JBL Bar 1000MK2-7.1.4 Channel soundbar System with Detachable Surround Speakers, MultiBeam 3.0, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, 480W RMS with 10″ Sub & Works with Voice Assistant-Enabled Speakers (Black)

Amazing!
This sound bar is amazing!! I saw a write up on how to calibrate the speakers so they are louder. I tried it and it works so good! I actually have to turn down the surround speakers because they were so loud after I calibrated them. You can’t go go wrong with this sound bar! I highly recommend it!

Superior Sound Quality
The JBL Bar 1000M2-7.1.4 Channel sound bar System is my third surround sound system I’ve owned. It is by far the best! You will be blown away by the rich bass, the clarity of sound, and the detachable rear speakers! Setup is easy and Bluetooth connectivity is a breeze. The price may be a little higher, but the value for your money is remarkable! You will not be disappointed!

JBL MK2 1000 hits all the marks
Everything you would expect from JBL. This sound bar fills the room with Dolby ATMOS audio. Love the easy set up and calibration. Up your home cinema experience!!

Rear speakers can’t be heard! Base only at medium volume.
Overall the surround sound doesn’t give a good Dolby Atmos or immersive directional sound. This is more like a really good soundbar system with good clarity and a really good base or sub when the volume is turned up, but without Atmos directional sound.When cranked up, the speaker bar and sub are loud, have strong base, and sound clear. The rears are underpowered to the point they have zero effectiveness. The rears are like a whisper at best and can’t be heard unless you put your ears up to the rear speaker. The rears are completely overpowered by the rest of the system. This is with all the remote control settings turned up.At normal everyday listening you can’t really hear the base (sub speaker) all that well. The sub doesn’t kick in until medium volume, even with the equalizer tuned up. It’s not like the sub is underpowered, rather more like a programming issue. You mostly only hear the main bar, which does sound really good. But I fully expected the base to work better at low volumes and the rears to have a decent effect. They might as well not sell the rears and take some money off the price. Basically I think the bar 500 and bar 700 would sound comparable given the weak rears speakers.

Absolutely an amazing speaker system!!Bass, clarity and surround sound!

