I will try to give a simple review of both my soundbar. I have Sony HT CT150, yamaha ysp 5100. Sony was in my bedroom previously and yamaha in living room.

Sony HT CT150 in a room size around 11x16, soundbar at longer wall. Listening position is 7' away/
Can only hear 5.1 sound, but the surround sound is near to none, i give surround sound 2/10 points, have to adjust the surround volume to almost maximum to be usable. Dialog is clear, can hear the voice moving from left to right clearly. Subwoofer sounds ok.

Yamaha YSP5100 was in a opening living room, roughly size around 25x30, soundbar at longer wall. Listening position is 15' away.
Can hear clearly 7.1 sound after calibration. Dialog is clearer than Sony. If no sobwoofer is not connected, bass out of question. You can clearly hear the left and right channel separates very far away. Sound stage is huge. Sweet spot for listening is big, around 2m apart. If a sound is running in circle, you can clearly hear it spinning around ur head I did turn my head around for the first few times when there were sound behind me when watching movie. Everything is better than Sony beside the bass.

For the soundbar to be usable, you gotta use it in a square or rectangle room for it to work well. Please choose your cabinet wisely, else the soundbar will block your TV. I personally do not have the space in my room now to accommodate cables running to the back of my wall now, so i can give any opinion compare to true surround sound.

If u r after sound quality then I won't really recommend soundbar that cost 1k n below as the sound is worse than a lot of pc speakers. But it does look nice sitting below the TV.

I've owned sony soundbar at rm1. 5k(forgot about the model already) 7 years ago, it did ok at dialog, ok at sound separation, not so to project sound behind u, bass is ok with the price.

Then soon after that I got myself a yammy ysp 5100. The sound field and quality is night and day compared to Sony (yeah I know the price gap). I can clearly hear the sound from behind me. Dialog not bad, sound separation is great. Bass is near to zero from the unit because u have to get ur own sub for it.

Few years later I bought the philips Fidelio b5. The sound is a lot more better than my LG TV, and the great thing about it is the detachable rear speakers. Sound quality on par, separation ok, bass not so.

After years of trying to get back to soundbar, I think I will give it a pass for awhile and stick back to my 2.0 system (although my heart is always telling me to give soundbar a try).

Oh ya, I demoed b&w panorama 2. Great system if u r able to get it at decent prices. But if u r really after sound separation and sound field, just get cheap 5.1 and try to hide those cable