Sony HT-S350 Soundbar Review

The Sony HTS350 is a pretty plain bar. It has a metal grille that covers the front face and most of the sides, while the top has a faux-leather texture which feels nice. The rest is made of solid plastic.

The subwoofer has a port in the front. There's a metal grille protecting the speaker above it. The sides and the top are made mainly of wood, while the port is made of plastic.

The Sony HT-SD35 is a little wide and might not fit between the legs of many 55 inch TVs. On the upside, it's not too tall, and you shouldn't have issues placing it in front of the TV, as it won't cover the bottom part of the screen unless your TV sits flush on the table.

The subwoofer has the size of an average desktop PC. It pairs wirelessly to the bar, and you shouldn't have issues placing it anywhere in the room as long as you can plug it in.

The Sony HT-S350 has a good build quality. The bar is mostly made of plastic, and there's a metal grille around the sides that helps protect the drivers inside. There's also a faux leather material on the top of the bar, which feels nice. The sub is mostly made of wood and plastic, and there's a metal grille on the front.

• Manuals
• Remote and batteries
• Optical cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)

The Sony HT-S350's stereo frequency response is okay. Its sound profile is dark and muddy due to the lack of low-bass and the underemphasized treble. Its mid-range is still quite balanced, so vocals and lead instruments are reproduced fairly clearly. However, this setup uses Sony's S-Force Pro Front Surround sound to create a more immersive sound, and you can't turn this feature off. While movies sound pretty decent on the bar, this feature isn't really ideal for stereo content like music.

If you prefer a more neutral sound profile, we recommend using the Sony HT-SD35 with its default settings. Out-of-the-box, its subwoofer level is set to eight.

The Sony HTS350 has a decent soundstage. Its soundstage is perceived to be a tad bit larger than the bar, but this is probably due to the always-on surround mode called S-Force Pro Front Surround. The focus of the soundstage is great and objects are easy to pinpoint, but the always-on surround makes those objects a bit stretched in the soundstage.

The Sony HTS350 has a good stereo dynamics performance. It can get loud, making it suitable for listening in large rooms and crowded environments. However, when pushed to its maximum volume, there are some pumping and compression artifacts in the bass range. This is mostly noticeable with bass-heavy music.

At a normal listening volume, the THD performance of this soundbar is good, resulting in a clean and pure audio reproduction. However, when using the bar at the maximum volume, there's a big jump in THD. This shouldn’t be too audible for most, and you probably won’t notice it with real-life content.

The Sony S350 is a 2.1 soundbar setup, which means it doesn’t have a dedicated center speaker. It uses the left and right speakers to create a sound in the center, which will sound more diffused and less clear compared to a discrete center. When sending a 5.1 surround sound signal, it will downmix it to stereo, although it might sound a bit wider due to the always-on surround mode. Overall, voices still sound fairly clear and accurate, and the bar gets loud enough for most people.

The Sony HTS350 has poor performance with surround channels. The 2.1 configuration of the soundbar won't result in the most accurate and clear representation of surround objects in the soundstage. Everything is downmixed to stereo and doesn’t feel as real as a discrete surround experience offered by home theater speakers. The overall sound profile is fairly dark as this soundbar lacks detail in the treble range. This soundbar, like many other Sonys, has an always-on surround sound mode that causes a strange frequency response measurement, visible in our plot.

The Sony HTS350 has a disappointing selection of sound enhancement features. You can customize its sound using its subwoofer level adjustment, and it also comes with some EQ presets, including 'Cinema', 'Music', 'Standard', 'Game', 'News' and 'Sports'. Unfortunately, there aren't any bass or treble adjustments. It also lacks room correction, so it may sound different depending on the room you're listening in.

The Sony HT-S350 has a very basic selection of physical inputs. It can connect to your TV through HDMI ARC and to one external device by Optical Audio in, but that's all. There is no Full HDMI In so it can't act as a hub between different devices. Also, you can't play back music stored on a USB.

You can decode surround sound over ARC with this bar, thanks to its Dolby Digital support, but it will be downmixed to 2.1. Unfortunately, the bar can't decode DTS or any higher-end format like Dolby Atmos, and this means that more advanced object-based surround sound formats won't be played back. On the upside, Dolby Digital content is very common on streaming platforms like Netflix and on most Blu-ray discs.

The Sony HT-SD35's audio format support via optical connection is mediocre. The Dolby Digital surround sound format is supported, which is good as it's widely available in the content of streaming platforms or Blu-ray discs. The unsupported DTS format isn't widely available on its own, as it's the fallback for the higher quality DTS-HD MA found on many Blu-ray discs. If you're looking for a 2.1 setup that supports DTS via optical, check out the Samsung HW-T450.

The Sony HT-S350 soundbar has a passable latency performance. It has fairly high latency, so your visuals appear on the screen a bit before you hear the corresponding audio. This delay is most noticeable with lip-synching. That said, some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary.

The Sony HT-S350 soundbar supports Bluetooth connectivity, letting you wirelessly stream audio from your mobile devices to the bar. However, it doesn't support other formats like Wi-Fi or Apple AirPlay, which may disappoint some users.

Since there isn't a Full HDMI In port, the Sony HT-S350 can't relay the video signal of any external device to your TV.

The interface or the Sony HT-S350 is very basic and consists of only three lights that flash when you change the settings.

On the top side of the bar, there are a few touch-sensitive buttons that control the basic functions. You can power the bar, select TV mode, change the volume, or pair with a Bluetooth device.

The remote control is slim and can control all the functions of the bar. It has some preset modes and can control the volume of the subwoofer independently but can't act as a universal remote.