Customer Ratings & Reviews

It helps with the speaking parts in shows when music would normally mask the speech. This is the second unit. The first was returned as non-functional.

Very good sound bar for the money. The audio is clear and the equalization is well balanced but you can still adjust bass/mid/treble. The only thing I don't care for is the Echo Dot. It seems less responsive than a standalone Dot and is more of a nuisance.

great quality for the price. polk is still a leading brand for sound quality.

Really good sound and expandable with subwoofer and rear surrounds. Easy to setup and use via Amazon Alexa app. However, it claims to be an Alexa device but doesn’t support playing Apple Music - which Alexa fully supports. They literally have to disable this functionality. There is absolutely ZERO mention of this pretty important fact. I have 5 Alex speakers and play Apple Music via multi-room Alexa but guess what - you can’t do that with this supposedly Alexa speaker. Seriously? The only reason I kept it is because it happens to be connected to a fire stick that DOES support Apple Music. So I play to the tv which plays their “Alexa” soundbar. The downside of course is I have to turn on the TV to be able to listen to music thru my supposed Alexa speaker.

Great soundbar. Polk really does voice really well. Best “for vocals” soundbar I have heard, and I have owned plenty of high end models. Plus, great sound when playing music. Polk remains among the best brands. High recommend.

In reviewing the soundbar individually is a disservice in my opinion. I did use the sound bar alone, then added the subwoofer, and lastly added the wireless speakers for a full surround sound system. As a single unit, namely the soundbar, you can find better ones out there because you absolutely need a subwoofer, in this case a wireless subwoofer to at least get the bass side of the sounds. I personally have an open floor plan in our house and living room. Because of this, there are no smaller rooms and walls to bounce off. With the further addition of the wireless speakers it absolutely sings. The sounds watching a movie and listening to Spotify is a dream. It is really easy to connect Spotify to this soundbar. The installation was easy. The soundbar actually comes with both a HDMI and optical cable. Each can easily run twenty dollars per cord but Polk included everything you need here. In case you don't have an HDMI ARC connection, no problem! There's the optical connection, which, I think is an awesome connection as well. The soundbar requires you to download Amazon Alexa. In my case on my android device. From there, the soundbar's settings can be adjusted slightly with the EQ settings there. From there you need to connect the soundbar to your wifi network. The set up here is relatively easy. I say relative because my initial attempt failed even though I have Google Mesh as my network. I just attempted the second time to connect the device through Alexa and it connected pretty smoothly. The onboard EQ settings work pretty well, with the option to adjust the bass and tremble a bit. All in all, the soundbar looks good and sounds ok as a stand alone unitl The integration with Amazon Alexa was seamless and you pretty much use Alexa as your Hub. The Alexa functionality is actually better than my other Alexa enabled speakers. There's no false triggers, the sound is there and the LED line is pleasing to the eyes. Phone calls are done through the Alexa app as well. This use was clear and I had no issues using this function. In adding the wireless subwoofer, this made a huge difference on how the movies and music sounds. You can feel and hear it pretty crisp and hits the bass lines just enough but not annoying. Even at full bass. Connecting was simple. You place the wireless subwoofer where you want it, plug it in and then press the pair button on the soundbar first to pair and then on the wireless subwoofer for a few seconds. Then the final piece I think is essential in this setup is the wireless speakers. The pairing is just like with the wireless subwoofer, you press the button on the soundbar to pair and then go to each speaker to press the button to pair. This method was pretty simple and worked the first time. I got an additional prompt saying that the subwoofer pairing has failed but it was already connected. So you may get that you may not. The sounds from the wireless speakers were simple and did it's job. You can use the soundbar's remote to adjust the volume of these speakers in case you have placed them a bit off center to your listening area. With all three components combined, this is a system that sound fantastic. I have a much more powered system without the wireless speakers but to me the wireless speakers fill in the gap in what is missing in my home theater experience that I longed for. Especially when theaters are not fully opened yet. Do I recommend the soundbar alone? No, not alone. You HAVE to get the subwoofer and if you can add the wireless speakers if you can. It makes the whole experience so much better.

The quality of sound on the sound bar was excellent. But I have to give it a very low review because I could not get it connected to my wireless network. I used both Polk, as well as Best Buy tech support and Amazon for technical help. This has built-in Alexa and it just would not connect to my fairly simple wireless network. I also bought other Polk speakers and since the sound bar could not connect I could not use the other surround speakers either. I returned all of them.

