HT-SF150 2ch Soundbar for TV with Bluetooth

I originally had an old TV, Blu Ray player and Sky box hooked into a traditional hi-fi amplifier, but when I bought a new Sony TV it didn’t have a line-out socket to allow this, and despite it being a very modern TV, the audio was never great. Budget was an issue and I wasn’t looking to spend a huge amount of money. And a full Surround Sound option wasn’t really an option as I didn’t want more wires threaded around the place. This Sony sound bar connects to the HDMI ARC input on the TV and channels audio from all connected HDMI devices. If you don’t have an ARC connection, you will need a vanilla HDMI port and Optical Digital Audio, for which a cable is provided. Audiophiles may criticise the sound quality but I find it much much better than the native TV audio. My only minor gripe is that it lacks a little bass but this isn’t a deal breaker. You will definitely notice the difference when switching between the sound bar and the TV audio. The sound is ‘fatter’. I’ve not tested Bluetooth music streaming much yet as the connection kept dropping, even when the phone was right next to the sound bar. However this might be down to my 4-year old phone that also has trouble connecting to my car stereo. All in all though, this is a great entry level sound bar for those on a limited budget. Pros: Very easy to setup with a single HDMI ARC connection. Channels audio from all connected HDMI devices. Excellent sound quality for a low price. Looks great. A simple black box with no extraneous frills. Cons: Lacks a little bass, which is quite noticeable when playing music over Bluetooth. Slight delay of 1-2 seconds in getting audio from power on and switching modes. HDMI cable not supplied.

Getting straight to the point - this is a great sound bar for the money. There are lots of mixed reviews from various people depending on their own criteria, but for me this is a real positive addition to the tv plus some. I bought another brand of soundbar prior to this which had 5 star reviews on amazon but lacked clarity and quality of sound for me so I sent it back and got this for £75 half price at Christmas. My experience of this sony bar is very good so far. It doesn’t come with a built in sub, nor does it have an output for one unfortunately, which is where it falls down very slightly. The sound is good and clear, lots of volume and controllable through hdmi arc but does lack a little bit of boom. There is good punch though. We listen to music on it as well as films and only a couple of times I’ve though it needs an extra bit of bass. The remote is good but once set up and in the sound mode you like, you don’t need it as you can control it via the tv remote. It also fits perfectly below my 55” tv. For the price I’d highly recommend it to anyone. For reference, my tv is set approx 5/6ft from my sofa which is square on. Soundbar on top of a tv unit almost in line at head level (slightly below).

I did this review years ago, now it's 2023 and I'm still rocking this sound bar. No issues or audio degrading from the speakers. Been a great match for my Series X, PS5 and Legion laptop. This thing will outlive me. Another minor update. So I've recently purchased a new TV, since my old LG had unfortunately broke (cracked screen). That means it is now residing on my wall, directly under my Samsung 55 7500 curved TV. Gone have the soundbar mounting arms, that hanged above my TV. I found my old Sony wall guide, marked the holes and drilled it with my Ryobi impact driver. Still works perfect and is working with no hitches on my 7500 Samsung using the arc function. Smart remote fluidly controls the volume +- and mute and the nifty feature when my TV wakes up the soundbar is not far behind with the ARC function. So a 2019 small update and this soundbar is still going strong, I wasn’t going to come back and edit this review but the overall thumbs ups persuaded me. I initially payed £150 for this and now the price has dropped to around £81 on Amazon and to me that is a stellar bargain for anyone wanting a simple but effective upgrade to their sound. Straight off the bat this will never be a 5.1 or complete surround sound killer. I’ve recently installed mine above my 43 inch 4K TV with a soundbar vesa mount, keep in mind this needs a mount that allows for wall mountable bolts/screws for the TV VESA Mount and you will be golden. Many mounts come with black little bolts but some strong bolts with nuts can solve this as well. —- I can actually hear my movies! Using this in ARC mode on my 43inch 4K LG tv and it has saved me so much hassle in controlling the volume and not searching for a plethora of boxes. Bluetooth works perfectly so I can listen to my music/audiobook playlist. The first film I watched when I set this up was Jurassic Park on Blu-Ray and the sound was so much better than my 43 inch 4K TV speakers by miles. You are in that moment, it’s late but you can’t hear anything being said, you turn it up and you go much better; then WHAM, bomb goes off and your heart drops. No more of that with voice/night mode. Plus the games also benefit and too I can hear the actual voices. Even low sounding films like Dark was the night was vastly improved. I had an old Bose solo tv base and sadly the sound has been lacking for years and one of the worst purchases I made, so I set myself a budget and wanted the bass inside the speaker as I didn’t want a sub woofer on the floor to be kicked around or annoy my neighbours as they make a right racket. This just fits me perfectly, it will never beat a true surround setup, but it’s easy to use. Simple setup and no long wires for 5.1/7.1 setups.

