Soundbars or true surround?

[stoofa]

I enjoy having a surround sound system. It isn't particularly good - but I just love sitting at home and having the sound coming at me from all directions, especially when watching films.
The core of the system is a Yamaha RX-V581 and attached to it are rather old, nay ancient, Onkyo surround speakers (5) and Sub. These actually came with an Onkyo surround setup many moons ago.

These speakers are starting to show their age - getting sound distortion, they really should have been replaced a long time ago.
I want small, bookshelf style speakers, to decided on the Monitor Audio Radius 45's for the 4 corner speakers. Something Monitor Audio (possibly 200) for the centre speaker and then look into Sub options.
This won't be super expensive, but the 45's are £100 each, throw in a good Centre and sub and the price will begin to climb.

I read reviews of £1100+ Soundbars that can offer "near 5.1 experience" but do they? I have also seen Soundbars with wireless rear speakers and wireless Sub as well - seems like a very neat and tidy way of doing things, albeit expensive.

Are there any sensible priced Soundbar options that can offer a good surround experience? Without breaking the bank?

At the moment, Sky Q and PS4 Pro connect to the Yamaha RX-V581. I'm assuming Soundbars offer multiple inputs too? So everything would connect to it and then ARC (eARC) back for surround sound directly from the TV?
If I wanted to add more HDMI devices, capacity to increase via the soundbar would be nice.

I'm not an audiophile, I'm not a person with a bottomless budget for audio equipment and the rather pathetic and old Onkyo surround speakers have been fine, only needing replacement due to obvious sound distortion these days.

Cheers for the pointers.

 

[stoofa]

Thank you for all of the posts - well for most of the posts.....no, thanks for them all, always good to get healthy debate.
I think I'm going to go the 5.1 route and just replace my ageing speakers - the Yamaha RX-V581 is a capable receiver and I think if I budget myself somewhere in the £500 - £600 max to replace my speakers and sub I should be able to get something I'm happy with.
In fact, after reading through a number of threads elsewhere, I've been looking at:

Wharfedale DX-2 at around £350
Monitor Audio 5.1 Mass (Older version) at £499
Monitor Audio 5.1 Mass (2019 version) at £599

I've got limited space for rear speakers and alas some of the recommended Q Acoustic units simply won't fit.
I hear good things about the Monitor Audio equipment, I did notice that on the 2019 version the centre speaker is "just another satellite" as opposed to every other setup I've seen where the centre always seems to be a bigger, more powerful speaker than the 4 satellites. However I am sure they know what they are doing.