I agree, the new age is more about HDMI-ing everything into the TV and then having e-arc or arc out to either the sound bar or your AV receiver. This does bring some limitations via plain ARC but via e-ARC those limitations go away as it can push even the high quality sound codecs. With a soundbar arc is fine mostly as people tend to accept a good stereo 2.1 signal as they just want improvements over the TV speakers. Depends if you are buying a high end soundbar with built in "fake" surround or a more budget one for improved TV speakers.
I've bought 3 soundbars in recent times. One was a cheap <£100 and I forget the manufacturer but it was basic with no control. The sub boomed annoyingly during films and the likes. I sent it back and went with the Sony HT-SD35 (same as the HT-S350 without wireless connection to TV) for about £150-200 on some deal. The wireless sub actually hits pretty hard and has a separate sub control. The preset sound modes include a soft style one for night time listening, and a clear voice type one as I recall. I think a lot of the Sony ones if not all, are kind of in a permanent surround mode I think I read so may not be as good musically. In terms of an upgrade over the built in Hisense TV speakers it's night and day.
Then I just got for our kitchen TV a Yamaha YSP-209 for about £300. Recently been on offer for £240 but missed it
I got this with a bias towards music as we use it to play tunes in the kitchen and spilling out into the garden for BBQs and the likes (kitchen opens up with large bifold doors). It's a fairly robust and high quality unit for the money. The wireless sub drops quite nicely and packs a good punch. The surround aspect of it I agree with the reviews is not that great and is best left in stereo mode. It has built in Alexa which works seamlessly. There seems to be some debate online as to whether this works with multi room alexa speaker mode. i.e. speaker groups where you play on multiple speakers through the house. I can confirm on latest firmware it does. So you can have a party and have music playing in multiple rooms all the same and include this soundbar in the group.
If you are wall mounting your TV, consider the depth of the soundbar sat on the wall underneath it. If you have a superthin modern OLED or QLED picture frame one, then the soundbar can look unsightly sticking out further than the TV. If you have an older style LCD TV and you get one of the cheaper wall mounts that protrude by about 2-3cm, then by the time you add on the 5-10 cm of your average LCD, they are sticking out enough to match up with most soundbars. The Yamaha is one of the deeper ones at about 10.5cm. Slightly annoyingly they add on about 1cm unecessarily by the way they make the mount points. Consider this and whether it has a cut away for the cables to drop down a channel and allow flush mount of it. If you are mounting the soundbar on a unit then ignore all this lol.
Above £300 and you start looking at the high end Samsung and LG ones. Have a look on that rtings website where they have reviewed them all very critically and in depth.
Definitely get one with arc at minimum and connect it via HDMI so you get CEC where you can control the volume of it via the normal TV remote. Also look at things like auto off to save power after you turn the TV off etc. I would never buy one without being able to independently control the sub as you will want to be able to tweak that. Everyone's room setup is different, plus placement so you want that control.
