Sony S100F Sound Bar Revew

The standard price of this sounds bar is $129.99 but is often on sale for 25 percent off on Amazon bringing the price down to $98 dollars. So what do you get for your 98 dollars?

Well included in the box is the sound bar itself, a power cable, an audio optical cable, a dedicated remote with two AAA batteries, and some documentation which includes a manual a quick start guide and a template for mounting your sound bar to a wall. According to the dimensions on amazon the sound bar is 35.5 inches in length 2.5 inched in height and 3.5 inches deep.

Now let us go over the set up. Setting up the sound bar is fairly straight forward and there are actually two ways to connect it to your TV. If your TV has an optical audio out, like mine does you can simply connect the TV to the soundbar with the provided optical audio cable and call it a day. This option doesn’t give you the highest sound quality however and of course you will not be able to use the TV remote to adjust sound you instead will need to use the included Sony remote control.

This can actually be a good way to connect the sound bar as it also frees up an HDMI port on your TV. The TV I have only has 2 HDMI ports and I have many more devices connect to this TV so they are a precious commodity. As a result I had to install an additional HDMI switcher box to handle all of my devices.

The second, and most likely, preferred way to connect the sound bar is to locate the HDMI Audio Return Channel or ARC port on your TV. Then using an HDMI cable (which is NOT provided in the box) connect one end to the TV and the other to the sound bar.

You will then need to enable Consumer Electronic Control or CEC mode on your TV. By default on most TV’s this is not enabled. My TV is a Vizio brand so I can only show the steps taken for this specific TV. Be warned however that some TV manufacturers like Vizio do not place the CEC mode in the audio settings which makes no sense to me whatsoever.

But basically on Vizio TV’s you will need to look in the general TV settings menu and turn it on. Once connected, you will notice the volume bar now says audio system when you adjust the volume with the standard TV remote and for some reason it only changes volume in increments of 2 which is not a big deal just a little strange. You will also notice that when you adjust the sound the white LED blinks in confirmation of the signal. This LED also blinks repeatedly when you mute the audio. I also noticed that there is a slight delay between the moment when you hit the button on the remote and when the TV volume actually adjusts again not a really big deal and you get used to it over time. With CEC mode enabled the sound bar also turns on and off automatically along with the TV which is a nice feature.

So lets move on to sound performance. According to the spec sheet this sound bar has a maximum output of 120 watts with a frequency response of 20 Hertz. How does this sound bar sound? Well it is difficult to convey over YouTube video with my limited recording equipment but I would call the sound quality pretty good. It is far better then the speakers that came in the TV and that is really what I was looking for.

Also for under 100 dollars you can’t really expect much. If you look closely at the sound bar you can see that it is really only 4 speakers total 2 tweeters one on each side left and right and two mid range again one on each side. And this brings up a drawback of the sound bar. It is unable to provide deep bass low frequency sounds but once again at this price point you need to have your expectations in check.

For testing purposes I have been watching movies and TV on this sound bar and it sounds fine to me. If you are an audio file however, you may find this soundbar lacking.

You can also connect this sound bar to your phone via Bluetooth and you can plug a USB drive into the USB port to play audio files. I haven’t tried this yet so I don’t know how well it works. But remember if you are playing audio either though Bluetooth or a USB drive you will need to use the included remote to adjust volume.

Moving on to the remote. The remote is simple and has a few different audio equalizer settings. I didn’t notice much of a difference between the modes so I kept the Equalizer settings on the standard setting. And if you are not using the ARC feature the input button on the remote is what you would press to cycle through the sound bar audio signal inputs those of course being, optical audio, USB, and Bluetooth.

Another benefit I failed to mention earlier is that since this is an older sound bar with a dedicated optical audio input you can use this sound bar with a wider array of TV’s older and newer TV’s which is a huge benefit in my opinion. Some new sound bar’s sold today do not come with a dedicated remote and instead require an app on your phone for volume control and playback settings.

That to me is a huge drawback so if you have multiple people in you household that use the sound bat that means that they all have to download the app in order to control the sound bar and that would get irritating very quickly. Luckily however you don’t have to worry about that with this sound bar. So that about sums it up the Sony S100F sound bar is pretty good for the price point at only $98 and will likely be better than your standard TV speakers.