Sony HT-A5000 5.1.2 ch 450W Dolby Atmos Soundbar for TV with built-in subwoofer, 360 Spatial Sound Mapping, works with Alexa and Google Assistant

Purchased because I’m sick of trying to understand dialogue buried under a torrent of music and effects on my tv. I connected my Virgin Media 360 straight into the sound bar and then took the Output of the sound bar into HDMI 1 input of my Sony Bravia TV.If you have a more modern TV than my 5 year old model the you can plug the sound bar ARC output straight into the eARC HDMI connecter of the tv.The performance of the sound bar is impressive.So do as the instructions say and set it up using the simple guide first which adjusts thedevice to suit the acoustics of your room.The voice button on the remote lifts the dialogue ofProgramme material for us old guys with dodgy hearing. In my setup switching on my virgin box fires up the sound bar and the tv at the same time.The bar is the same width as my 55 inch Sony tv so is quite a lump.In finishing I’m pleased I bought it.

Really love this 3D-sound based speaker.Looks good, and quite long so measure your space first.The original TV sound was weak by comparison and now I can hear the dialogue properly and deep bass rumbles for films. This is a new dimension of enjoyment.Takes a little bit of setting up but the software 'wizard' walks you through all this so no dramas.Don't compromise with a cheap sound-bar, get a decent one to compliment an expensive TV.Highly recommended.

This is a preliminary review from 2 days of experimentation.This soundbar replaces a JVC Home Theatre 5.1 installation (with 9 separate cables) which was fed by optical S/PDIF from a PC. PC video was through a Display Port 1.4 connection to a BenQ monitor with its own speakers enabled as a fall-back in case of a primary system failure. The video card was, and still is, NVIDIA with Display Port, DVI and HDMI output.The first installation change was due to the soundbar only accepting HDMI or Optical S/PDIF. I changed the video to HDMI and ensured the soundbar would pass through HDMI in Standby mode. This change also required me to have a spare 4K60 HDMI cable to complete connection to the monitor, a point that some users may have to note as there is only one supplied with the bar.Having also connected the optical feed, I left the TV source option as Auto. Whilst this works for sound the BIG problem is that the user loses video when selecting TV as the input source apart from a message about using TV volume control.. I have discovered that without updates, upon reselecting HDMI after changing sound source to TV, the video does not return unless users switch the bar off and on again. This is, obviously, a quirk of the software which is resolved resolved in update to 001.769. That update also installs 360 Spatial Sound and Alexa compatibility.Pass through works as expected and, if the bar is switched off, the sound comes out of the monitor speakers.The second quirk is with PC video files. Whilst .mp4 and .mov files all appear to play with sound there is a problem with some .mkv files. The video content is perfect but some specific files appear to have no sound. This may be due to the sound CODEC used or the way it is integrated into the .mkv file. The bar is supposed to handle most Dolby and DTS formats. This will require further investigation.As for the sound, this soundbar is a tidy and worthy replacement for the older Home Theatre solution. The sound is clear and less "boxy" than that of the old system it replaced. The sound spectrum is more than adequate for my requirements without adding any of the extra speakers offered by Sony.For those who are even more "picky" than me, there is one thing missing from the unit that I would consider a valuable addition. That is some means of notifying the user that a Dolby or DTS CODEC is detected and is being decoded.UPDATE:I recently changed the PC. The new unit has an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 4070 graphics card.It appears there may be some incompatibility between this video card's HDMI interface and the Sony pass through and HDMI live function. The video card cannot identify the monitor and defaults to a very low resolution or fails to output video altogether at boot. I have been obliged to output sound to the bar through the HDMI whilst video is fed through a Display Port channel. It works well in this configuration but it does mean that there are now two cables instead of one. If I connect HDMI output through the sound bar to the monitor whilst the DP is also connected, setting "Duplicate display" on the PC, the HDMI signal is still at a low resolution on the monitor and does not appear to truly be a duplicate of the DP image. It is almost as if one of these devices is speaking in Japanese whilst the other is listening for Taiwanese.

I bought this sounbar to renew my old Samsung 2014 2.1 sounbar.So this one is really wou three dimensional powerful device clear dialogs atmospheric sound and I have paired with sw5 sony 300w subwoofer so now is really home cinema.Honestly can recommend this sounbar.One little minus it's bit expensive but for quality it's ok.

I bought this to pair with a new Sony TV and wow does it bring a whole new level of cinema like sound with it. The rich tones, deep bass and crystal clear voices make this a truly great addition to our home.

This soundbar has a lot of bass good for music but midrange and vocals are lacking when watching tv and movies and is way to big and bulky I ended up returning it and getting Sonas arc.

Only just received the soundbar, not sure that a subwoofer is required if being used in an “average sized” living room. No issues with lip syncing when tested against various sources.

It was not the dramatic change I was expecting. I didn’t buy the rear speakers and maybe that’s what it’s missing. Also it’s very temperamental in terms of integration with my TV. Sometimes it turns itself on automatically and sometimes it doesn’t. For this price point I was expecting something much better, specially from Sony. Does the job, but could be much better.