i donna like soundbars ,, and i had no desire to get one way back when they were first introduced .. but finally got tired of poor voice quality with my bedroom 24" tv and thought that at this time ,, soundbars should be of better quality and manufacturers know how to make soundbar work right ... and then reading a bunch of reviews that praises soundbar ... i got this polk as my very first one ... and i am not impressed .. i even bought the yamaha yas-109 too for another tv and it is the same .. i decided on the polk and yamaha brands for their long history of being in the speaker business ,, and assume that the $200 price range would give me a clear quality output .. and avoided lower price cheep quality and not going higher price even if quality would be better .... and besides ,, these soundbars cost more than twice the cost of my tv ,, but what i learned is that soundbar produce fake sound with all the options and you all know what i mean .. the physical positions of the drivers are wrong ,, they point up .. and not at you .. ,, but you may get brands that do aim at you but they are way more expensive .. with more drivers too .. the use of hdmi-arc and setup ,, network connections and other features all add to complicating the operations and use and more ... and i am going to leave it at that .. you can read other reviewers to get more details .. but finally i just got a set of powered amped shelf speaker and now enjoy a more natural output .. using the headset output .. and you will get a clearer output as long as the source is good .. if you see my photo ,, i mounted the soundbar on top of my bed to have the speakers point at me .. and it was just used for ordinary tv listening at night before sleeping .. so i may try to sell soundbar or give it away .. last laugh ,, i noticed every soundbar brand advertises a selling feature is ,, the soundbar will produce clear voice listening .. ha ,, proves my point that tv sound is bad .. and hard to understand ..

Absolutely fantastic sound bar! But if you pair it with it's other components, the sub and surround speakers (both optional) then it becomes really close to amazing. Setting up the bar though gave me some minor issues. In the box you get the bar, power cord, a sleeve with the typical literature, remote with batteries, wall mount hardware (no screws!) and not only an HDMI cable but also an optical one too! Rarely do you see that so it was a nice touch. Build quality is great. Not gonna be slipping around or rattling in place where you decide to put it. I put mine on my TV stand and while the instruction manual recommends putting the bar as close to the FRONT edge as possible, to me it takes away the aesthetics of it so I placed my near the mid closer to the rear. Connections are fairly straightforward. A disappointing note on this is that there is no HMDI in from an external source like I see in most sound bars nowadays within the price range (like 2 HDMI IN connections if that makes more sense). It is only from your TVs ARC connection. You can also use the optical connection and even Bluetooth. Using the Alexa App to set up seems easy at first, but I ran into a problem while on WIFI. The app finds the bar instantly and starts to walk you through the whole set up, but for me, as soon as I made it to the part where you connect to your home's WIFI, it just locks up and never connects. I remedied this by a very simple set. Turned off my device's WIFI and proceeded to setup via Bluetooth instead. Doing that worked and connected the bar flawlessly. So to save you a potential headache, try that 1st. After setup, I told Alexa to play me some Rock and RHCP started. Thumbs up Alexa for that. You can change bass and treble (voice) levels via the remote or just tell Alexa to do so. Voice commands worked with no hiccups. After pairing the Sub to the bar, music sounded at least 1000x better. The woofer is deep and powerful and not distorted at all. Movies and games were great. Obviously being far more superior to the TVs speakers. This time I added the rear surround speakers and the sounds became more immersive. Watched a couple of Netflix and Amazon Prime movies. After that, played Xbox Series X and gaming was awesome. In my opinion, at least get the woofer alongside with this bar at the very least. It just enhances the sound quality soo much. Polk is a great company that has been around for a while and they know their stuff when it comes to speakers and sound devices.

