Sony HT-X8500 Soundbar Review

The Sony HTX8500 is black and fairly plain-looking. It has a metal grille on its front face, and its top face is covered in faux leather. The bar is otherwise made of plastic. As the subwoofer is integrated into the bar, two ports are found on each side of the soundbar.

The subwoofer is integrated into the bar.

This wide bar doesn't fit between the legs of a 55-inch TV stand. Still, it's not very tall, so it most likely won't block your screen unless your TV sits flush with the table.

You can mount the bar to your wall. However, you have to buy the brackets separately.

The bar's build quality is decent. It's made from robust matte plastic and has a metal grille to protect its speakers. The subwoofers are integrated into the bar, and the metal grille protects it. Its ports are located on the sides of the soundbar. If you're looking for a soundbar with better build quality, check out the Vizio M-Series M21d-H8R.

• Manuals
• Remote
• 2x AAA batteries for the remote
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)
• AC cord (1.6 ft / 0.5m)
• AC adapter (4.2 ft / 1.3m)

The Sony HTX8500 has an adequate stereo frequency response. Although it comes with integrated subwoofers, it still struggles to reproduce the thump and rumble in the low-bass. Its sound profile is a bit boxy and dark, but vocals and lead instruments are still reproduced quite clearly and accurately. There's also a bass adjustment feature to help you customize its sound as well as some EQ presets.

With its bass set to '-1', this soundbar has a slope closer to zero, meaning it has a more neutral sound with stereo content. However, it still struggles to reproduce the thump and rumble in the low-bass. Its mid-range is pretty neutral, meaning that vocals are reproduced clearly, but they can also seem dull due to the recessed treble. Unfortunately, you can't adjust the bar's treble.

The Sony HT-X8500 has a mediocre stereo soundstage. It's about the size of the bar, and the bar doesn't do any tricks to widen the soundstage. It has a diffused focus, so objects sound like they come from more general areas rather than precise, accurate locations. For a 2.1 setup with a better soundstage, check out the TCL Alto 8i.

This soundbar gets loud enough to fill your room with sound. There's some compression when you push it to max volume, though, especially in the bass range.

The THD performance of this soundbar is good. At a normal listening volume, it produces clear and pure sound. When pushed to its max volume, there's a very small jump in THD across the range, but it's hard to hear with real-life content.

It's a 2.1 setup, so it doesn't have a dedicated center speaker. Instead, it uses its left and right speakers to simulate a sound in the center, which sounds more diffused and less clear than a dedicated center speaker. That said, its performance is still okay, and although it has an uneven bass range, there isn't a lot of bass on the center channel anyway, so voices sound fairly clean and accurate.

It's a 2.1 setup, so it downmixes surround content into stereo, which doesn't produce the most accurate or clear representation of surround objects. This doesn't sound very immersive either, as these objects are perceived as coming from in front of you rather than from the sides or behind you.

The bar uses the manufacturer's Vertical Surround Engine technology to simulate an Atmos experience. However, it has to downmix Atmos content into surround to play it, which doesn't sound as immersive as setups with dedicated up-firing drivers. The upside is that the channel's frequency response is quite even, so sound effects are accurately reproduced in the mix. Helicopters flying overhead in an action-packed scene don't seem to be coming from right above your head, but you can still make out their sounds clearly.

The Sony HT-X8500 has a poor selection of sound enhancement features. While it doesn't have a graphic EQ, it has several EQ presets to help you find the best match for your audio needs, including 'Cinema', 'News', 'Music', 'Game', and 'Sport'. Its 'News' preset doubles as a dialogue enhancement feature, so voices seem more crisp and detailed. The Vertical Surround Engine feature activates when Atmos or DTS:X content is playing, too. That said, there's no room correction feature, meaning it can sound different depending on the room you're listening in. If you want a 2.1 Dolby Atmos soundbar with more sound enhancement features, check out the Vizio M Series M215aw-K6.

This soundbar has limited connectivity options. While you can connect the bar to your TV and another device using its HDMI ARC or Full HDMI In ports, you won't be able to connect older devices to it using an AUX cable.

This soundbar can playback common 5.1 surround sound formats like Dolby Digital and DTS via ARC. Also, it can play lossless and object-based formats like Dolby Atmos over this connection.

The Sony HTX8500 has a full HDMI In port, and it can support all common audio formats, same as its HDMI ARC port.

This soundbar supports Dolby Digital as well as DTS content when using its Optical Audio In. You can find this content on streaming platforms and many Blu-ray discs.

The Sony HTX8500 has a good latency performance. With its ARC and Optical ports, it has fairly low latency, meaning the audio you hear is in sync with the video you see. However, it doesn't perform as well with its Full HDMI In port. Over this connection, the sound seems to come before the visuals, and this is especially noticeable with lip-synching content. Some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary. Unfortunately, the bar doesn't have a way to manually adjust for latency.

This soundbar can passthrough some common resolutions and refresh rates, which is handy if you want to connect the bar between devices like a PC and a gaming console. Note that if you use your PC to create a custom resolution, you can "force" the bar to pass 120Hz at 1080p. HDR10 and Dolby Vision passthrough are available for those with a Blu-ray player.

You can stream wirelessly to the bar via Bluetooth.

This soundbar's interface is simple and easy-to-read. Six labeled lights illuminate depending on the setting you're on. As you change the volume, they show the overall volume level.

This bar has very straightforward controls. You can control the power, input source, Bluetooth connectivity, and volume level from the top of the bar.

The remote looks similar to the Sony HT-X9000F but lacks music management controls like track skipping and play/pause. You can control everything else about the bar via the remote.