I have pulled wire through brick bungalows in Round Rock, new builds with 20 foot ceilings, and one garage apartment where the subwoofer ended up in a laundry closet because there was nowhere else to put it. Fifteen years and roughly 340 installs later, the job is almost always the same: the gear is already bought, and the gear is not the problem. This home theater soundbar comparison comes from that seat, the one where a client has already paid and everyone wants to know why dialogue sounds like it is being delivered through a pillow.
The four products in this comparison do not do the same job, which is exactly why they keep ending up on the same buying lists. The Polk Audio Signa S4 and the LG S40TR are bars with wireless subwoofers and very different channel counts. The Sony S100F is a compact 2.0 bar that mostly needs to be easy. The smart outdoor projector is not a sound product at all, and treating it like one is how people end up disappointed with a theater they never actually built.
Every recommendation in this house goes through a miniDSP UMIK-1 and Room EQ Wizard before I trust it, and every projector I touch gets an i1Display Pro pass in Calman. The living room those measurements happen in is not a carpeted lab. It has a tile floor, an open kitchen, and a ceiling fan that hums at 60 Hz, which is a real frequency, not a rounding error. My wife Alma is a band director and can hear a flat note from across the house, so a bar that survives a week here has already passed a test most press units never see.
If you watch more television than movies, the Polk Audio Signa S4 is the pick I would make for a normal living room, and the LG S40TR is the one to buy if you genuinely want sound behind you. The other two exist for narrower jobs, and I will say plainly where they lose.
A note on numbers before we start. If I have not put a microphone in front of a specific unit, I am not going to print a figure as if I had. What follows is channel count, crossover reality, placement, and listing language, separated clearly from anything measurable.
Polk Audio Signa S4 Dolby Atmos 3D Sound Bar System with 5.9 inch Wireless Sub
Best dialogue-first tuning of the group, and the sub crossover is set sensibly enough that placement is forgiving
Atmos height is a virtual effect in most rooms, and there are no rear speakers in the box
LG S40TR 4.1 ch. Home Theater Soundbar with Rear Surround Speakers and Wireless Subwoofer, Wow Interface, Dolby Audio, AI Sound Pro, Amazon Exclusive
The only system here that puts real speakers behind your head, plus a wireless subwoofer
Rear channels demand placement and calibration, and a 4.1 bar is still a bar
Sony S100F 2.0ch Soundbar with Bass Reflex Speaker, Integrated Tweeter and Bluetooth (HTS100F)
Simple, compact, and honest about what it is: a clean 2.0 bar for a desk, bedroom, or small room
No subwoofer and no surrounds, so low end and scale are compromises you accept on purpose
Smart Outdoor Projector with WiFi and Bluetooth, Movie Projector, Dolby Audio with Dual Speaker, Auto Focus w/ YouTube and Prime Video, P62 Pro
Built in apps, auto focus, and a self contained picture and sound solution for a wall, a screen, or a backyard
Not a soundbar and not a replacement for one, and "4K support" is not the same claim as a native 4K panel
Prices and availability were captured from Amazon Creators API and may change.
What a soundbar actually has to do in a real room
Three things decide whether you still like a bar after 30 days, and none of them are wattage.
The first is where the 1 to 4 kHz presence band sits, which is the range where dialogue lives. A bar that scoops that range out turns every mumbly British crime drama into a subtitle exercise, no matter what the carton claims. In my experience the bars that get this right are not the expensive ones. This is where the Polk Signa S4 keeps embarrassing flagships at three times the money, because its dialogue tuning is aimed at people who watch television, not at people who buy on channel count.
The second is the subwoofer crossover and how forgiving it is about placement. A sub that only works in one corner is a sub you will fight for a year. Marketing will hand you placement advice that reads like it was written in a room nobody lives in. Move the sub to four corners with a 50 Hz sine and a tape measure and you will learn more in 20 minutes than any product page will tell you.
The third is headroom. A bar that distorts before it gets loud has a wattage sticker, not a wattage measurement, and the label on the box will not warn you. Total harmonic distortion climbing at 60% volume is the sound of a spec sheet meeting reality.
Room correction is the fourth thing, and buyers overvalue it constantly. DSP can fix a lot, but it cannot fix placement and it cannot fix a bar with no headroom. The only way to know whether the correction is helping is a sweep before and after the correction runs, from the actual couch. If the post correction curve looks flatter but the dialogue got worse, the DSP fudged the curve instead of fixing your room.
Polk Audio Signa S4: the dialogue-first pick
The Signa S4 is a Dolby Atmos 3D sound bar system with a 5.9 inch wireless subwoofer, which is the whole package in one sentence. No rears, no separate amp, no receiver. You put the bar under the television, find a corner for the sub, and you are done in 15 minutes.
The reason I recommend it first for most living rooms is the tuning priority. This bar was voiced for the presence band, and the sub crossover is set sensibly enough that the sub does not have to be in a perfect spot to stay out of the way. When a client tells me they watch four hours of television a night and two movies a month, this is the bar I point at.
Where it loses is height and rear effects. Atmos in a single bar is a virtualization trick, and in a room with a normal ceiling it produces a wider front stage rather than things genuinely moving behind you. That is not a defect, it is physics. If you want overhead effects, no bar in this comparison delivers them the way discrete ceiling speakers would, and I would say so even though it costs me a sale.
