Product Reviews

I used to have a wired surround sound with a sub woofer, but my wife didn't like the wires so we went for the all in one. The surround sound is really deceptive, sometimes I hear sounds and wonder where they come from. It sounds like the other room, but its coming from the soundbar straight in front of you.The only problem is the led display on the top, you can't see it, it should be on the front.

Two weeks into use very happy with product sound great

Great sound coming from box in my apartment ,sport sounds good because I have dolby plus UHD

Bought to replace old sounder with separate subwoofer. This sound bar is very neat and looks great under the tv. The sound is very good especially on cinema mode

Just bought this today and I'm so happy with it ,, the sounds are fantastic.

Bought it last week and works very well. Was very easy to set up and connect to TV.

I bought this just before Christmas along with a Sony Bravia android smart TV. Has great sound and features and goes very well with the TV.

Will not connect to a Sony Bravia with ARC HDMI, only the optical cable, been through all soundbar and TV instructions and Sony on line help and still no joy. If I am doing something wrong then why do all the instructions and help line not put me right? I would have expected Sony to be a click and play when talking to other Sony products

I bought this 2 months ago and the atmos function works very intermittently , contacted sony support pretty unhelpful , just send out pages of user manual which don't resolve issue, they then ask you to contact one their support agents , nearest one to me is 60 miles away and also expect you to pay postage costs in my case £30.00 , will never buy sony again , very poor value for the money paid

Very good sound bar, but I’ve had issues with the sound disconnecting.

Excellent product from Sony if you don't actually want to setup 6-8 speakers in your room. It does a great job with 1 soundbar!

Purchased this sound bar for Christmas what a great move. Films, sport, documentaties etc. Makes watching tv a totally different experince would not be with it now.

I've had my soundbar a few weeks now and I'm still finding things out about it. Great sound and goes great with my sony bravia TV

Had the product three weeks now. Brilliant product as you would expect from Sony.

I bought this product three weeks ago as a replacement for my Sony Home Cinema system to be honest this does not give the same sound quality but I got fed up listening to the sound produced by the TV and I linked it to a new 4k DVD player the ease of set up was good and not having speakers all over the living room certainly pleased my wife. For the size of the product the sound quality is good.

Sony is top of the tree as far as I'm concerned. Never had poor equipment.

For me I found setting up sound bar was easy following instructions along with fast delivery. The sound ranges are amazing using all its capabilities. For anyone thinking of buying a sound bar at a very reasonable price which delivers a quality sound then I would suggest you will not be disappointed.

Bought the X8500 to replace older wired system and haven’t been disappointed. The set up to our Sony TV was plug and play out of the box and easy to synch with SkyQ. Sound is good in an average size living room and Bluetooth connection for music good too.

Lovely deep rich sound fills the room beautifully. Neat and easy to control

This is a very capable soundbar with a good, balanced sound presentation. The bass is good but not overwhelming. It has puzzled me why the reviews have been so polarised, either five stars or one. I think I understand why. To get the best from this soundbar, you need to connect it via HDMI to a TV that supports ARC/eARC. Remember that Atmos is only supported over eARC or where a component such as a Blu-ray player is connected directly. If you want bass that will shake the furniture, you need a soundbar with a subwoofer; a soundbar on its own will still produce plenty of bass, but with limits. Please don’t expect this soundbar to produce the same surround effects as a system with several speakers. Having said that, this soundbar produces a decent soundstage with some vertical effects. This soundbar is ideal for those who live in a flat or don’t want rumbling bass to disturb others in the house. It will provide scale and weight to improve your enjoyment of movies, sports events and music. It is a good soundbar, but it won’t be right for everyone.

We are very pleased with our purchase overall. However, there were conflicting connection instructions which was frustrating to say the least The printed leaflet supplied in the box said to connect my existing Sony DVD Player X500 to the Soundbar HDMI slot which caused the speaker to crackle. However,Sony Support on 020 7365 2810 advised me to connect it directly to my AG8 OLED TV and it now works fine. I wish the colour of the Sounbar was Black rather than Grey so that it matches my AG8 TV I have it connected to. The lights on top are difficult to understand and remember, it would be so much better to have a small digital display on the front.

I bought this to go with my Sony KD55XG8505 TV. It fits perfectly between the TV stand legs. The sound from the TV was very good for a flat screen TV, but I decided I would like a little more depth of sound. The soundbar linked very easily with the TV, although an on screen display would have helped as I experimented with the various sound options. The soundbar feels very well made and gives an excellent depth and field of sound. It provides a real cinematic experience when playing a Blu-ray DVD. If you do not want a number of speakers dotted around the room to give surround sound then this provides almost as good an experience in a soundbar that will sit neatly under your TV.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT DOLBY ATMOS SOUNDBAR FROM SONY. MOVIE WATCHING HAS BECOME FUN AGAIN WITH CINEMA SOUND. IT PAIRS EASILY WITH A SONY TELEVISION SO YOU DON'T NEED THE SOUNDBAR REMOTE UNLESS YOU WANT TO PLAY MUSIC OR CHANGE SETTINGS.

