Review on Enhance Your Home Theater Experience with Polk Audio Command Sound Bar – 🎵 Now with Handsfree Amazon Alexa, Multi-Room Music Built-In, 4K HDMI, and Fire TV Compatibility by Jessica Redmann

Watch out for updates, this thing is so confusing! Well it's an improvement over the last soundbar I had. I used to have a JBL Bar Studio and it was good but not much louder than the TV speakers. I often sat in the living room with the JBL on at 80-90%. Now, on this soundbar, the Polk command bar is louder and I didn't hear any distortion even all the way up. JBL at maximum volume will be distorted and equal in decibels at 100% to about 40-50% of this Polk command bar. I've only had the Polk command bar for a few days and will be updating it in a few months. The sound is excellent for 199r. The sound isn't Bose, of course, but it's a lot better than a lot of the cheaper $200-$100 units where the Bose is $700. I would recommend this to anyone who wants better sound than a cheap soundbar. In the last few days, Alexa has often had trouble understanding me, no problem with the wifi, she tells me sorry, I'm having trouble understanding me. Music also takes longer to play and even with the Alexa app to launch music I had some issues. If you're only looking for this for the Alexa experience, you might be disappointed. I'm giving it 4 stars, down 1 for the Alexa issues, but the sound quality is pretty good. I wish the app could do more. I created a poll to add Alexa. And that's pretty much all the app does. It does not make sense. I can't adjust the volume or anything else through the app. So that's also a bit missing. The Bose Soundbar has an app that lets you play all kinds of music and Alexa, control the volume, and add extra speakers. So I thought maybe this Polk app would have more than one initial setup, unfortunately it doesn't. To update:. So I had some problems with Revain playing music. I could do half of the song and it just stopped. I have two different Wi-Fi routers so I thought it might be my router (one I found had issues with other devices), unfortunately switching Wi-Fi was a big problem. The app wouldn't let me change it, it got stuck on the part where it was supposed to turn on Wi-Fi. Here is the fix to change wifi after many tries. Reset the soundbar settings. Hold the volume up and down buttons until you enter demo mode (I've restarted the device now by unplugging it, but this may/may not be necessary). Holding the same volume up and down buttons on the command bar polk until the panel displays an exciting demo mode will reset the panel to factory settings. Clear the app data on your Android phone (I don't know iPhone, probably uninstall and reinstall). Set up your device as new. So I switched it to a different wireless router and it's currently playing a few songs. One fell about 3/4 of the way. I'll keep fiddling with it and keep updating. It still sounds great, and now that I've figured out the bass and voice controls on the included remote, the sound is even better. Now I will not remove the stars. I think the problem was with my router rather than the Polk command box. Just take a look. UPDATE #2 Music is still being interrupted. I've found that when I ask for a song, 99.9% of the time the song doesn't play in full or only plays for a few seconds. that's why I'm deducting a star. When I ask Alexa to play a playlist or station, the songs play better, but I usually ask for a specific song. Let me know if this is a Polk software issue. Hopefully they fix that in an update, but it's not working for this specific area yet. The TV sound is still pretty good compared to what I had. Update 3 still has issues with music playback, which is a shame because it sounds so much better than any other Echo device. Contacted Polk support, no response for 4 days. Called Revain support, spoke to someone, couldn't figure out who transferred me because they didn't know (I think), waited for an Alexa rep until I hung up. Update #4 has the answer. Hello, this could be an error. There will be a new update this month that will take care of many issues. Update cannot be forced. If it is required, the panel will prompt you and start updating. Please upgrade to 4, maybe 5 stars if they actually fix this bug. It's been about 2 months since the update (I think) and the remote that came with the device no longer controls the device. This isn't a remote though, as I can see how IR works if I point my phone's camera at it and press the button (a little tip for those who didn't know digital cameras can see IR). This means the soundbar receiver isn't working, luckily the arch allows me to adjust the volume but now I can't adjust the bass/speech volume. So down to 2 stars update on 01/12/19 finally got a new updated firmware and the remote works again. Had to unplug and plug the power cord back in to force the update. I have no idea how long that alone would take. . Unfortunately the music plays for 30 seconds then pauses, can resume when the Alexa app is open but cannot resume with the remote. So my big mistake is still a big mistake. Stars not provided. I'm keeping 2 stars until the music bug is fixed. Updated 01/16/19 so I got an email yesterday that the update was released (the email said it was the 15th but I got it earlier) and apart from the various bug fixes I noticed that they added a multiroom feature! It's what people have been asking for, and I can finally hear music on this thing (although I have to use my Echo Show, which is in the kitchen, to listen downstairs). And I can finally say that I really like how the music sounds on this thing. It doesn't stop when I play music on another device (via the multiroom setting in the Alexa app), so +1 star. Can't do more because it still pauses the music when you ask it to play the music. But the bass hits hard when you turn the bass on, and it sounds a lot better than the Echo Show I have, which I think was Revain's best Echo device. In any case. I will update this as events develop. Update 4/12/19 Revain support said it looks like Polk can be contacted. Then 2 of my Alexa devices stopped working. I had to cancel and re-register the echo show and point to start work again. So I tried the Polk command bar and played all the songs non-stop for a day! Pause again the next day, now it only happens every 10 seconds! Polk customer service said to do a factory reset and power cycle. Tries. No difference. Unfortunately they stop taking calls 30 minutes before I leave work but I see they are free on Saturdays so I'll call tomorrow. This definitely looks like a software issue, but it could be a faulty device. I hope I finally get answers. 6/12/19 update, purchased November 18th, no longer works with HDMI Arc for audio control via TV remote. So finally use the supplied one. Revain music never works and no one has ever suggested a solution other than rebooting or contacting another company (Amazon -> Polk and Polk -> Amazon), factory reset, unpairing Alexa, rebooting, ever recycling as it never will function as an Alexa device. With the same success, you can just take a point and connect it to this device. although I tried this and the bluetooth connection failed repeatedly. So fuck it, just a soundbar that needs its own remote control because the arc is out of order. I was informed today that a random notification sound was being played while I was working, so a self-destruct timer may have been updated or started. Who knows. As of 06/16/2019 the command bar is making a comeback, there is an update for the Polk command bar, do not disable it while it is being updated. Happens any minute! Update 9 or something. Got a replacement today. Hdmi works again to control cec on new device. I haven't tried music yet. Will definitely update again if something doesn't work or gets messed up. If it wasn't so annoying it could have gotten 4 or even 5 stars.