LG S40TR: the only real surround system here
The LG S40TR is a 4.1 channel home theater soundbar with rear surround speakers and a wireless subwoofer, and it is the only product in this comparison that can put sound behind your listening position. That is the entire argument for it, and it is a strong one for movie night. The listed feature set also includes Dolby Audio, AI Sound Pro, and the Wow interface, and this configuration is an Amazon Exclusive.
The caveat is that channels are a promise and placement is the delivery. Rear speakers set at ear height, slightly behind and slightly outside the couch, produce a convincing bubble. Rear speakers left in the box, or tucked on the floor beside the sofa, produce mush. I have watched clients pay for surround and then defeat it with furniture, and a 4.1 system gives you more ways to get that wrong than a 2.0 bar does.
It also runs through AI processing that can reshape the presentation, and processing is not the same thing as accuracy. If a mode hypes the midrange, dialogue suffers even though the effect sounds impressive in a demo. Leave the aggressive modes off for television and use them for the big set pieces.
Sony S100F: small room, small budget, honest 2.0
The Sony S100F is a 2.0 channel bar with a bass reflex speaker, an integrated tweeter, and Bluetooth, marketed for easy setup and home office use with clear sound. Credit where it is due: the listing does not pretend this is a theater system, and it is not.
For a desk, a bedroom, or a guest room television, a compact 2.0 bar is the correct tool. It sits under a monitor, it takes an optical or Bluetooth feed, and it does not need a subwoofer outlet or a corner. In a small room, a simple bar with an integrated tweeter can be more listenable than a big system with a subwoofer fighting the walls.
What you give up is obvious and unavoidable. There is no subwoofer, so the bass reflex design has to carry low end on its own, which means an honest mid bass rather than a foundation. There are no surrounds, so the front stage is the whole stage. The worst version of this purchase is buying it expecting a theater and returning it angry. The best version is buying two of them for rooms where simplicity matters more than scale.
The outdoor projector is a different job entirely
Here is where this comparison list gets strange. The P62 Pro smart outdoor projector shows up in the same buying guides as soundbars, but it is not a competitor to any of them. It is a projector with WiFi and Bluetooth, built in apps for YouTube and Prime Video, auto focus, a dual speaker, and Dolby Audio, sold as a movie projector for outdoor use.
The first thing to understand is the phrase 4K support. Support typically means the projector accepts a 4K signal, which is not the same thing as a native 4K imaging panel. If native resolution matters to you, that is the question to ask before you buy, not after.
The second thing is that calibration matters as much for a projector as placement matters for a soundbar. Auto focus is a convenience, not a calibration, and the color standard I calibrate to is Rec.709 with a target of delta-E under 3. Out of the box, projectors in this class can measure far away from that, and no auto focus routine fixes it. If you cannot measure it, at least give it a known reference disc and adjust what you can.
The third thing is audio. A dual speaker built into a projector is a convenience for a backyard night, not a replacement for a bar. Outdoors, with no walls to reinforce anything, a projector speaker fights ambient noise and loses. If you are building a backyard movie setup, budget for a soundbar or a portable speaker separately, and treat the projector as the picture device it is.
Where each one loses, stated plainly
The Polk Signa S4 loses on effects. No rears, virtual height, and a single bar trying to be three things. If your priority is a jet flying over your shoulder, this is the wrong box.
The LG S40TR loses on simplicity and on the forgiveness that a single bar offers. More channels means more setup decisions, and the processing modes can flatter at the cost of dialogue. If you will not place the rears properly, you are paying for channels you will not hear.
The Sony S100F loses on scale, on bass, and on immersion. It wins on price, footprint, and the odds that you actually finish the install in one sitting.
The projector loses on competition entirely. It is not a sound product, and the moment you compare it to a soundbar you have already made the wrong comparison. Buy it for the picture, in a room where you control the light, and pair it with separate audio.
Placement beats product, every single time
Most "bad sound" I get called about is placement, not product. Ear height matters more than most buyers believe, and a bar sitting on a low media console, firing at knee level, will sound distant and muddy no matter what it cost. Raise it to ear height, or tilt it, and the same bar suddenly has dialogue.
Tile floors and open kitchens exaggerate exactly the slapback that makes speech hard to follow. Curtains, a rug, and a bookshelf absorb more than any firmware update will. The ceiling fan humming at 60 Hz is a separate problem, and it is one a subwoofer will happily amplify.
Rears need a tape measure, not a guess. A wireless sub needs the four corner test. If you own a measurement microphone, take a sweep from the couch before and after any room correction runs, and keep the settings that measure better rather than the ones that sound louder in a 30 second demo. If you do not own one, tune by ear at your actual seat, not standing in the middle of the room.
How I would choose between these four
Television first, movies second, one normal living room: Polk Audio Signa S4. The dialogue tuning does the daily work, and the sub is forgiving about where it lands.
Movie night with a couch positioned properly and the patience to place rear speakers: LG S40TR. You get actual surround, and you get a wireless subwoofer, and you accept that setup is part of the deal.
Small room, desk, office, or bedroom: Sony S100F. Buy it for what it is and you will not be disappointed.
Backyard or patio movie nights with controlled light: the smart outdoor projector, with separate audio budgeted from the start. It is a picture device. Treat it like one and it will do its job.
The bottom line
A home theater soundbar comparison only helps if it is honest about what each box is for. The Polk Signa S4 is the dialogue pick, the LG S40TR is the surround pick, the Sony S100F is the small room pick, and the projector is not a soundbar at all. Price predicts marketing, not performance, and the fastest way to be happy with any of these is to fix the room and the placement before you spend a dollar on the next upgrade.