Sony HTX8500 2.1ch Dolby Atmos/DTS:X Soundbar with Built-in subwoofer, Black

I bought a Sony OLED TV and a Yamaha 4K Dolby Atmos receiver. Surround sound worked with the cable box but wouldn't work when streaming. I could not get the TV to pair with the receiver while streaming. My son gave me a Toshiba sound bar and I couldn't get that sound bar to pair with the TV either. I couldn't stand the poor sound quality of the TV so I decided to get a Sony sound bar and hope that I could get the TV to pair with the sound bar. I have a small fortune invested in the Yamaha receiver and Bose speakers. I was looking for a sound bar that gave me value for my money so I selected the Sony HT-X8500. I read some good reviews on Amazon. I have a small TV room and the sound quality is excellent. It was very easy to install. In ten minutes I had it hooked up and paired to the TV. The sound bar has the sub woofers built in so there is no need to find a location for a sub woofer. The remote is great. I like the news and voice function when I'm not using the cinema function. The only thing that I didn't like was that it takes about 15 seconds for the speaker to switch from streaming to cable. If you want a sound bar for a small room you can't go wrong with the Sony HT- X85OO.

The Sony HTX8500 soundbar has completely transformed my home theater experience. The Dolby Atmos and DTS:X compatibility deliver an immersive, cinematic sound that fills the room. The built-in subwoofer eliminates the need for additional speakers, yet it still provides deep, punchy bass that truly enhances movies, music, and games. Setup was a breeze, and the compact design fits perfectly under my TV without taking up much space. Despite its size, it packs a powerful punch. Whether it’s action-packed scenes or subtle dialogue, the sound quality is crystal clear and balanced. If you’re looking for an affordable, all-in-one soundbar solution with premium features, the Sony HTX8500 is a fantastic choice. Highly recommend!

Our both our surround sound theater and our TV have "aged out", the equipment is fine, but the software cannot upgrade any longer, as the chips are too old and no longer supported by our streaming subscriptions. Therefore neither can work as our streaming source with our TV 😫. Since the industry is "stuck" with the chip shortages yada yada, it is not a good time to be replacing the entire system, so we need to limp along until the industry gets their act together. A new Roku box solved the streaming issue, but it won't send the sound through to the theater - again, age-compatibility issues - so, we needed something better for sound than the TV sound, which is pretty awful. The "promises" for sound bars is that they produce Surround Sound, without the wires and speakers everywhere, so this seemed a reasonable priced option to test that claim, and to get us by until the new system we plan to purchase is available. This came as expected, easy to install, and works. On installation, it claims that you only need the HDMI it comes with if you have an ARC HDMI on the TV. Ours did not work that way, possibly because the Roku is a separate box. If you have built in streaming on the TV, it may work, but with our configuration, even with the ARC port on the TV, it was necessary to install both the HDMI and the optic cable from the TV and HDMI from the Roku box to the speaker to get the streaming sound to the speaker. Since this only came with 1 HDMI cable, we needed to obtain an additional HDMI and an optic cable to make this work, but this configuration was shown in the instructions, and once we acquired the additional cables, it works as promised. The sound is better than the TV sound, specifically, with the TV, speech was difficult to hear and understand speech at low levels, but when we turned the sound up enough to hear the speech, the background sound was unbearably loud. The sound bar fixed that. We were able to tinker with the sound settings and now we can hear the speech without going deaf from the background sound, Yea! Is it surround sound? No. Not even close. If you are sitting VERY close, it tries, but in a normal living room setting, if you are used to 5-1 or 7-1/2 surround sound, you will be disappointed if you expect the same from this sound bar. I did not really expect that it would, so I am happy with this. It is better than the TV sound, and provides additional control for custom sound settings that the TV alone did not have, so it is a step up, which is a realistic expectation. I would buy this again.

Very happy with this soundbar -- I'm not an audiophile but I do appreciate the performance in our room. It helps to hear the dialog in movies (sometimes a challenge), and it enhances the sports experience when watching an event. This Sony sound bar is connected to a Sony Bravia 3 TV. Setup was especially easy -- we used the HDMI cable provided in the speaker box, and supplemented it with a fiber optic cable as well. I'm not sure whether that's a bit redundant, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I had this mounted (directly beneath the TV on an articulating wall mount) and connected and performing within an hour working alone. Using the attachment to the TV means if we move the TV based upon my viewing position in the room, the speaker moves with it and delivers the sound to our seating position. No need to pay for installation. I would definitely buy again.

Great sound, great purchase.