After trying two other cheap soundbars "2.1" and being disappointed with both I thought I would give it one more go and go with a well established brand. Specifically the entry level Sony soundbar :- "Sony HT-SF150 2ch Single Soundbar with Bluetooth and S-Force, Front Surround - Black" [120w] I didn't want a separate active subwoofer as its only for my bedroom and I tend to watch movies as I fall asleep so this seemed ideal. Compared to the previous two I bought this one was lacking in the connection/input side of things (RCA connection) but was far superior when it came to features namely Dolby signals/multiplex audio. F. Surround sounds good when the soundbar receives a Dolby signal, it has DRC (Dynamic Range Compression) which makes dialog/vocals easier to hear in Dolby enabled movies in the event they sound quiet, It has a separate vocal mode which works well, movie/music mode for a more punchy bass, The usual standard mode and an auto-select mode, which swaps it around (EQ-Modes) depending on the media you are playing. Each one is interchangeable and the mode is highlighted by the LED. For instance press the vocal button once and the led on the bar will light up once, press it again and it will blink twice (one blink = off, two = on) So on a night I tend to put both nightmode and vocal on, this limits gun shots / explosions but enhances dialog. ARC works fantastic (TV remote controls volume and standby/power) and the bar remembers your EQ settings/volume after coming out of standby unlike the cheaper bars. (With the exception of 'nightmode' that disables and goes back to normal after bringing the bar out of standby). When viewing a movie with a Dolby signal the bar can be set to play the front channels (with f.surround) / just the sub channel (both speakers dedicated to bass) or the front and sub channel, when you select the latter it will play the front channel through the left speaker and the sub channel is played through the right speaker, quite clever really. These are enabled with the remote. Too be honest though I've not needed to use that, this may not be a 2.1 speaker and a lot of reviewers say it has no bass but that hasn't been my experience at all, The reflex bass can be quite punchy especially with action movies (guns explosions) when viewing films from my PC the volume has never been higher than halfway, most of the time it's a few steps past quarter (and a few steps below when I'm trying to sleep). Let's be realistic though it's never going to be in your face bass rattling windows, vibrating under your feet... (making the neighbors hate you), You are going to need to buy a unit with an active sub for that .... and spend the extra coin to pay for it. Movie explosions/music sequences can still be heard downstairs a lot of the time during the day (small two bed house) Finally, in the event you have your speaker in front of your TV and it blocks the sensor, this bar has a iR repeater built into the back, when enabled it picks up your remote commands and duplicates them at the back of the soundbar, sending it to your TV sensor. I've not needed to use it even though the bar is in front of my TV my signal still reaches... But a very handy feature in the event you need to use it. Plus standard features, USB for music/podcast playback, Bluetooth mobile / tablet audio streaming (prob some other odds and ends I've forgot to mention) The only conclusion I can come too (in regards to some of the negative reviews) is a lot of reviewers didn't read the included instruction book and thought they activated modes when they infact turned them off (one light blink). I tried both the :- AZATOM 2.1 180W TOPVISION 2.1 120W The latter being in the top ten Amazon rank for soundbars (due to a sly free gift offer) Both of those offered big claims in regards to performance but they are greatly inferior to this soundbar in more ways then I've mentioned here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this bar is perfect, but for the money it is a lot better than my previous purchases and I'm happy with it overall. (It's fit for purpose). I paid £87.97 for this bar and it's worth every penny, A much better sound presence then the standard downward facing speakers built into my LG-SmartTV. > July 2021 edit: This review was originally written with my LG smart TV paired to the Sony bar. I thought it was only fair to add, I have just linked it to my Philips ambilight smart TV via arc input and the audio is very low compared to the LG and the volume does not display on screen as was the case with the LG setup. (After playing around with this problem further, I can restore volume levels by going into the TV settings and selecting, Settings|All settings|sound|advanced|delta volume -and moving the slider up, As for the volume being displayed on the screen I've still not figured that out) Just wanted to add this information for full transparency. I hope this review helps.

Absolute bargain from a premium brand. Sounds very clear with reasonable amount of bass and goes more than loud enough for anyone living in a flat/apartment. Looks super premium and expensive as well. Works perfectly with HDMI controls through my Apple TV so I can adjust the volume using the Apple Remote. It’s also handy to be able to connect directly via Bluetooth for music without having to turn on the TV, and then it even automatically switches inputs back to TV next time you turn it on. For £99 this soundbar is an absolute steal. You would have to spend £300+ to get something noticeably better than this.

