Onkyo SBT-A500 review: Atmos sound bar looks pretty, sounds pretty plain

While 4K and HDR hog the TV limelight at the moment, the latest audio "must-have" is atmospheric audio. In 2017 you're going to see a lot of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X as manufacturers try to pitch those atmospheric audio formats -- and the new gear they require -- at the mainstream.

6.4

Onkyo SBT-A500

The Good

The Onkyo SBT-A50 supports Dolby Atmos and has a nice design, including the separate breakout box.

The Bad

The Onkyo SBT-A500's sound quality falls far short of what we expect from an expensive sound bar, or even one that costs half this much. The bar's Atmos effects were unconvincing, and there's no surround capability. Few of the streaming features are working at launch.

The Bottom Line

The Onkyo SBT-A500 is fully loaded with features, and its attractive design may woo potential buyers, but poorer than expected sound quality kills the deal.

For every excellent Atmos device like the Samsung HW-K950, though, there is unfortunately one of these: the Onkyo SBT-A500 . The best we can say is that this product looks cool, and it has a lot of features. However, with sound quality that isn't anywhere near the level you'd expect at the price, no amount of attractive design and goosed-up extras can make up for it. Ideally this sound bar should drop in price by half before we'd consider recommending it.

The SBT-A500 is available for $999, with UK and Australian pricing and availability yet to be announced.

Design

On looks alone, the standout part of the Onkyo SBT-A500 is that separate receiver, seen on the lower shelf above. Where most sound bars opt to cram everything into one unit, the Onkyo has wisely broken the inputs and other assorted guts into a separate box.

This has two main advantages: the speaker can be as small as practically possible, and the device can also accommodate more external inputs. The only downside? A box the size of a half-height receiver (17.1 inches wide by 2.75 inches high by 12.8 inches deep) needs to be stored somewhere, which defeats the purpose of a sound bar for a lot of users.

The speaker itself has a relatively low 2.1-inch profile, which hopefully means it won't block your TV's infrared port, but if does, then the unit is also wall-mountable.

The subwoofer is decently sized at 10 inches square by 13 inches tall. it houses a 6.5-inch driver, which is driven by a 50-watt amplifier.

The remote control is very similar to the ones you would see on Onkyo's full-size receivers. It keeps the button count to a logical minimum, and the layout is sensible.

Features

Onkyo's SBT-A500 is the first Atmos speaker we've seen for under $1,000, and it certainly packs in the features. These include both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive audio playback and a welcome four HDMI inputs with 4K/60p passthrough.

Streaming music support is one of the best we've encountered, with Chromecast, DTS Play-Fi, AirPlay, Bluetooth and the forthcoming FireConnect multiroom system. As of the time of testing, however, the unit is still awaiting a firmware update to add Play-Fi, Chromecast and Fireconnect.

This is a 3.1.2 system, which means it has three sets of front-firing drivers, plus two ceiling-pointed drivers for overhead effects and a (wireless) subwoofer. The bar connects to the receiver via a proprietary "multichannel audio cable," so there's no upgrading your speaker later.

Aside from the HDMI ports the Onkyo also includes an RCA stereo input, optical digital and Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

Performance

We were initially satisfied with the SBT-A500's clarity with movies, but as we listened more and more, we noted it wasn't all that much better than we've heard from much more affordably priced sound bars.

With the heavy-duty special effects that supply a lot of the "Gravity" space drama's excitement the SBT-A500's subwoofer's deep bass was plentiful, but definition was just good, not great. We've used "Gravity" in a lot of our reviews of Atmos surround products because the film's sounds of the astronauts floating around the listening room do a good job highlighting Atmos' spatial effects. The SBT-A500 was a disappointment in that regard; we heard little of Atmos' height effects, and this sound bar failed to project much soundstage stereo width. The SBT-A500 sounded like a little speaker, so we checked again that we were in fact listening with Atmos processing turned on -- we were. It was that hard to tell Atmos was engaged.

Switching over to the Samsung HW-K950 Atmos sound bar system, the sound bloomed, and thanks to its separate wireless surround speakers "space" returned to the "Gravity" soundscape. The sound was indeed a lot closer to what you'd get from a bona-fide multichannel home theater system. The Onkyo and Samsung systems are both pricey, but the SBT-A500's performance lagged far behind the HW-K950's.

With "The Revenant" Blu-ray the SBT-A500's sound fared a little better with scenes where American frontiersmen on a fur trading expedition fight for survival in the wilderness. The ambience of the forest, the wind, and rustling of the trees sounded clear, but even so we still missed the room-filling sound of the HW-K950. Back with the SBT-A500, dialogue sounded fine, and you can separately raise its volume via the remote control to improve intelligibility somewhat. The scenes where the Indians battle the fur traders the SBT-A500 played loud with ease.

We next played Bruce Springsteen's 2007 concert "Live in Dublin" DVD. The sound was dull -- and not a lot better after we adjusted the tone controls and turned the treble up. The all-acoustic concert's sound lacked get up and go.

David Bowie 's final album "Blackstar" was even more hemmed in by the SBT-A500. It sounded like a table radio with muddied bass. The HW-K950 did a much better job with music.

Final thoughts

The Onkyo SBT-A500 promises a lot. After all, this svelte sound bar features the latest Dolby Atmos and DTS-X object-based surround sound, and more features than even the best flagship sound bars of just a few years ago offered. The SBT-A500 is a premium priced sound bar system, so we expected spectacular sound, but our enthusiasm took a nosedive when we started listening to it. Only with a deep discount would this sound bar make sense because against competitors over $500 at the moment it simply doesn't right now.

For the same price as the SBT-A500 you could buy, for example, the Onkyo SKS-HT594 5.1.2 speaker package plus the TX-SR575 receiver. Sure there's more wires to contend with but a better feature set and true surround this combo are sure to stomp all over the sound bar in terms of performance.