If you're going to spend the money on this, I highly recommend just throwing down $1000 for the higher end version. This is okay, but it's nothing special, and will just make you wish you'd spent more money on something higher end. Music on this sounds totally mindblowingly spectacular, but voices don't, which is a big problem for an audio device that you're hooking up to a TV. Whenever a scene comes on that's mainly sound effects and music, then this thing really shines and impresses me, but when people start talking then it often disappoints. It's better than my TV's speakers for sure, but voices are sometimes less muddy (though lower quality overall) on my TV's speakers. A big problem is that there are only three bass settings, and the bass is what makes the voices muddy, so you either end up having a little too much bass with voices slightly muddy, or too little bass. The controller and integration with a Sony brand TV also leave a lot to be desired. I have a Sony TV, so you'd think there would be some nice integration, but there's not. For example, when you turn the volume up or down, it doesn't show the volume on the TV, only on the sound bar. The sound bar's whole interface leaves a lot to be desired. There are like 5 LEDs that they use to display everything (including volume), which tends to be confusing. You'd think with a Sony TV at least that the TV would display the settings instead, or at least the volume, but no such luck. You're stuck with the confusing LEDs. The fact that it comes with a remote at all is slightly annoying; the last thing I need is another remote. The controls have a lot of complex options and functionality. There are different options you can cycle through by holding a button down instead of pressing it and vice versa. It has a bunch of presets, stuff that specific to certain kinds of content, all sorts of options. You'd think that would be good, but it often just ends up being confusing and unnecessary. The default options are probably the best (which is probably why they made it the default), and you can spend hours cycling through the other options just to find stuff that isn't as good as the default. The whole interface and remote are needlessly complex and confusing. I would have actually preferred if you just plugged the sound bar in and there were no options, remote, or confusing LEDs. The vertical surround sound and other surround sound stuff it does is pretty cool when you're listening to music, but the moment it switches to voices you're going to wish you'd spent more money for the higher end version. The surround sound does seem to surround when music is playing, but when voices are playing then it often feels like a slightly smaller sound stage than my TV's built in speakers. The surround sound stuff seems to occasionally slightly distort voices as well, but like the muddy voices it's often transient. This thing definitely shows off how cool it could be if you'd spent more money. Overall, this might make a nice gift for a friend or family member (or a child) who isn't an audiophile or who has an old TV, but I'd highly, highly recommend just spending $1000 instead if you're going to buy a sound bar for yourself. It's just kinda not worth it at this price point. It does look beautiful though, I'll give it that, and when music is playing it's totally spectacular. It is overall better than my TV's built in speakers, but the occasional muddy or distorted voices bother me.

This soundbar was the perfect complement to my new bedroom TV ( Sony OLED 55in Bravia XR A80K Ultra HD SmartTV ). It has just the right amount of top bass and treble for a bedroom setup. TV is stand mounted w/ the soundbar sitting centered directly in front of the TV. It’s a super simple setup w/ clear easy to comprehend directions. So easy that they even put a red sticker over the HDMI out port and leave open the eHDMI In port so there is no confusion ( if you mess up this install you should probably do yourself a favor an hire someone to handle all audio/video task ). The included controller works great but don’t even need it bc my TV remote will work all the soundbar features all the same. Also it has all the main power / input / vol and Bluetooth buttons in easy reach 🔝 of soundbar. Great airplay features so if you want to only use the soundbar w/o the TV on you can rock out while cleaning or doing laundry. Bottom line is it a SONY so we all know what to expect, quality quality quality. It passes all the test w/ flying colors ✅

I bought this as an "upgrade" to my current soundbar, since my old one lacked eARC and my new TV supported it, I wanted to see the difference, plus this had Dolby Atmos and I wanted to try it out. Well, I'll say this, it has some punch to it. It gets plenty loud and sounds really good. The major and I mean MAJOR, problem is that you can't really hear anyone talking unless they're basically yelling when watching or playing anything unless you crank the volume WAY up and when you do, anytime a loud scene comes on, it's rumbling your room and about to shatter your eardrums. No matter what I tried, I couldn't balance out the volume and get the dialogue to be clearer and crisper without having to crank the volume up. The different EQs and presets made little to no difference whatsoever. As I live in an apartment, this isn't acceptable for my living space and the last thing I want is a noise complaint and I'd warn anyone else who lives in an apartment against getting this. If you live in a house, without children, it's probably fine for you, the need for cranking up the volume won't be much of an issue. Unless you actually like subtitles, I wouldn't invest in this either because that's the only way you'll be able to understand what people are saying at reasonable volumes.