So, so disappointed with the HT-X8500 – I expected so much better from a Sony product. I’ve never bought a sound bar before so I was swayed by reading some excellent reviews about this one …but after buying it I found it hard to believe the reviews were about the same thing I’d bought. Physically the HT-X8500 looks and feels good, but the overall sound quality is really poor – there is little clarity and no dynamic range to speak of …my Samsung TV speakers sound better, so for me this was a complete waste of money.

Excellent from switching it on. The sound is amazing

What a unit... 1st class. It's better than the Sky Sound box I have.

Having finally bought a new TV after 12 years, I was looking to get an eARC HDMI compatible soundbar with Dolby Atmos for virtual surround sound straight through the TV from the upcoming PS5 / XBox Series X releases. Getting a suitable TV was expensive, so I was relatively low on budget and ended up finding this. For the price you wont find another futureproofed soundbar with more features. The only drawback is that eARC overrides the passthrough of sound from an external device to the soundbar, so one device I had using digital optical output to completely bypass the TV (and potentially any lag) just always automatically goes back through the eARC HDMI instead

I wanted a high quality soundbar and this is just the ticket. Lovely bass sound, different sound features depending on what you are viewing or listening to

Difficult to setup but once it was working with my 3 year old 4K UHD curved Samsung TV, after buying a high speed hdmi lead and starting the setup from scratch, it works fine. The sound quality is adequate but disappointed with Dolby Atmos as it is not as I thought it would be. I nearly returned the soundbar but decided to see how it goes.

We bought this as a partner to our Sony Bravia KD43XH8196 which we bought two weeks ago and so far we are very pleased with it, although I'm still learning how to use it properly.

Purchased this product to use with my smart TV and I and I am quite impressed with the sound and features. No issues with lip sync at all and the soundbar works well with the tv's builtin apps. I would be happier if there was a little more bass and if I could add a separate bass speaker I would but unfortunately I cannot do this. Over-all though the soundbar is good value for money.

i am happy i bought this item and iam very happy with quality of the item

the main reason to buy this was to compliment my new tv and upgrade from an old sound system. The sound is great and makes tv programmes better, so i would recommend it for that. The down side is that it doesn't come with an onscreen display. this means that you never really know what setting you are on or what the setting was the last time it was used. This leaves to a lot of guess work and pushing of buttons. I probably would have bought something else had i know this.

Sounds are brilliant but disappointed with lack of onscreen display.

I bought this with high expectations. I found the background sounds completely over powered the voices making it virtually impossible to follow storylines.

I bought this soundbar a few weeks ago, the sound is very good, loud and crisp especially connected with a 4k blu ray player. But the functionality is not impressive with no display on tv, the flashing lights on the top of the bar are confusing at best and they should have been on the front to be easily seen while seating down. So to summarise, this bar produces great sound, and I'm happy with it, but the lack of tv display is a real let down

Sound when playing films is out of this world. Could be sitting in cinema

This soundbar in a word is ”Billiant” and ands to the experience when watching various types of programmes from movies to sport.

So what can I say about the htx-8500. Well it's a lovely looking bar, nice rounded edges and a very simple but sleek design. One earc/arc output and one hdmi 2.0 input to connect a single device to. I would have liked one or two more inputs but I can live with only one. The input is 4K and hdr pass through, I have gotten hdr and hdr 10+ but it will not pass through dolby vision. The output handles all of the major codecs including dolby atmos. Now to the sound, I'm a little of a Sony fan boy so perhaps a little bias, but the sound quality on this is really breathtaking. You can get a good sense of height for atmos and it really shines through. I have no hesitation in reccomending this at all. Oh and if Sony wanna send me anything to review please feel free lol.

This adds to the atmosphere when watching sporting events. Not just because of the extra volume, but the quality of sound.

I have had this soundbar for a week now and on the whole I am very impressed . Unfortunately Earc is very buggy and I am forever having to switch the tv off then on to get any sound from the soundbar when switching to Netflix via the onboard app?! I had bought new high speed Hdmi cables and foolishly thought buying a Sony soundbar with a Sony tv would make the Earc process Seemless ?. How wrong I was !!

Quickly elevates the TV watching to an amazing immersive experience Pleased with purchase