Best Cheap Soundbar 2026: Enjoy cinematic sound on a budget

Although there are plenty of premium soundbars available to buy, and the very concept was,at one point, an expensive accessory that only a few home theatre enthusiasts could enjoy, it’s now possible to pick up a soundbar with a budget price tag attached. Even if you only have around £100 / $100 to spend, you can still find a soundbar to elevate your TV’s audio, and thanks to the hard work of our tech experts, we know which ones are best to buy.

Even though soundbars have been around for quite some time, and we’ve honestly tested more than we care to count, there’s a good chance that you might be someone who’s looking to buy their very first soundbar, and in which case it’s worth covering the basics before we move on to the options that our team recommend.

As TVs have only gotten slimmer over the years, this has usually come at the expense of built-in speakers as there’s only so much sound quality you can derive when there isn’t a lot of space available. Soundbars offer a return to form, acting as dedicated speakers that can focus on delivering amazing audio, whilst your TV works solely on the visual side of things.

If you care about good audio quality even a little bit then we can’t recommend soundbars enough. They’re fantastic for everything from elevating vocals so that you can actually hear what characters are saying, to delivering powerful bass that makes action scenes even more intense. Regardless of how much a soundbar costs, we put them all through a series of rigorous tests to see how they perform across multiple use cases.

You can read about our testing process in greater detail below, or skip ahead to get straight to our current recommendations for soundbars that don’t break the bank. If you decide that you’d rather save up and go with a brand that costs a little more then you can find more premium options in our round-up for the best soundbars overall. Similarly, anyone wanting to do a full visual/audio upgrade in one go can also check out the best TVs.

Best cheap soundbar at a glance

Best overall:
Wharfedale Vista 200S – check price
Best cheap Sonos soundbar:
Sonos Ray – check price
Best gaming soundbar:
Razer Leviathan V2 – check price
Best cheap surround sound system:
Sharp HT-SBW55121 – check price
Best cheap Dolby Atmos soundbar:
Polk Signa S4 – check price
Best cheap desktop soundbar:
Creative Stage Pro – check price
Best soundbar under £100 / $100:
Majority Bowfell Plus – check price

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How we test soundbars

Soundbars were created to boost TV sound quality – which means we end up watching a lot of TV. We play everything – news reports for voices, movies for scale and effects steering – to ensure that the soundbars that come through the doors at Trusted Reviews are given a proper challenge. We’ll play different genres of music, too, since a good soundbar should be capable of doubling-up as a great music system.

More complex soundbars feature network functionality for hooking up to other speakers and playing music around the home, so we test for connectivity issues and ease of use. We cover the spectrum of models available, everything from cheap soundbars costing less than £100/$100 to those over £1000/$1000, to ensure our reviews benefit from our extensive market knowledge. Every product is compared to similarly priced rivals, too.