Sony Theatre Bar 9/ SA-RS5/SA-SW5

Sony's latest soundbar plus surrounds and sub makes for an impressive home cinema experience

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Sony has replaced the excellent, three-time What Hi-Fi? Award-winning HT-A7000 with this, the Bravia Theatre Bar 9. It features subtler styling, a more practical design, a better app and more drivers. The HT-A7000 is still in our view the best performance-per-buck soundbar you can buy, particularly with the last stock now being sold with some huge discounts. So has Sony improved on its predecessor's sound with this new 'bar?

There's no end of non-Sony rivals to contend with as well, of course, most notably the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus and Samsung HW-Q990D, the latter of which is a complete system in a box. The new Sonos Arc Ultra, in its 'Immersive Set' guise also carries a similar price tag to the Theatre Bar 9.

The rounded front corners and fabric cover, which shrouds 90 per cent of the bar's visible surfaces, make the Bar 9 look much softer and more discreet than its predecessor, while in terms of dimensions it is exactly the same width (130cm), but it's also less tall at 6.4cm and deep (11cm), making it seem more svelte and also more likely to sit in front of your TV without blocking the screen. Handy spacers (foot extensions) are also included in the box so that the 'bar can be raised slightly to straddle a TV stand. Should you prefer to wall-mount there's a bracket included.

There's just one on-unit control – a power button. During testing, though, we are surprised to discover that we don't miss on-device controls for functions such as volume and input, since, as well as the soundbar's remote, most controls can be handled by your TV's remote, and more advanced adjustments are made in the app.

Under the fabric cover are 13 individual drivers (up from 11 on the HT-A7000) and quad passive radiators. Along the front are four woofers, three standard tweeters and two beam tweeters; on each end is a side speaker; and on the top are two up-firing speakers and those passive radiators.