Early days with this sound bar and lots of tweaking and experimentation to try with the thing, but we basically bought this because we got sick and tired of the terrible audio mix on most Blu-Rays these days. Like the majority of folk who have bought a TV in the last 10 years, we found the TVs internal speakers (rear-facing, thin, quite frankly rubbish) drove us to distraction when trying to watch movies. Standard TV broadcasts seemed OK, but as soon as we watched a movie on any terrestrial service like Film 4 or put on a Blu-Ray we had the same problem we've always had - Mumbled dialogue but loud-as-heck music or sound effects. We'd tried just about everything to tweak the TV to get better sound (Sony's "voice boost" tech in their Bravia TVs is a pile of poo) so this was our desperation dive - a reasonably priced Sound Bar. A couple of observations straight off. This is ridiculously easy to connect, giving you a straight choice of optical cable connection or HDMI (if your telly can cope with the latter). Sound quality through both ways of connecting is identical but worth noting that the TV did NOT recognise that an external sound system was plugged in until we plugged in the optical cable (good job you get one supplied with the unit as you don't get a HDMI cable, you'll have to purchase one separately and I'd go for a high speed good quality one if you do). So set up was easy, first frustration came with the size of the unit. From the photos it looks like it snugly fits between the feet of the TV shown in the pics above, but it's about the length of our 40" Bravia (those of you with bigger tellies might be OK, but for us this means the height and the width of the sound bar covers the TV's remote / AR port, leaving us with no alternative but to try and raise the TV up on its plinth a bit. ARGHH!) Another frustration is that using the Sound Bar remote only triggers LEDs on the unit itself to show that anything's happening. There's no on-screen volume bar if you use the Sound Bar so you never quite know how loud / soft it is. Third frustration is that there are various 'modes' of operation with the unit itself, and the one we really wanted to work better for us (voice priority) really does absolutely nothing to boost speech in movies! ARGH! So we're back to the drawing board of trying to figure out what the problem is. On the positive side, music sounds great through this thing (but it's a bit of an expensive Blu-tooth speaker!) but I sincerely think Sony could've done better to integrate the sound bar with their own actual TVs with on-screen prompts for volume, modes etc. 3 stars mainly because it does actually mean we've got front-facing speakers on the TV now (I'm sure our neighbours appreciate this at least, as it means we're not jacking up the noise from the telly and projecting it backwards just to hear mumbled speech in movies) but overall pretty disappointed that this wasn't the golden solution for us.

This is a quick solution for needing sound on my new TV. It works quite well and the sound is pretty decent but it doesn't have a dedicated subwoofer. If I could go back I would definitely look for something that had a dedicated subwoofer as well as a volume indicator. My TCL TV does not display volume indicators for sound bars connected with arc and as the soundbar does not have its own volume indicator I have no more visual indication of what the volume level is. Still a decent product but definitely on the cheaper end and I would go for something a bit better but if on sale id say its worth it.

The Sony sound bar is good for many occupations from the house party, use it with your phone as a Bluetooth speaker and it’s super loud, blast the walls down loud. You can use it in the car (mains power required, maybe use an inverter, and it’ll be the loudest sound system going. Paid it with a Jackery explorer 300 plus and you got yourself a mobile sound blaster and I mean sound blaster, think so loud that you can’t speak to one another. It’s amazing for music and for tvs. The first one I got was dead on arrival but all is forgiven the replacement works Imagine walking down the street in the summer, blazing night nurse or some cool reggae or even tie song creep by Radiohead and boom boom boom it’s loud and you got yourself a street party.

Preis Leistung stimmt.

Ho finalmente ricevuto,e collegato al mio televisore Sony il citato apparecchio,e’ veramente eccezionale e lo consiglio a chi ama la musica.

Hatte mir tatsächlich ein wenig mehr erhofft bei der Soundbar, die sehr hübsch verarbeitet ist und eine ordentliche Breite hat, aber es kommt hier wohl nicht auf die Größe an. Zum Musikhören eignet sich das gute Teil leider ganz und gar nicht. Teilweise war der Sound einfach bassarm und schlechter als die Boxen im TV. Vielleicht optimal, wenn man Hörspiele, Hörbücher oder Podcasts hören möchte. Nach der Hörprobe mit diversen Songs im Vergleich zu bereits vorhandenen Soundbar wurde diese leider wieder zurück an Amazon geschickt. Die Abwicklung des Rückversands war unkompliziert :)

Sembra abbiano badato più all'estetica che alla funzionalità. Ottima qualità del suono ma una barra senza pulsanti in rilievo e un telecomando incomprensibile che neppure riporta la scritta bluetooth. Associarlo ad una TV (io ho una Hisense) sembra una cosa semplice ma mai si considera un decoder, che non ti si dice come lo si collega. Insomma un disastro se non sei un tecnico e non si ha dimestichezza con la tecnologia. Il manuale è semplice e complicato e la barra (senza un tutorial video.. eloquente) dopo giorni, è ancora lì che aspetta. Il "santo" in grado di far funzionare il tutto. Amen.

Il prodotto è arrivato con un cavo non adatto alla rete elettrica italiana.