Jbl Bar Studio

All-in-one Soundbar with built-in Dual Bass Port design

Enjoy significantly better sound with more bass from your TV series, movies, and music through Dual Bass Port design.

Wireless music streaming with Bluetooth

Stream all your music wirelessly from any mobile device.

JBL Surround Sound

Bring movies to life with JBL Surround Sound, without the hassle of any additional wires or speakers.

The smallest of a four-product range, the Studio is easy to accommodate.

At around 60cm in length and just under 6cm in height, it will slot under most suitably sized TVs without appearing undernourished, and has been crafted to JBL’s usual high standards of quality and aesthetic modernity.

Across the top you’ll find the basic controls for power, volume and source selection, with HDMI (ARC) and optical sockets to the rear. Bluetooth is also on board, potentially negating the need for a separate living room sound system.

The Studio’s size obviously restricts the scale of its sound, with drivers kept to two tweeters and single woofer – but two reflex ports help reinforce its low-end output.

JBL Surround Sound, an in-house technology designed to replicate the wrap-around sound of a 5.1 system, is further proof this soundbar is aiming to overcome the limitations imposed on it by its size.

To switch on that sound mode you’ll need the included credit-card remote. The Studio, as with most modern soundbars, is designed to work with your regular TV remote, but the JBL clicker is worth having around for easy source-switching and controlling bass levels.

Bass is one of the things we first notice about the Studio when we connect it to our TV. Not only that there’s quite a lot of it, but also that it’s punchy and relatively rich too.

We’re fans of a neutral balance, so wouldn’t have it all the way up – but there is undeniably greater momentum to the sound than through the speakers on our TV.

That richness is perhaps not matched entirely through the midrange, but it glides above the low-end action, showing off a more-than respectable amount of detail.

Its scale still isn’t enough to fill much more than a small to medium-sized living room, but the Studio’s performance will certainly be an upgrade on most people’s televisions.

So what’s not to like? Well, if you just want to improve your TV sound – and not at high volumes – then there’s not all that much by way of competition at this price. High volumes are one caveat of the Bar Studio, though: the treble isn’t overtly coarse, but it does harden the more we turn it up, especially when the sound becomes busy.

That might be more of a concern if you’re planning also to use your soundbar as a wireless speaker, which is where our other concerns arise. Musically, the Studio is not particularly great at timing, and lacks the dynamic expression of any of JBL’s much-loved Bluetooth speakers.