JBL Studio Soundbar 2.0

JBL Studio Soundbar 2.0 (reviewed 13 December 2019)

So what is it? 

It's a soundbar, made by JBL (of Harman Kardon).

What are its key features?

The good  

1 - it's small. Shorter than your typical soundbar. Good if you don't have a lot of space, though I'm not sure that was ever really an issue as soundbars are meant to be compact in the first place 

2 - it has no separate subwoofer (see above. Good if you're trying to save space).

3 - it's cheap. At the time of writing, and in general if you time it right, available on Takealot for example (allegedly for 55% of "normal retail price") at R1299

4 - it feels like a quality product. The packaging is not Apple-level aesthetic joy (it's a long, thin box with a soundbar, remote and some packaging in it) but the speaker itself is weighted nicely, has little rubber leggies on which it stands, and feels as if they put a bit of effort into making the thing 

5 - it doesn't have a lot of cables. This helps reduce clutter. I currently have it connected via HDMI to my Xiaomi MI Box, and also via 3

5mm audio (aux) cable to the same box, so it looks quite neat. Other than that, there is just the short power cable coming out of the thing.

The Meh 

1 - the performance. The sound is good, sure. It is definitely an upgrade on whatever sound your TV can muster through what will be tiny stock TV speakers. But it's not as good as I was expecting from a JBL product, even a cheap one. The lack of separate sub means you have to rely on two 2" woofers, which are decent at middling volumes and for things with not a lot of heavy bass. Anything more than that, and they start to feel a bit lightweight. 

2 - the remote. It's very small (credit card size) which is good. But it feels flimsy and is also easy to lose down the side / underneath a couch / into a nearby toddler. 

The bad 

1 - it goes to sleep. A lot. Even when plugged in and switched on and plugged into a device that is trying to send it some sound. As soon as the soundbar gets a hint of a moment of silence, it goes to sleep. And then takes longer than it should to wake up. So you can either pause whatever you are watching and wait for it to come back to life. Or miss those few seconds of dialogue 

2 - it doesn't have an LED or a screen of any kind. Instead it has 5 LED lights which are supposed to tell you various things about how you are interacting with it, like what mode you have set the thing to, and, more likely, that it has gone to sleep and needs to be woken up (again). This is not useful at all. It shouldn't go to sleep at all. If I don't want it to be on, I will turn it off. I know we're struggling to produce enough electricity to sustain the whole country at the same time right now, but it's not as if this thing is a massive power consumer when it is goodly enough to remain powered up. If I had known this before buying, I probably would have looked elsewhere. I just assumed it would have a little screen. Rather than Morse code LED dots. It's 2019 for goodness sake. 

The verdict 

🌟 🌟 🌟 

Three stars (out of a possible five). 

The price, quality feel, decent sound quality and compactness of the thing just about  outweigh the ridiculous decisions to go with no screen and the fact that it suffers from a pretty serious case of persistent narcolepsy. 

Certainly worth checking out. 

H