Sony HT-AX7

Bird? Plane? No! It's Sony's... portable theatre/360-degree music thingy

Over our decades of venturing into the more esoteric parts of the hi-fi world, we have come across all sorts of weird and wonderful (and not so wonderful) products. Few if any, though, have caused quite as much head-scratching at What Hi-Fi? towers as the Sony HT-AX7.

The HT-AX7 is small enough to be a portable music speaker, but two discs attached to its top edge suggest something else is going on.

It turns out that those discs can be detached to become separate wireless speakers so maybe the AX7 is an unusually small soundbar. Except that it doesn't have any physical source connections or even wi-fi connectivity.

Maybe it is an immersive surround sound music player? But Sony itself calls it a portable theatre system. Confused? You should be...

The Sony HT-AX7's identity crisis plays out in its price. If you think of it as a personal/portable music speaker, its £499 tag makes it a pretty premium affair. Yet if it turns out the AX7 is effectively a dinky soundbar, that price would make it seem reasonably affordable by regular soundbar standards.

The Sony HT-AX7 is certainly a unique looker. In its 'joined up' state it comprises an eclair-shaped, fabriccovered base unit around 30cm long, 10cm high and 12cm deep, with two 3.9 x 12 x 12cm (hwd) circular speakers sitting tidily on top of each end of the base unit.

The top of the base unit houses a selection of control buttons but, unexpectedly, the HT-AX7 doesn't ship with a remote control. The only physical connection across the whole system is a USB-C recharging port on the base unit.

Build quality is excellent.

After lots of experimentation with speaker placement, lots of playing around with its sound modes and lots of experimentation with different types of source, our conclusion is that Sony's own description of this as a Portable Theatre System probably gets closest to the mark.