MIL wants "reasonably priced" sound bar system for

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What do yall think?

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There aren't many really good options for less than $100. Even most of RTINGS best "budget" soundbars are well over that price.

The 5 Best Budget Soundbars - Fall 2024

I don't think you're going to find much of a difference below $100. Woot has some refurbished soundbars.

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Well that's where the problem lies. She wants it to work at an extremely low budget. It's not that it has to sound amazing, it just cannot sound like absolute shite for the price she wants, but I'm convinced anything below a $200 5.1 system is going to be absolute arse.

Add a zero and get the Sonos Arc. Then add even more money and get the sub. Tell her it is $100/month for only 18 months.

200 is the sweet spot. You can get usually get a 1-2 year old (still new) Samsung 600 series or equivalent that are $400+ current year for that.
Stay away from Samsung though. They’re fine if you play everything through a single device like roku ultra or Apple TV box, but they all tend to lose their ARC capabilities after a year or two and ARC is usually finicky with them to begin with.

If you're in the Baton Rouge area, I have a full LG surround sound system, including subwoofer, rear speakers, etc. my wife is on me to sell. She can have the whole bundle for $250.00.

The Vizio I linked has that capability.

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Problem is her living oom has 18 foot high cathedral ceilings and is maybe 400 sq feet with a lot of openings/no door entryways.

Looking online I can gather that I would need to probably convince her to get something fairly large/powerful that would be able to travel across the room in order to avoid any type of weird acoustics happening with cheap Temu speakers.

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“Large and powerful” is a bit subjective. What really matters is the distance of the main listening position from the TV and front speakers. The cathedral ceilings and open doorways aren’t a problem and can make the room sound better, albeit more lively if it’s full of hard surfaces and no absorptive materials. Asymmetry can frick up stereo imaging, though.

Regardless, the quality of the speakers won’t change the room acoustics. But you will need more power (especially in the center channel) if the MLP is a long way from the TV. And it will make it harder to get everything positioned and set up correctly in a 5.1 setup.

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She is not the type to necessarily worry about quality of the sound but I am concerned that a standard 5.1 surround sound system might not be capable of cleanly being distributed across this room.

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I wouldn’t have much concern about a “standard” 5.1 system. And based on your description of the room I think a quality 5.1 system might sound great. The problem is you aren’t getting a standard 5.1 system on a $100 budget.

I’m usually pretty anti-soundbar, but with that budget I’d look hard at 2.0 or 2.1 soundbar setups. I’d also look at “traditional” 2.0 and 2.1 systems, wall-mounting the speakers a few feet to each side of the TV. Anything 2.0 with a subwoofer output (and the ability to turn on a crossover) is nice because you can always come back and add a sub later.

If you get something with a subwoofer, place the sub in a corner. Preferably whichever corner is closest to being equidistant from all listening positions. You aren’t going to get a ton of subwoofer output at that budget and placing it in a corner will boost SPL considerably.

I have this in the bedroom; it's ok and way way better than the TV speakers. You'll want a soundbar with a sub.

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Techradar review of Majority Naga 60 sound bar.