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4.3 out of 5 stars

Top positive review
1 people found this helpful
Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Great for large rooms
By Gabriel's Dad on Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2019
Pros:1. Easy to set up2. Truly wireless3. Amazing subwoofer - shakes the couch/houseCons:1. Nothing reallySummary:We have a large open living room that's open to the kitchen, almost 900 sqft. With a space this large, the built in speakers on the TV are about adequate for listening to the news, and not really good for much else, especially watching movies. Ideally we should have a receiver and multi speaker setup, and maybe one day I'll do that, but I just don't want to spend the money and time running and hiding wires and trying to find surround speakers that I can hide so it's not so obtrusive and obvious. The wife agrees that she wants the surround sound experience, but isn't interested in having speakers all over the living room. We've tried various 2.1 systems that simulate surround sound, but those aren't all that great. And anyways, it's hard to find a soundbar system that can fill this space. We've tried some others, but they've been OK at best.I found this JBL system accidentally and after reading the reviews, I thought I'd give it a shot. The thing that sold me was the wireless battery powered surround speakers. Since we would only use it during movies, for the most part it wouldn't be cluttering up the living room area. We have other JBL wireless speakers that we use via bluetooth when we're outside that work quite well, so I figured these speakers would also perform well. Especially in an indoor setting.I will tell you that if you're on the fence about this system, to give it a shot as you will be pleasantly surprised. The sound quality is absolutely amazing. it's loud and clear and fills our giant living room very well. Some of the other soundbars that I've tried get loud, but the sound gets muddy and distorted. The detachable surround speakers work well, also have great sound, and simply works. They connect automatically without a problem to the main unit, the speaker levels are adjustable on the fly, and you can place them wherever you want. This soundbar system also comes with a calibration speaker, which takes just a minute to balance the sound levels for the exact spot that you'll be sitting. Most impressive is the 10 in subwoofer. It's well designed and does a good job trying to hide into the background with its monolithic simplistic design. However, the sound that comes out of it is nothing short of amazing. We have the volume set at 2/3 of max, and it will shake the couch we're sitting on and rattle the walls.The soundbar also has a night mode, which helps reduce the subwoofer setting and bump up the midrange so I can hear the dialogue and i'm not waking the kids when watching something with lots of explosions and booms.I'm quite happy with the sound quality and loudness, wife is happy that the surround speakers are not permanently sitting around and can be put back on the soundbar, and my bank account is happy that this system only cost $500.
Top critical review
13 people found this helpful
Not enough control and subwoofer/satellite speakers lose sync randomly
By Michael on Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020
Update: it's been months since I bought this. Unfortunately I had to send it back to JBL for replacement because it kept losing subwoofer sync and would crackle. The satellite speakers did the same thing. I practically begged them to allow me to pay the extra to upgrade to the Bar 9.1 as that doesn't seem to have the same issue but incredibly they refused. What company doesn't want more money? Oh, JBL doesn't. Because of their incredibly restrictive policy on returns we will have to do this dance over and over with their return and warranty policy police again until we finally get something that works. Please don't buy this product. I wish I'd sent this back after my Day 1 experience....Day 1: Just unpacked it and set it up. I switched it on expecting to hear no midrange from all the reviews. Couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, I found that the midrange was WAY too high. Trebles sound flat. Bass overwhelming. The out of box experience leaves a lot to be desired.I played some music, while at the same time hunting for the manual equalizer settings to control this. There are none. How does a $500 sound bar have zero manual equalizer controls? Or an app to control settings with? It's 2020 right? All you get are the preset modes to choose from, none of which really tame the midrange. So I switch from music to a movie. This is now making more sense. As a sound bar to watch movies and TV on it's fine. But without the ability to control the equalizer properly makes it difficult to recommend for music. Heck, even their portable speakers have an app via bluetooth to change settings. I'm strongly tempted to send this back and get the Bose 700...Day 4: It took a lot flip flopping but I think I made the decision to keep it. With any of these soundbars, it's a serious tradeoff of price against features. Lots of soundbars seem to focus on wifi streaming, app support etc with a tradeoff on sound quality. Others focus on the sound quality with little to no capabilities on wifi streaming, apps etc. This is the latter. Here's my thoughts on its strengths and weaknesses:Strengths.1. It really does have good sound quality, particularly in TV shows and Movies. I found that only two sound settings are viable - 'Movie' and 'Sports'. The rest sound terrible.2. Forget the reviews that complain about the midrange. There's stacks of midrange. IMHO there's too much midrange.3. For those that are restricted with cabling the innovative capability to have truly wireless surround speakers is fabulous. This is the primary reason I bought it and the primary reason I'm keeping it.4. The bang for buck on audio performance is difficult to beat at $500. The subwoofer is super powerful and rich. When you use the 'movie' or 'sports' setting, the audio is crisp and clear.Weaknesses1. It really is such a shame, and a MASSIVE miss on a $500 sound bar to not even have manual EQ settings aside from the bass on the sub. I'd go so far as to say the product manager that designed this should be fired for it. Vizio does WAY better in this department. I'm shocked that they didn't provide some kind of app that could interface via Bluetooth to change it. I wouldn't be surprised if the functionality was actually there, but the cheap @sses who bought (previously way better) JBL de-invested from proceeding with it.2. No wifi streaming or app support.So why didn't I get the Bose? I didn't want to spend $1000 more. Bang for buck, if you can stream to it via your TV or Apple TV, then this wins.

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