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I still haven't bought a soundbar.

"What kind of tech nerd are you?" you may well ask.

It's practically 2020 and I'm still sitting here listening to my telly through its own speakers. How quaint.

Where's the space? The effects? The boom?

In short, what have I been waiting for?

The JBL Link Bar is the first soundbar I've really considered laying down cold hard cash for. The reason? All the other things it does instead of just being a soundbar.

By this stage it must sound like I have a major problem with soundbars and that's not exactly so. I've just never really seen the point. When it comes to home theatre, I'm a bit old-school. Ideally I'm looking for a surround-sound experience with decent bass boom. If there's an explosion happening on screen, I don't just want to see it, I want to feel it.

I have definitely reviewed some excellent soundbars over recent years and every time a new one comes out the claims of what they can do become more and more ambitious. These days they're supposed to be able to sense the size and shape of the room and beam various soundstreams in every direction to simulate what us old geezers used to do by wiring in two front speakers, two rear speakers and a subwoofer. I know, I know; calm down, grandad.

Certainly with enough well directed speakers built in, that feeling of space can definitely be achieved. But to really feel like you're inside the action, I've found you need to add a subwoofer at the very least, which is probably why so many soundbars come bundled with one in the same package.

Well, things have changed.

The JBL Link Bar has a greatly improved dynamic range, especially at the lower end of the scale. While technically there's no subwoofer built in, there are passive radiators at each end of the device to let those booming soundwaves rumble around and you'll definitely get way more bottom end out of those explosions and dance beats than you would out of any basic television speaker array.

Unfortunately, there's not much ability to tweak the EQ to your personal preference. There are four preset sound modes, Standard, Voice, Movie and Music but I pretty much kept it on Movie the whole time as that's the mode that spreads the sound out into the room most effectively. Apart from volume (obviously) there's only one other sound control, bass. Turn it up or down to your liking. The good news here is, turning it up turns it up quite a bit. The bad news is, because you can't boost the highs or mids as well, if you run the bass high, it tends to dominate and muddy the overall mix slightly.

There's still the option to pair a separate subwoofer if you want to. In fact, there's a heap of inputs on the Link Bar; three HDMI sockets additional to the HDMI ARC socket that'll ensure you can control the device with your TV remote or vice versa. There's also an optical port and a standard 3.5mm aux plugin. That's before you get to the bluetooth connectivity which allows you to stream from phones, tablets, laptops and also lets you connect a keyboard and mouse.

Why would you want to do that? Because of the Link Bar's greatest trick; it has Android TV built in. Yes the remote can navigate you around the Android TV user interface, but it's certainly easier to scroll and point with a bluetooth mouse and logging into your streaming accounts is so long-winded without a physical keyboard. If you haven't used Android TV before, think of it as a way to access all the streaming apps you have on your phone, without your phone. Common apps like Netflix, YouTube and Spotify are all pre-installed and you can log into your Google Play account to download others. Lightbox and TVNZ On Demand are there but Neon and Sky Go aren't. Maybe they'll turn up eventually. You won't find anything like the selection of apps you can install on an Android phone, as not all apps are optimised for your TV's large display. It is possible to sideload other Android apk's from a file manager although there's no guarantee these will work. 

I'm a massive fan of Android TV because I'm a massive fan of streaming content and doing it this way means you're cutting a step out of the equation (your phone) which always helps eliminate buffering and stalling. The Link Bar can connect via WiFi or ethernet and I actually had no issues using apps like Netflix either way.

So essentially, the Link Bar can turn any TV into a very smart TV, just by plugging it in.

But it gets smarter. The Link Bar has Google Assistant built in too. Whether or not you're getting used to talking to your devices to make them work, Google Assistant has been the big improver when it comes to voice activation. The far-field microphones in the Link Bar are impressively sensitive and if you're not too embarrassed to talk to your TV, you can render the physical remote almost redundant. Which may be why it's probably the worst feature of the Link Bar. The remote feels cheap and plasticky and weirdly has dedicated buttons for things like Netflix and Google Assistant, but not for basic operations like play and pause. There is a directional control wheel in the middle but the whole thing just feels a bit clunky to me.

Oh, did I mention Chromecast? Yup, that's built in too. You can see how the Link Bar is really more of a one-stop media centre than just a fancy speaker.

Priced under $700, admittedly you might be able to find another soundbar out there that sounds a bit better for slightly less but there's no way you'll get all the other features thrown in. When you take into account Google Assistant, Android TV, Chromecast and an impressive number of input options, the JBL Link Bar seems like amazing value for money.

I might actually have to buy one!



Click here for more information on the JBL Link Bar.