Polk Audio - 5.1-Channel MagniFi Max SR Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer & Surround Speakers (Pair) - Black

It's perfect for a small to medium sized room. Sound quality is very good, and you can control voice, woofer or surround speaker volume individually. The nicest thing about the system is how easy it is to set it up - all I need was a couple of corner shelves and self-adhesive cord management channels for a grand total of $20 at the local home improvement stores. And about 30 minutes of measuring, drilling small holes and putting up the shelves. After that, all you need to do is to plug in the woofer and the surround speakers, and the system will connect and sync the components by itself! I actually like the recessed main volume buttons; it makes volume control easy in total darkness. One caveat - using Google Assistant to control the soundbar is nice, but be careful using Google to set volume level. I made the mistake by asking Google to set soundbar volume to 50% when testing streaming music. The following day I lost control of the volume by using the remote - no matter what I do, volume stayed the same. For over half an hour I couldn't figure out why and thought that the unit was defective, and then it dawned on me that Google Assistant might be the culprit. It was. After deleting the soundbar from Google Assistant, and then reset the soundbar, everything went back to its glorious working conditions. I believe this is a bug that can be fixed, maybe by a future firmware update? I bought the system when Best Buy had it on a pre-Black Friday deal. I will take this Polk system over its competitors any workday plus Saturday and Sunday. Yes, some of the higher end systems would give nicer sound, Dolby Atomos for example, but it's definitely not $1,000 nicer to me. Particularly for my bedroom use. If you've never used a soundbar before, stop right here and this could be your perfect first soundbar. In my house I have 3 soundbars, a Bose, a Yamaha and this newly purchased Polk. For its ease of setup and incredible value, I will pick this Polk over the other two for bedroom or any small to midsized environment.

Solid sound bar - very well built and can get very loud. Does not do Atmos but the Dolby digital 5.1 is certainly good enough. I have been through about 4 different sound bars over the last year and this one is staying in my living room for a long time. Chrome cast works great after a few firmware updates, ARC connection so far very reliable - overall I am very happy with it. One other thing to mention - the subwoofer is quite large and I find myself turning the bass down as it is very powerful - which is usually the complete opposite of what I have experienced with other sound bars. I will take a solid 5.1 sound bar over a less expensive one with Dolby atmos 7.1.2 any day - don’t be fooled by 200 bars claiming atmos - it is not a cheap technology to simulate properly in a sound bar.

I have ran into a few issues with this setup, namely it cutting the audio completely on gaming devices randomly. Also after a year the back smaller speakers started to become tinny. I assume I may have gotten a faulty model, but I am not sure. There was also a strange stain on one of the smaller speakers. They were good speakers prior to the issues.

Let's be clear; The soundbar itself is never going to sound anywhere close to a left, right, and center channel speaker setup with a real 5.1 AV Receiver. That said, if you aren't setting up a TV in a living room, and you want to fill a room with sound, the ease of setup here can't be understated. You don't have to run a bunch of wires between your speakers here, which makes clean and professional looking setups extremely easy. The sound from the subwoofer and satellites is fantastic, the remote is straightforward, the lights on the bar are clear during the day without being blinding at night, and the variety of input options make installation a breeze even with setups that have a of devices like cable boxes and consoles. That said the Chromecast is a pain to setup with Wi-Fi, requiring you to download an extremely old version of Google Home just to get through it, but casting works just fine with the latest version once initial setup is complete. Also, there's no HDMI 2.1, no eARC, and no Dolby Plus or Dolby Atmos. I can't speak for HDR pass-through either, as the TV I connected this to doesn't support it. You also can't buy two more of the excellent wireless surround speakers for 7.1, which is a huge missed opportunity here. Overall though, all of those are just nitpicks. If you want more audio than your TV offers but less than a full AV Receiver setup, this system will absolutely fill a room with nice surround sound without a bunch of speaker cable mess to try and hide. After using it for a while I highly recommend this setup, especially for bedrooms. Living Rooms should probably have an AV Receiver instead for this kind of money. Still a great system either way.

I almost returned the system but could not bring myself to do it. When it works it works great, and now for the rest of the story. Set up was a breeze however I ran into the following issues that persist to this day. - Popping noises from rear speakers, be it interference or the rear channel is not getting enough power from certain 5.1 sources. Two different sounding issues. - Soundbar is painfully slow to sync with any source routed to any of the three HDMI Arc inputs. - Soundbar firmware occasionally locks up and must be manually power cycled when the tv turns of via sleep timer. - The remote is poorly designed with not enough "tweaking" options and an unfriendly layout. Aside form that works great !

I'm still trying to see if I love it. I enjoy theatre sound & I am learning Polk does not give you constant theatre sound. It depends on what your warching, live tv, movie or You Tube. The rear speakers dont seem to play high volume only on movies.

First and foremost, I picked up the Polk system when it went on sale for $399.99 at my local Best Buy after seeing they had some in stock on the app. And for that price point it’s impossible to find a system that sounds this great. The system is powerful enough to finally make my 70 inch LG sound as good as it looks. I was looking for a “wireless” system with rear channel speakers and apart from having to plug in the bar, sub, and rear speakers to power outlets the Polk system covered my needs perfect.

Our Bose Soundtouch 300 system died after 2 years. This Polk Magnifi SR was on sale and a fraction of the cost to replace our Bose. We could not be happier. It synced seamlessly with our Sony TV and sounds better than the Bose. The adjustments to the voice channel and surround volumes allow you to taylor this setup to your room.