and I have experienced which are just unacceptable for a unit that has such a premium price. There are some good qualities about this unit - it definitely has potential, but, again, they wouldn’t be something that I would say would supersede the concerns/negative aspects. The unit was very easy to set up - it was especially simply going from a Sony TV to this Sony HT-ST5000. The interface is pretty straightforward and I had the unit up and running in about ten minutes. The remote is almost identical to the remote for my Sony Blu-ray player. It’s kind of a chunky little thing that doesn’t have much weight to it, but it’s easy to navigate and works well. The unit is pretty stylish - it looks great on the TV stand and the display is easy to read with or without the speaker grille on. That’s really about it. It looks nice; it is easy to set up; the operation of switching between modes, turning volume up or down, etc. are all easy to find/utilize on the remote. However, the actual real life bugs that occur during use are too much to be overlooked. I’m replacing this with a Sennheiser Amber today and I will hopefully be done with the search for improved sound for the Z8H TV I just bought!

I purchased this item based on other reviews and I have to say, I am not disappointed at all. Sound is high quality. This system is loud.

Excellent sound for a sound bar. The multi channel bar provides great surround sound with good highs and deep base from the wireless Sub.