The Polk Audio React Soundbar gives great quality sound to fill the room with excellent audio! Design The Soundbar has the kind of design that's pretty common with a lot of new home speakers. Fabric is stretched over the front, top, and sides. There are lights in the front but you only see them when they light up because they're behind the fabric. I think it looks cool! The top has the normal type of button layout you would expect to find on an Alexa device, with volume up, volume down, mic off, and an action button. I was glad to find an HDMI cable and optical cable in the box. It also comes with a template for wall mounting. Setup is easy using the Alexa app on your phone. Sound The sound quality is excellent! Movies, YouTube video's, and different styles of music all sound great. Vocals, stringed instruments, piano, drums, nature sounds, and sci-fi audio all sound real. I listed to a number of types of music, watched some movies and TV shows, and watched YouTube videos. The sound is consistently excellent with clear rich vocals and deep bass. Not only are vocal great but the remote actually has buttons for vocal "up and down". It worked very well to make vocals more pronounced or soften them. There are also modes for different types of content or at listening at night: Night, Music, Sports, and Movie. I like the night mode. It seems to reduce loud noises and background sounds while keeping voice audible. It's helpful for watching a movie while the kids are sleeping upstairs. Remote It's a sleek and very functional remote. It's IR, so line-of-sight only, but it works well. Along with the volume up/down buttons there are also up/down buttons for Bass and Voice. At the bottom of the remove there are controls for balance and volume of the rear surround speakers, in case you have those. While they are self explanatory I was surprised by the one for voice and, as I mentioned above, liked the way you can make voice more or less prominent. You will also see controls for the volume of the surround sound and the balance of the surround sound. I like the way the lights on the speaker show where you're at for all these features. Volume up/down goes from 0 at the left and then to the right as you get louder, the way you would expect. All the others start in the middle (default) and then you can increase or decrease from there. I love this because you can play with it and it's easy to get it back to default - so you know you'll have surround at a good level when you're done messing with it for example. The remote also has the following buttons for modes that I mentioned above: Night, Music, Sport, and Movie. Alexa and Voice Control Alexa works very well on the React Soundbar. Using Alexa is a requirement because you use the Alexa app to setup and control the Soundbar. Beyond that, you can use Alexa for voice control. I was able to ask Alexa to turn the volume up or down or turn off my Android TV by asking Alexa to "turn off the TV". I was most impressed by the voice calling feature. I could ask Alexa to call someone in my phone. I was impressed how it handled calling my wife's phone. Sure it will call any phone but my wife and my aunt have the same name. It actually was smart enough to ask me who I wanted to call. Most times I've had voice assistants seemingly just pick one and call. It gave me the last four digits of the number's and asked me which one I wanted to call. It was quick, easy, and accurate! Once the call is made sound quality is excellent and with the the mics built in the soundbar for Alexa it picks up voice great and you can hear the person on the other end through the speakers perfectly. It's a great way to do a speakerphone call!

As the title says, my experience with the soundbar, subwoofer, and speakers has been good but the Alexa integration is poor. I have a Sony TV and just the soundbar compared to the TV makes the audio much better, when you add the subwoofer and speakers that are all wireless you get really nice sound with a simple setup. You just plug everything in, press a few buttons and you're up and running with surround sound that sounds great. Getting Alexa setup wasn't too hard either, as I have a few of them so I just opened the app and it found the polk. Nice thing is that you actually control the soundbar all through Alexa, so no extra app is needed, although that control is limited. The next part that's lacking is the control of the TV if you don't already have a firestick or fire tv. If you tell the soundbar "Alexa, turn off TV" it won't do anything even though its connected through the HDMI to the TV. I wish that they would have just gone ahead and built Fire TV stick into the soundbar since without it you essentially have an echo dot that's bigger and since the fire cube I have has a mic on it the soundbar is just repetitive and many times doesn't do what you want since you need to talk to the Fire TV. While its nice not needing another app, the controls are also limited. You have volume, bass and surround sound volume. I actually like this, but previous systems have given more control so just something to be aware of. Overall, its a decent soundbar but it really doesn't need the Alexa built into it as its not very useful.

Watching movies and listening to music through this device did provide high-end quality sound. I did recognize a distinction in audio when toggling through the different modes. Unfortunately, setup with Alexa was long and troublesome. I kept receiving error messages when trying to find the device and issues when attempting to connect with my wireless network. I solved the problems by connecting to the Polk Audio React Sound Bar via Bluetooth first and then entering setup mode within the Alexa app. This may require a factory reset if the device is unrecognizable during initial setup. Owners should also be aware that this device works best on the 5Ghz band instead of the 2.4Ghz. This may pose as an issue given that 5Ghz should be reserved for critical devices such as laptops. desktops, and gaming consoles. Once you conquer the issues then it's truly smooth sailing. The sound bar worked flawlessly in recognizing my voice when initiating Alexa commands and response time was great. In summary, this product should be a great fit for your home. Cons: - Initial Alexa Setup was buggy - Works best with the 5Ghz band which causes undesired network congestion Pros: - Sound surround sound - Premium build quality - Great response time when using remote and Alexa commands