While I don’t love these speakers, I have to admit that they are very good quality. I have the soundbar, subwoofer and surround speakers. Pulling them out of the box they are obviously very high quality speakers. Initial set-up was pretty easy. It tries to get you to connect to Alexa right away, which you will need to do to get the full functionality, but you don’t have to have Alexa to use them. Connecting the subwoofer and surround sound speakers to the bar was really easy, but I did have to have them pretty close to the bar to make it work (around 3 ft). But once they were connected, I could move them farther away and they stay connected without any issues. The soundbar also uses English voice commands so it makes it a bit easier to figure out what the soundbar is doing. One irritating thing is that they expect you to be ready to go with all your speakers close to the soundbar and attach them all at once. I did the sub first, then opened the surrounds and entered pair mode again to do the surrounds. When I did the surrounds I did one first and waited for a confirmation before doing the second. That’s not the right move. It won’t actually connect the surrounds unless you do them both together. After that hiccup I also got a notice that the sub could not be connected. I had to ignore this warning since the sub was already connected and stayed connected but the system wanted me to try and reconnect anyway. All minor notes, but maybe it will help someone else trying to set things up. Once it was all set up the next thing I noticed is that the sound bar doesn’t have a menu. There are a few options on the alexa app, but mostly its just a blank slate that when you push a button on the remote you need to look at the light indicator and kind of guess what is happening. This really became an irritation when I was trying to set up the surrounds properly. The surrounds are wireless and easily connected to the bar, but they still need power. As a result my surrounds are in ok locations, but not ideal ones because they are not uniformly distant from the main listening location. The instructions say not to do that, but my power plugs are only in certain locations and if I wanted to pay to move a power plug, I’d just pay to wire up a system and not use wireless speakers. Normally the way you address this issue is to change the volume (and sometimes timing) of sound from the speakers to account for differences in distance. The remote has options to adjust the balance between surround speakers and volume for the surrounds and sub independent of the soundbar. So technically you can make all the fine tuned adjustments you need. However it doesn’t come with any microphone system or other helpful guides and tools to actually tweak this right. The instructions don’t even give any hints on what volume the surrounds should be at and so it is likely that it will take you a while to get the balance of everything just right. Its really a shame because the hardware all looks and sound fantastic, but if they are just set wrong it can completely ruin your experience. I also don’t love that those settings are adjusted with a button on the remote. I have kids and they will push any button they aren’t supposed to. If I spend a long time getting everything dialed in just right, they can completely mess it up with just a few pushes of a button. I always bring sound bar remotes into a universal remote where I can conveniently leave those buttons of, but still, it seems like a shortsighted design. There is no menu to adjust syncing with the tv, but I have a Hisense and it connected without a problem and turns on and off together with it easily. Overall, once I got it dialed in, the system makes great sound, but they just made it harder than it needed to be to get there. There is a built in Alexa device. This is actually great for controlling other things while watching tv, communicating quickly between Alexa devices to extend our makeshift intercom system, and its fantastic for listening to music. Most speaker systems I’ve had or used allow you to connect a Bluetooth device to it to listen to music. This does to and I’ve used it occasionally, but most of the time I just stream my music. Its nice to have a dedicated unit to be able to do that. Its also fun to easily be able to put your music on in a surround sound setting that really gives you an amazing sound experience. My one grip on the Alexa is that you can not change the wake up word. You are stuck with Alexa. This is a super simple thing to activate and my understanding is that it is completely controlled by Amazon. I don’t know who’s rules it is on what devices can use a different wake up word, but for me that really kills a ton of the benefits of having the device. One of our children has a name that is VERY close to Alexa and it means we have to keep the microphone on the Alexa device off. We can push the button to turn the mic on and use it when we want, but generally speaking it might as well not be there. Companies should really boycott adding Alexa to devices until they let every device change the wake word. These are overall very good speakers, but the limitations of Alexa and a few minimalistic design choices by the company really hold it back from being amazing. You can get this soundbar and run it without the other speakers and if you do you don't need to worry about the issues with the surrounds so I didn't take off any points for that irritation, just one star for the Alexa wake word issue.

There a few speakers you’ll never go wrong with Polk is one of them this is the second sound bar I have great just to even listen to music in the house with Bluetooth WiFi

Love this sound bar, after adding the surround speakers and base, its perfect!

The sound bar is working great. Sound very clear. I am very happy with it.

