Bar 1300X

Overview

The Bar 1300X is the flagship of the JBL Bar series that HARMAN announced at CES 2023 for the US. A 12-inch wireless subwoofer and two detachable, battery-powered surround speakers are in the box. The bar is 1000 mm wide, 60 mm high and 139 mm deep (1376 mm wide with the surround speakers docked), comes in black and can be wall-mounted with the kit in the box.

JBL lists six racetrack drivers, five 0.75-inch tweeters and four 2.75-inch up-firing drivers in the bar; each surround speaker has a racetrack driver, a tweeter, an up-firing driver and two passive radiators. Output is 650 W for the bar, 2 x 110 W for the surrounds and 300 W for the subwoofer, 1170 W in total. The surround speakers run up to 10 hours on their batteries, recharge when docked, and also work on their own as Bluetooth speakers. The TV connects over HDMI eARC or optical, and three HDMI inputs take consoles and players. Over dual-band Wi-Fi the bar supports AirPlay, Chromecast built-in, Alexa Multi-Room Music and Spotify Connect; Bluetooth, Ethernet and a USB port (MP3 playback on US units) are also built in. Setup runs through the JBL One app.

What the specs mean

• 11.1.4 channels: eleven channels from the bar and surround speakers plus the subwoofer, with four up-firing height drivers in the bar and one in each surround speaker. JBL's MultiBeam processing widens the sound. The system is complete out of the box.
• