Soundbar vs old AVR 2.1 setup?

Right now my audio solution is a Pioneer VSX-832 receiver, Audioengine P4 stereo speakers, and am Audioengine subwoofer. It sounds fine but is kind of a cable management nightmare and the speakers don't actually fit on our TV stand right now so it looks a mess.

I'm considering replacing that setup with a soundbar and small subwoofer. I know real home theater nerds sneer at soundbars, but realistically we're not going to do surround sound. Our living room is super narrow so the sofa is only about 6 feet from the TV and that's with it up against a wall, so there's no putting rear speakers in here. When we tried we hated it. It just doesn't work well in the room.

I'm okay with basically a 2.1 system but I'm wondering if I could do that in a way that's compact, looks nice, and has a center channel so we can hear some goddamn dialog occasionally.

Would a nice soundbar actually be an upgrade from this situation?