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A genuinely tiny bar plus a real wireless subwoofer, with Atmos by virtualization only. The sub is the surprise; the small footprint is the reason.

The rear speakers detach, charge in the dock, and walk to the back of the room when you want real surround. It's the cleanest answer for renters who can't run wire, with rears that could stand to be louder.

A capable bar with a wireless side-firing sub, DTS Virtual:X, Alexa, and Wi-Fi streaming for $349. No Atmos and no Dolby Vision passthrough, but everything else is well-judged.

Auto-rotating drivers tilt up for Atmos and forward for music in a 5.1.2 array, with an 8-inch wireless sub that reaches 30 Hz. The original Elevate's party piece, on sale.

Sub, rears, HDMI cable — it all ships in one box. Genuine Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, hi-res audio over TIDAL, and a marketing 9.1.5 that's honestly a 7.1.4. Mostly excellent, occasionally tubby.

Twin built-in subs, phantom 7.1.4 imaging, and Sennheiser tuning that delivers a genuine surround illusion from one box. HDMI 2.0a is the thing keeping it off the next-gen-console list.

A premium 7.1.2 bar with HDMI 2.1, two built-in woofers, and crisp dialogue. Out of the box it's elegant and a little anemic on bass; the optional sub and rears are not optional if you want the whole story.

A 120Hz QLED with excellent off-axis viewing and weak everything else: regular LEDs instead of Mini-LEDs, ~1,000 nits peak, one full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 port. The Hisense U8N and TCL QM8 cost the same and walk away with it.

Sony's QD-OLED flagship: ~1,500 nits HDR, perfect blacks, and the best picture processor anyone is shipping. The price-per-inch is the highest in the category and the HDMI 2.1 port count is genuinely too low.

A 4K QLED with a matte coating, swappable bezels, and an "art mode" that looks better in your living room than a black rectangle does. The picture is fine. The point isn't the picture.

LG's brightest OLED, mounted flush like a painting and driven by the new α11 processor. Pay the C4 premium for Brightness Booster Max and the wall-mount design — and accept the missing ATSC 3.0.

Panasonic's flagship runs a 4-layer Master OLED panel and an integrated 5.1.2 speaker array that makes you genuinely consider skipping the soundbar. The catch is that you'll have to hunt for one in the US.

A bright, bright Mini-LED with 144Hz, Dolby Vision Gaming, and Google TV — at a price that makes the LG and Sony flagships look like a tax. The catch is the same one Hisense has had for years: sit off-axis and the picture falls apart.

A 144Hz Mini-LED hitting ~2,500 nits with blooming so well-controlled it sometimes passes for OLED. Some 24fps judder and slightly crushed shadows; at this price, you'll get over it.

A beautifully built 5.1.2 bar that makes voices sit forward and proud, but its bass tops out somewhere short of cinema. Plan on the matching Bose sub, or look at something denser.

Real rear speakers, a dedicated sub, HDMI 2.1 passthrough for the PS5, and 11.1.4 channels you can actually point at. Two grand if you can't find last year's Q990C, which does most of the same job for less.

Fourteen speakers, real 9.1.4 Atmos, and a new woofer design that does the work most bars hand off to a separate sub. The trade-offs: no DTS, one HDMI port, and the Sonos app is still the Sonos app.

A QD-OLED panel with a matte anti-reflection coating that finally solves OLED's bright-room problem. In a dim room you'll feel the coating in the picture; in a bright one you'll wonder why every OLED isn't doing this.

Sony's flagship Mini-LED hits ~2,440 nits with an anti-reflection coating that owns bright rooms. Only two HDMI 2.1 ports, which on a $3,300 TV is a baffling cost-cut.

A 144Hz OLED with G-Sync, Dolby Vision, and webOS getting five years of updates. Launched at $2,699; you should not pay that. Wait two months and it'll be $1,600.

Sony's mid-tier OLED, tuned the way Sony tunes everything — for content people made with cameras. Not the brightest panel on the market, easily the most filmic. Around $1,800 for the 65-inch.

A premium Atmos soundbar in the brass-and-vinyl Marshall aesthetic, with a low end that actually moves furniture. A grand is a lot. It earns most of it.

A compact Atmos bar that punches above its size and slides into the Sonos ecosystem without thinking. Around $500, and it has not been meaningfully beaten in its class.

A compact soundbar with a Roku streamer baked in, dialogue you can actually hear, and a setup that doesn't require a Discord server. Around $200, and it earns it.

A 65-inch Mini-LED that is so much TV for the money it makes the rest of the market look complacent. Bright, fast, smart enough. Around $800 on sale.