SB26

Overview

The SB26 is a Harman Kardon soundbar with a wireless subwoofer, available from September 2013. The bar is 920 mm wide, 110 mm high and 89 mm deep, comes in black, and wall-mount brackets are in the box.

Each side of the bar is a two-way module with two 75 mm midrange drivers and a 25 mm dome tweeter, driven by 2 x 30 W. The wireless subwoofer has a 250 mm driver in a ported enclosure and its own 100 W amplifier.

The TV connects over HDMI ARC or the optical input. The bar also has two HDMI inputs, a stereo analog input and Bluetooth; its USB port is for software updates only. It comes with an IR remote, and it can learn the volume, power and source commands of the TV remote. The Harman Kardon Remote app for iOS and Android was announced with it. The box also contains HDMI, optical and 3.5 mm cables, an IR repeater cable and an AC adaptor.

What the specs mean

• 2.1 speaker setup: two main channels (left and right) and one subwoofer channel; the ".1" is the wireless subwoofer in the box. The Harman Display Surround mode creates a virtual surround effect without extra speakers, and no surround speakers can be added.
• HDMI ARC: the Audio Return Channel sends the TV's sound to the soundbar over one HDMI cable, and with HDMI-CEC the TV remote can control the bar.
• HDMI passthrough: a video source plugs into one of the two HDMI inputs, and the soundbar passes its video on to the TV. Harman Kardon gives no resolution or HDR format for it.
• Audio formats: Dolby Digital decoding.
• IR repeater: if the bar blocks the TV's infrared receiver, the included repeater passes the remote's signals on to the TV.