JBL Bar 2.1 Channel Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer Review: Easy set up and awesome sound

This soundbar offers easy set-up, minimal cords, and rich sound perfect for gaming, movies, and music.

JBL Bar 2.1 Channel Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer review
Bottom Line
The JBL's 2.1 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer is a minimalist soundbar that offers easy set-up, along with rich sound that performs well for gaming, movies, and music.
Sound
Design
Features
Price
Pros
Excellent sound
Easy set-up
Minimalist design
Well priced
Cons
Aux port has a 4-sec delay
4.4

By far the easiest sound system we have ever set up is the JBL Bar 2.1 Channel Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer. It’s set up offers a gloriously simple plug-and-play process that doesn’t require any head-scratching. Furthermore, the JBL Bar 2.1 Channel Soundbar offers incredible sound at a great price, with minimal cords and a clean aesthetic that will fit in with almost any entertainment room. With that said, we have a couple of tips for you on how to make the most of this sound system.

Set Up: Super easy

The box that the soundbar comes in is huge. Seriously, like really big. But once you get it out of all of its packaging, the set-up is unbelievably easy.

The beauty of this product is in its simplicity. It is basically plug-and-play theater-quality sound. Connecting the subwoofer is modern-day magic in that you don’t have to do anything. You turn it on and it automatically finds the available connections. Even my TV remote auto connected. This is really great because who needs to use yet another remote? No one! Using your existing TV remote to control the soundbar is very convenient, but you’ll need to keep the JBL 2.1 Soundbar remote handy too in case you want to change the bass or audio settings.

That said, if your TV remote auto pairing process isn’t successful for some reason, there is a very simple pairing process in the manual that you can refer to.

Sound: Immersive & Full

The difference from a built-in TV speaker to this 300-watt soundbar is jaw-dropping. Movies sound incredibly rich and powerful, while video games like Super Smash Bros pack a walloping punch of sound. The bass is booming too, but controllable. From the remote control, you can adjust the bass up for an action-packed movie or down for a more chill talk show or music. When it comes to dialogue, “movie” mode works great for streaming TV and movies and it offers especially crisp dialogue.

You can also use the soundbar as a Bluetooth connected speaker for your phone or laptop to connect to, making it a really useful entertainment room sound solution. Even better, there are very limited cords involved so it looks tidy and clean, rather than a bundle of cords you have to hide in a cabinet.

Pro Tip

Use the optical cord because otherwise there is a startling 4-second delay when you use the Aux port and a 3.5mm cable it’s quite awful coming off a commercial mute and missing 4 seconds of show dialogue. Fortunately, this can be easily avoided and reduced to a barely worth mentioning 1-second delay by connecting the soundbar to your TV with an optical cord.

The Bottom Line

JBL’s 2.1 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer packs a punch and manages to do so while staying slim and attractive. The set-up is little more than plug and play and it even pairs automatically with your existing TV remote. The sound is excellent and the cords involved are minimal. That said, don’t forget to stick with using an optical cord to avoid the much-maligned aux port/cable 4-second delay. The JBL 2.1 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer retails for $299.