Sony’s new budget soundbars get US pricing, and it’s not what I was hoping to see | usagoldmines.com

• Sony’s new soundbars get US pricing, though no release date
• Sony Theater Bar 6: $649 | Sony Theater System 6: $769
• Continues a trend of pricing higher than the competition

Sony recently unveiled the US prices of its new TV line-up, and the price of its new OLED TV is way higher than the competition – and that’s despite the same TV being right in line with the competition in the UK.

It looks like the same pattern is happening with its new soundbars, too. We don’t have UK pricing yet, but the US pricing is pretty high by budget-to-mid-range soundbar standards.

The new Sony Bravia Theater Bar 6, which is a 3.2.1-channel Dolby Atmos soundbar with upfiring speakers and a separate wireless subwoofer, will cost $649. The Sony Bravia Theater System 6 is a 5.1-channel surround system with soundbar, two rear speakers connected to a wireless box, and a subwoofer – and it’ll cost $769.

Don’t get those two models confused despite the very similar names – the latter doesn’t include upfiring drivers, although it does support Dolby Atmos decoding. Both soundbars supports DTS:X, too.

Sony’s new Theater Rear 8 wireless rear speakers that can be added to soundbars (including the Bravia Theater Bar 6, but also the likes of the Sony Theater Bar 8) cost $449 for the pair.

There’s a lot of power and scale to the sound from these speakers – the Theater System 6 is 1000W – but they’re not particularly high-spec, and these seem to follow Sony’s trend of pricing its TVs and soundbars a little high in the US.

The Sony Theater Bar 6 is a replacement for the Sony HT-G700, a model that cost $599 when it launched in 2020. For its replacement to add upfiring speakers and to only cost $50 more given that inflation has totaled over 20% since then in the US means the price rise isn’t too bad in a vacuum.

But the issue here is really how much higher the US price is likely to be than the UK price. We don’t have that yet, but the UK launch price of the HT-G700 was £449 – that equated to $560 at the time, and that price included sales tax. The street price in the UK also tends to drop more regularly on Sony soundbars.

As I alluded to above, we’re seeing the same kind of story with the Sony Bravia 8 II TV, which is the company’s new top-tier OLED TV, and is priced much higher in the US than the UK.

In the UK, the Bravia 8 II is priced very slightly higher but basically in line with its competitor, the LG G5, at 55 inches – and is cheaper than the G5 at 65 inches. In the US, however, the Bravia 8 II costs $600 to $1,100 more than the LG G5 or the Samsung S95F, depending on size.

Are tariffs to blame?

There’s a question over whether Sony has priced these with the expectation of needing to include tariff costs – but the company hasn’t confirmed this, and there’s no real reason to think so, other than the prices being so out of line with the competition.

But as I said above, Sony has a frustrating habit of doing this in the US, and the soundbar prices fit right in with what we’ve seen from the company in the past.

Will the soundbars be worth the price anyway? I’ve heard them both in action, and the Bravia Theater System 6 (the surround one) offers a very impressive scale of sound, plus a great party trick (literally) that I think Sonos should steal.

The Theater Bar 6 is also impressively punchy, though in my demo I had concerns that it was a little compressed in the mid-range. We’ll have to wait for a full review to be sure, but with the Samsung HW-Q800D having a street price very close to the Theater Bar 6, I suspect the Sony may be edged out on value by the better-specced Samsung.

I wanted to see Sony come out swinging with aggressive prices for these bars, and really take our list of the best soundbars by storm – the competition is good for everyone. These prices seem just a little too high – but we’ll wait on our reviews for final judgment.

You might also like…

• Check out our list of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars
• Owning a soundbar has been a game-changer for me – here are 5 cheap options I’d recommend
• Setting up the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar was one of the worst tech experiences of my life, but damn it sounds incredible