Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad Soundbar Review

The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad doesn't follow the usual soundbar format. There's no bar to speak of. Instead, you get four felt-covered speakers to position around your room. Their flat design means they're easily wall-mounted via the included stands, where they might resemble small acoustic panels. The plain, grey fabric also allows them to blend in with most room decor. Should you prefer to place them standing up on their black, plastic stands, that's straightforward to do. You connect to the speakers via a small, black control box.

This version of the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad doesn't come with a subwoofer, but you can purchase the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with Bass Module if you're looking for more low-bass thump. You can also add another subwoofer if you have a compatible unit.

Since this unit eschews the conventional design of a long, thin speaker that sits under your TV for four speakers, the satellites and the 'bar' are one and the same.

Two of these four speakers are designed to be positioned on either side of your TV, with the remaining two positioned behind you. This flexibility means the system can accommodate almost any size of TV, especially since the speakers are just a touch wider than conventional satellite speakers.

This set of speakers does not come with a subwoofer, but you can purchase the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with Bass Module instead if you know you'll want a sub. You can also add a subwoofer after purchasing the Theater Quad.

The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad's two satellites, designed to be positioned behind you, are identical to the two speakers placed on either side of your TV. They're slightly wider than conventional satellite speakers, but their thin depth means they're easy to find space for in most rooms.

Each of the four speakers in this set comes with a stand that can easily be configured as a wall mount.

These speakers have an amazing build quality. The control box is similar to the one that comes with the Sony HT-A9 with Bass Module. It's made of durable plastic and has a large display. The speakers themselves are covered in a tightly woven fabric. This means there's no hard protection for any of the drivers other than the up-firing ones, which are covered with the plastic grille on top of each speaker.

• Sony Home Theater System Manual and pamphlets
• TV control box cable (6.5 ft/2.0 m)
• AC adapter (4.9 ft/1.5 m)
• 4x AC power cords (4.9 ft/1.5 m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft/1.5 m)
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries
• Speaker stands/wall-mount brackets

This soundbar has a decent stereo frequency response. Its main limitation is its lack of a subwoofer to reproduce low- and mid-bass content like rumbly explosion effects or thumpy 808 kick drums. If you can't bear the thought of watching videos without low-end heft, it might be worth checking out the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with Bass Module. Regardless, this soundbar does an impressive job reproducing mid-range content like speech and treble-range content like clashing sword effects.

This soundbar comes with a Stereo Field Optimization feature which Sony says optimizes the sound to the specific layout and acoustic properties of your room. The feature runs automatically when you first boot it up, but you can re-run it whenever you wish. Subjectively, we found this feature to make audio feel more forward as if it were jumping right out of the speakers.

We tested this system's performance with the bass setting at medium with the Stereo Field Optimization enabled and DRC (for dynamic range compression) disabled.

Without the Bass Module connected, the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad has three bass settings: 'Min,' 'Med,' and 'Max.' We used the 'Max' setting for the preliminary calibration, but the 'Med' setting for regular testing.

Because the front two speakers of the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad can be spaced widely apart, the stereo soundstage of this soundbar can extend as wide as you choose (depending on your room size and available cable lengths). As a result, this setup produces a remarkably wide soundstage. That said, the phantom center isn't particularly focused, so audio panned centrally can sound a bit fuzzy, especially if you set the speakers very far apart.

This soundbar has good dynamics performance. It gets loud enough to fill most rooms, though if you have a huge room, you might wish it cranked out a few extra decibels. That said, it doesn't compress your audio much at maximum volume, so the audio you do hear will be pure and clean.

This bar's center performance is decent. Ultimately, the performance will depend on how far apart you set the speakers since there's no discrete central channel, so left and right speakers combined produce a phantom center. That said, we found the results to be satisfactory. Voices sound balanced, but also like they're coming from two speakers rather than one central point.

You can also pair this system with a compatible Sony BRAVIA TV and use the TV's speakers as a discrete center channel. But, as we noted in our Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with Bass Module review, the results aren't necessarily impressive.

This soundbar's surround performance is adequate. The four satellite speakers mean that objects are rendered accurately in space, and you can easily tell where a sound is coming from. The result is an immersive experience, especially since the mid-range is fairly balanced and detailed. However, since there's no subwoofer, explosions and rumbly Taiko drums are not rendered accurately and lack thump.

This set of speakers doesn't do a bad job representing height in Atmos content. Each of the four speakers has up-firing drivers designed to bounce audio off your ceiling. For the most part, this does add a sense of height to your audio. Airy sounds like orchestral string sections are represented well, though the lack of a subwoofer means it's a little difficult to sense a clear distinction between this elevated content and earthier sounds like the rumbles from a collapsing tower. Still, the audio these drivers produce sounds very thin, though that's to be expected without the subwoofer that is present in the Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad with Bass Module. Audio is also mostly well-localized in space, and it's easy to pick out objects that pan across the field from left to right (or vice versa). Subjectively, we found it harder to notice issues with the phantom center when all four speakers were engaged than we did during Stereo Soundstage testing.

This soundbar doesn't have any presets or EQ, but you can the bass level in the companion app. You can also toggle between three modes. 'Night Mode' compresses the audio so that the bass is quieter and less likely to disturb your neighbors. 'Voice Mode' enhances speech and dialogue so that it's easier to hear in the mix. Finally, 'Sound Field' tailors the soundbar's performance to suit your room and has three further sub-modes: 360 Spatial Sound Mapping, Dolby Speaker Virtualizer, and DTS Neural:X. The system also supports DSEE Ultimate, Sony's proprietary upscaler for lossy audio.

You can connect this soundbar to your TV via HDMI, and there's an HDMI 2.1 In port. There's also an Ethernet port and an S-Center Out port, which lets anyone who owns a compatible BRAVIA TV use their TV's speaker as a center channel. Unfortunately, there's no optical port, so you might be unable to connect this soundbar to older TVs.

This soundbar is compatible with all the main surround sound formats such as Dolby Digital via eARC. It's also compatible with object-based formats like Dolby Atmos.

This soundbar supports all the common surround sound and object-based formats via its HDMI In port.

This soundbar's audio latency via ARC is acceptable. It's not able to achieve low latency scores with any of its compatible formats, so you might notice occasional lip-sync issues. That said, different apps and TVs compensate for latency in different ways, and you can use the companion app's AV Sync feature to compensate for any latency manually.

The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad's latency performance via HDMI is passable. It's unable to achieve low-latency performance regardless of the audio format you choose, but different TVs and applications compensate for latency in different ways, so you might not notice any lip-sync issues. Regardless, you can use the AV Sync feature in the companion app to compensate for any latency issues you do notice.

This bar supports HDMI 2.1, so it can passthrough 4k signals at 120Hz and 8k at 60Hz. That means it can act as a hub between your TV and PC or gaming console. It also supports HDMI VRR and ALLM passthrough.

The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad supports most of the common wireless connectivity options, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Apple AirPlay, and Spotify Connect. However, it doesn't support Google Chromecast.

The control box has a small interface that you can use to view inputs, settings, and the menu.

The only button on the control box is the power button, while each of the four speakers has both a pairing button and a power button.

The remote is similar to many other Sony remotes and is easy enough to use. You can also control this soundbar via its companion app, which you can view in this video.

The Sony BRAVIA Theater Quad doesn't have a built-in voice assistant, but you can activate it via a compatible device's Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.