Excellent sound for any size room, plus Alexa built-in oh snap!

one of the single worst consumer electronics purchases of my life.Amazon always

I am blown away with how great this sound bar helps the tv sound. I got this to replace an old home theater system with huge 12 inch speakers. It does the job! Alone it's great, when you add the sub, it's unbelievable. Out of the box, I don't think any adjustments are needed. Setup was super easy. Plug it in and connect it thru the alexa app. It is smart, so it adjusts to what your listening to. It has other listening modes if you'd like to change to them, movie, sports, or music mode. You can also independently change the bass or voice tones. Hook it up with the included hdmi cable to the arc connector and either remote (TV or soundbar) will control the volume. Alexa is built in and works great. It's on all the time so you can always talk to her. (she can respond kind of loud at times but that's the same on all alexa devices, no independent volume control for her response, Amazon's fault) This is a great looking, compact sound bar, that really impresses!

If I could return this I would. Won’t connect to blue tooth android phone. Wants an app that doesn’t work. The Alexa portion hardly works Sound is decent. But overall I would return and fine one that operates better

Throughout my usage of this Polk React Sound Bar, I have found it to be a very good sound bar. First of all, looking at the audio performance, this sound bar does really well: the volume can get really loud, the sound quality is good and full, and it performs better than any speakers that come with your TV. This device handles all of the basic functions really well. As far as connections go, this sound bar offers many different connection options including optical and HDMI ARC. It was very nice that both an optical and HDMI cable were included in the box. After some research and reviewing the manual, the recommended option was HDMI ARC rather than optical (if available). I hooked up the HDMI ARC and it was super easy, it just worked and there was nothing special to configure. Overall, this has lots of connection options so you should definitely be able to find one that works well for your setup. The one connection that is missing though is HDMI eARC. HDMI eARC is an upgraded version of HDMI ARC which provides the best possible audio transmission over HDMI and fully supports Dolby 5.1 and Atmos. It’s too bad that this brand new unit does not have this. Overall though, I am happy with the connection options, but do keep in mind that eARC is missing if that is something you are looking for. Additionally, if you are looking to upgrade your experience with an added subwoofer and surround sound, this unit has you covered. It pairs with a wireless subwoofer and wireless surround sound speakers (sold separately), allowing you to easily set up a surround sound audio system without having to do any special wiring. The subwoofer and surround speakers do have to be plugged into power, but beyond that, they are completely wireless. I tested both the wireless subwoofer and wireless surround speakers and they were very easy to pair and worked well with this sound bar. Beyond the basic functions, this sound bar also has some very nice added features. It has built-in Alexa which adds some great capabilities to this sound bar. We were originally going to put an echo dot in the living room where our TV is, but now this takes care of both the sound bar function and the Alexa function. We regularly drop into different Alexa devices in our home so I was very glad to find that we could both make phone calls and drop in through this device. It’s great for making phone calls because of the speaker quality, and those on the other end could hear us well even at a distance. And of course, you can also play music through Alexa which is really nice. The music output with this along with the subwoofer and surround speakers was excellent and very immersive, so definitely a great way to listen to some music. Overall a great sound bar that handles the basics really well and has some really nice additional features! If you have other Alexa devices in your household, this unit can complement those really well!

Unbelievably good sound from a soundbar. Easy to setup and easy to use. My TV could not maintain the ARC HDMI link, so I had to switch to the digital optical connection until the TV issue can be resolved (if ever). But no sound quality is lost via the optical link, so it still sounds marvelous - particularly with the subwoofer and surround accessories. I must repeat - this soundbar sounds so good with great depth, detail, clarity with a nice soundstage. And to top it off, it has excellent Alexa integration so that you can control the volume and other settings via voice control. Super sweet!

Very disappointing. Details did not include the necessity to have to have Alexia. Sound is very poor. I will be selling this item as soon as I can.

This is a medium priced system. I bought from an older salesman in the TV section. I explained that I had an issue picking out voices in a movie. I bought this 4 discreet speaker system with the voice boost on the controller. The audio is amazing. The bass is super, I have actually toned it down... undistorted and just like sitting in theater. I use it with my LG 55 OLED and an HDMI cable perfect. I can change my seating position and change the rear speaker balance and volume. I have an LG sound bar and am about to exchange it for another one of these if they will restock.... will they?

I really enjoy the quality of the sound. Voice is much clearer than other speakers. My only negative is that it does not have an input option for audio. I have an older CD player that I cannot connect.