Sony HT-A7000: Cinematic and immersive

The Sony HT-A7000 is a new flagship soundbar. It’s a premium product with all the bells and whistles that you would expect from Sony. Depending on the space available, the size of the room and, of course, your budget, you can buy the soundbar as a standalone or you can add a subwoofer and rear speakers. The overall design of the soundbar is rather large at 1300 mm (51 inches or just over 4 feet). It certainly does look long. But it would still fit quite snugly under a 55 inch or larger TV.

The design of the HT-A7000 is rather interesting. The combination of glass, metal, plastic and fabric makes for a simple and elegant looking speaker. The chassis is filled to the brim with speakers — two upward-firing speakers, two beam tweeters and five front speakers. Additionally, there are two built-in subwoofers. This is classified as a 7.1.2 channel speaker set. The glass on top has some of the controls though one would most likely use only the remote. It is a bit of a fingerprint magnet and sometimes reflects content from the TV. The front grill is not removable as some people prefer so don’t try and peel it off!

Easy setup

Setting up the HT-A7000 is a total breeze. If you have just the soundbar, all you need to do is connect it to your TV, preferably with the supplied HDMI 2.1 cable connected to the eARC HDMI port, and that’s it.

When you power on the soundbar, you will get the option for an easy setup as well as an advanced setup. The easy setup has options for initial setup, audio setup and network setup. The process is simple and finishes in just a few minutes. The speaker also has a sound field optimisation option which measures the distance from the walls and ceiling and sets sound levels accordingly. If you also have the subwoofer and rear speakers, these will also be taken into account for the sound field optimisation.

If you are unhappy with the sound or make changes to the placement of the speakers, you can always run the optimisation routine again. The process sends out some fairly loud tones in all directions but once done, the soundbar does sound very good.

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Sound all around

Apart from the TV output, the soundbar has tons of options for playing music — Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, Amazon Music, Tidal and more. Sony’s format of 360 Reality Audio is also supported and the demo of that is very impressive; it truly shows off the speakers.

Sony’s Vertical Surround Engine and S-Force Pro front surround provide an immersive experience. Watching movies like Gravity, you can feel the sound spinning around in the room with you. Ready Player One shows off the vertical sound engine quite well, you feel the sound going up and down from the floor to the ceiling and back.

Connect a PS4 or a PS5 and even the gaming experience is enhanced. Playing Last of Us Part II had us looking over our shoulders every few minutes for attackers. While the soundbar does not as yet support low-latency mode and variable refresh rate, the game experience did not suffer at all.

For that cinematic experience, subwoofers and rear speakers are absolutely essential

Overall, the HT-A7000 is a great sounding soundbar and for someone looking for a simple setup for an enhanced immersive experience, it is a great option. Surprisingly, there are a few things that are missing — despite all the setup options, there was no equaliser; while this is usually not required for TV content, it is critical for music listeners.

It is great as a standalone soundbar but for that cinematic and immersive experience, the addition of a subwoofer and rear speakers is absolutely essential. Adding all that up does make it a bit of a pricey option. However, there is no doubt that it sounds great and, in the end, that is what matters most.

The soundbar alone costs ₹1,49,990, and the soundbar and the Sony subwoofer SW5 together come for ₹1,77,990.

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