INTROSo I’ve had the system for a few days and I have to say that I’m quite disappointed. I spent quite some time deciding between this and equivalent Samsung soundbars and for some reason, against my better judgement maybe, I decided to go with the JBL. I think it was a mistake but without testing the Samsung soundbars I cannot be 100% certain. Part of my decision was based around me owning the original JBL Xtreme 1 bluetooth speaker and I figured if JBL can get so much decent performance out of such a relatively small form factor then the soundbar being larger and more expensive overall should perform better. Yeah…No.My issues have nothing to do with the things most people complained about. As far as I can tell the system is performing exactly as it was designed……and that’s actually my biggest problem with it.CONTEXTThis is my first soundbar system, I am mostly used to setting up full surround sound systems with amps and separate speakers , stereo systems with subs with crossover adjustments etc. I don’t claim to be an expert or audiophile by any stretch but I’ve owned and setup various systems over 25+ years so I have some idea on what I like and how to get the best out of them to my ears. Considering the amount of reviews I have seen by various youtube “experts” and ordinary folks etc giving this system high praise, I have to question whether to trust anyone any more.PROS AND CONSPros: OK yes the bass gets deep, the bass can rock your walls/windows and annoy your neighbours if you like that sort of thing…..great, well done. The clarity from the speakers is pretty decent , setup is fairly quick and simple, the design is not bad , I actually prefer the sharper edges of the previous generation but compared to the bulky boxy rear speakers on the Samsung systems I like the form factor of the JBLs. Wireless connection has been solid, I’m not noticing any significant latency or anything. The Dolby Atmos feeling is decent I guess , I don’t really have anything to compare with so I’m just going by how it felt to me in my room. Is it better than a regular 5.1 surround sound? I don’t know , maybe, but only somewhat. Maybe I need to play with calibrating more but I don’t think I was getting really accurate positional information and I think the separation of the front channels is lacking a bit because of the short length of the bar. There’s certainly many moments where sounds are coming from places where theres no speakers so something is working but whether its accurate or not its difficult to say as its all based on reflections. This is supposed to be the Pros part right? ;)Cons: Here we go ……The 2 main problems with the JBL 1000mk2 soundbar and I’m assuming this is true for the entire soundbar range is that they are seriously lacking any decent lower mid/upper bass response in the soundbar itself and the woefully weak App.Most reviewers are banging on about the power of the bass from the sub but if you turn the sub off , the soundbar sounds weak and cheap frankly, those two bass ports on the soundbar, they are just for show , you would never turn up the soundbar loud enough to have any need for those bass ports to vent anything and I don’t think they do anything good for the sound signature at all. They sound hollow and a bit tinny/boxy because of the materials of the soundbar anyway. If you compare them to the JBL Xtreme 1 speaker and the hefty construction of those, you get such a better sound from those. They really should have put in one larger more powerful driver in the soundbar to give the sound some heft and warmth. There’s a noticeable gap in the frequency response of the lower-mid/upper-bass from the soundbar and the sub doesn’t accommodate for it because the crossover setup seems to make the sub kick in at a too low a frequency range.For example there will be moments in a movie where the sub is doing almost nothing at all which means all the work is being done by the soundbar and that’s when you will realise how woefully inadequate the soundbar is.In a normal separated sub setups or amp you would have a crossover adjustment to help make up for the lack of bass from the other speakers but we don’t have that ability here. We’re at JBLs discretion on what they deemed is fit for our ears.The App is so lame , there’s barely any controls to adjust anything or save any presets on the equaliser . It’s the worst app for such an expensive system I have ever seen , JBL should be ashamed frankly. Basically JBL have decided the consumer are babies and they should just let the thing automatically adjust and then you deal with it. That’s not how hifi audio / home theatre equipment should be. Every room setup has its own challenges and manufacturers need to give consumers enough advanced controls to be able to dial in the system to their specific needs. That’s just how it should be and maybe 90% of the consumers are lazy and won’t touch the advanced settings but you cannot give such limited settings without the option to have more advanced settings if needed. You’re basically limiting what the system can do and its ability to adjust for its inadequacies . The whole point of making these convenient apartment sized speaker setups is to eek as much performance as possible from a small form factor and there’s a heavy reliance on software to achieve that. Cripple the software and you might as well tell everyone that you don’t have any respect for your products or your customers.Maybe I’m spoiled coming from dedicated amps with a million controls on exactly how much each channel can be dialled in but I’m not even asking for all that much. Having 0-10(or better) range for volume on each channel/speaker and a crossover range for the subwoofer is the bare minimum I would say for a system like this. And not having any way to save presets for the equaliser which has to be adjusted if you’re switching from music to movies etc, slap in the face. It’s not difficult , they’ve made a conscious choice to limit adjustments.Just having low-mid-high for the adjustment levels of the rear surround and bass with zero adjustment for center channel is crazy. If people live in an apartment like I do (which is what these type of systems are designed for) having room shaking bass is only good for the occasional party , but for day to day use , you want to dial in the sound scape so its well adjusted for the room and has good low volume performance. I noticed that I often need something between the low and high setting to get an ideal response at certain volumes and you just cannot do that , which is ridiculous frankly and then I have to manually adjust the EQ when I’m switching between movie and music because I can’t save presets.I don’t have any hope that JBL see it in their infinite wisdom to update the App and give us the options to improve the quality of life of this system. This is their second iteration of an almost flagship soundbar and clearly they don’t care about that if it doesn’t exist already.ADDITIONAL NOTESI actually attached the rear surrounds to the wall with the provided wall mount. Nice to have the mounts provided but the wall mounting setup is not great. The way the speaker slots into the wall mount, its a single connection point, it has so much room to move that the speaker sags a bit and can rotate slightly so it can look not level and aesthetic. I know these aren’t necessarily made for permanent mounting but it was an option and I wish they had put more thought into it….but its the least of the issues.CONCLUSIONAnyway long rant but general conclusion is , unless you ONLY care about bass from the sub , you probably want to go and check out the Samsung range (or something else) first before buying anything from JBL soundbar wise (I know its the same company ). Atleast they have the decency to provide more controls in their app for channel adjustments and not infantilise their customers. Yes their latest F ranges sub woofer speaker is smaller and might lack some sub bass heft but I imagine it would actually be better at filling in the gap of the upper bass/ lower mids and for an apartment it would be perfectly fine. I was seriously considering the 930f model Samsung which was cheaper than this and has more speakers in the soundbar so technically it could have even given a better Dolby Atmos performance for less money.I’ve attached a movie to show my JBL Xtreme 1 and the JBL 1000 MK2 soundbar (without the subwoofer on) playing some music to demonstrate how lacking in critical lower mid/upper bass frequencies the 1000mk2 sound bar is . (HEADPHONES NEEDED TO LISTEN!!!) .If they can make the Xtreme sound that full then they can certainly do it with the soundbar but they chose not to and it hurts the performance.I’m happy to be proven wrong in anything I said, this is just my opinion. Hope it helps someone with their choices.