There was a time when surround sound was well out of the reach of most consumers’ wallets. This changed during the DVD boom of the aughts: Very inexpensive systems, usually referred to as “home theaters in a box” (HTIB for short) made their way to retail, and for most people, they were good enough. Suddenly, you didn’t need to spend several hundred dollars on a receiver and speakers; you could spend $100 to $300 and get a self-contained system that would perform perfectly fine when it came to giving you an immersive experience watching movies or even music mixed for surround, even if they wouldn’t necessarily qualify as hi-fi.
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In recent years, though, soundbars with “virtual surround” modes have largely pushed out HTIBs. For a true surround experience, you generally need to spend at least $600 to bundle a speaker set and a receiver, but there are exceptions. And at electronics superstore chain Best Buy, there’s one particularly big exception: Vizio’s V51-H6, a soundbar with semi-wireless surround speakers that enable full surround sound in a package that retails for just $249.99, or under $200.00 for My Best Buy Plus members or Amazon customers.
Finding a genuine surround system for $200 to $250 is incredibly rare these days, so you might be skeptical of what Vizio’s selling here. But with a 4.5-star average out of five from customers on both Best Buy and Amazon’s websites amidst thousands of user reviews, plus positive professional reviews, it’s worth taking a deeper look at.
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