Sony HT-S400 Soundbar Review

The Sony HT-S400 is a simple black soundbar that's mostly made of plastic. The plastic looks good, but when you touch it, it feels a little cheap. There's a metal grille that wraps around the sides as well.

The subwoofer is plain, built of a mix of wood and plastic. The port is on the front, and there's a metal grille protecting the speaker above it.

The Sony HT-S400 is a bit wide, so it doesn't fit between the legs of many 55" TVs. That said, it isn't very tall, so it doesn't obscure your TV screen.

The sub is about the size of an average desktop computer. It connects to the bar wirelessly, so you just need to plug it into a power outlet to use it.

The Sony HT-S400 has a decent build quality. The bar's mostly made of plastic, which feels a bit cheap, especially compared to more premium soundbars. The metal grille on the sides helps protect the drivers inside, which is a nice touch. The sub feels pretty solid, too.

• Manuals
• Remote with 2x AAA batteries
• 2x Power cables (4.9 ft / 1.5m)
• Optical cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)

The Sony HT-S400 has a decent stereo frequency response. The overall sound is pleasing with stereo content, with balanced mids that reproduce vocals and lead instruments with clarity. There's an extra emphasis in the mid-to-high bass range, however, adding extra boom to the mix. The subwoofer is pretty one-note—you notice the lack of rumble in the low-bass, especially with bass-centric tracks like EDM.

The Sony HT-S400 gets closest to a neutral sound profile with its default settings. It is a bit bassy, so you can always use its subwoofer level adjustment feature if you prefer a different sound.

The Sony HT-S400 has a decent stereo soundstage. The bar comes with Sony's always-on surround mode called S-Force Pro Front Surround, which, like similar features from other manufacturers, uses psychoacoustics principles to expand the soundstage. Sound seems wider than the bar itself, which is good, but it doesn't stretch to the walls of your room. The focus is decent, too, so sound effects seem like they come from a more general region as opposed to an accurate, pinpoint location in the soundstage.

The Sony HT-S400 has great stereo dynamics. It gets loud enough to fill a large room with sound, and there isn't a lot of compression when you push it to max volume. As a result, audio reproduction remains clean and pure even when you crank up the volume.

The Sony HT-S400 has a good stereo THD performance. At a normal listening volume, distortion falls within good limits, so audio reproduction is clean and pure. As with most bars, there's a slight jump when you push the bar to max volume. That said, distortion is pretty hard to hear with real-life content, especially if you're a more casual listener.

The Sony HT-S400 has a middling center channel performance. Since it's a 2.1 bar, it doesn't have a discrete center channel to improve vocal clarity. Instead, it uses its left and right stereo channels to simulate a "phantom" center channel. The resulting sound isn't as clear or as real. Overall, voices are still fairly clear and accurate, though a little muddy due to the extra emphasis in the bass range.

The Sony HT-S400 has a poor surrounds performance, which isn't a surprise given its 2.1 setup. It has to downmix surround content into stereo to play it, which doesn't sound as immersive. Sound seems like it's coming from a speaker placed in front of you, and sound effects don't stretch around your room. The frequency response on these channels is also quite bass-heavy, which adds a boomy, muddy quality to the sound.

The Sony HT-S400 has a disappointing selection of sound enhancement features. If you want to customize its sound, you don't have a lot of choices on hand, aside from its subwoofer level adjustment (though the button on the remote reads 'Bass', this feature only controls the amount of bass reproduced by the sub). The remote also gives you access to its dialogue enhancement mode (called Voice) and its night mode, which balances the volume level in your programs. You can't adjust the amount of bass reproduced by the bar, and you can't control the treble, either. You can't turn off its S-Force Pro Front Surround feature, either.

The Sony HT-S400 has a limited selection of physical inputs. You can connect the bar to your TV over Optical or HDMI, which is nice. However, there's no Full HDMI In for high-quality passthrough, and you can't wire other devices like smartphones with an AUX port.

The Sony HT-S400 only supports Dolby Digital over ARC. Dolby Digital is the most common surround sound format, so you're likely to come across it on most streaming platforms and some Blu-ray discs. However, there's no support for lossless or object-based formats like Dolby Atmos.

Over Optical, the Sony HT-S400 supports Dolby Digital. It's the most commonly-used surround sound format, but since it's a 2.1 bar, it has to downmix it to stereo to play it.

The Sony HT-S400 has a decent latency performance, so the audio you hear is in sync with the video you see. That said, different apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your results can vary. During our testing, we obtained different results when we used the same TV and the same app, meaning you may experience some lip-synching issues with the bar. You can sync the bar with a compatible BRAVIA TV over Bluetooth to avoid these latency issues.

The Sony HT-S400 lets you wirelessly stream audio to the bar via Bluetooth. If you're an avid Apple or Google user, there's no Chromecast or Apple AirPlay compatibility.

There's a small display screen on the front of the bar. It reads out the settings as you change them.

There are some physical controls on top of the bar to let you control its basic features. You can power the bar on/off, change the input, pair it with a Bluetooth device, and adjust the volume.

The remote is fairly simple and lets you control all the bar's features. For example, you can turn it on and off, adjust the volume, and access different enhancement features like night mode and dialogue enhancement.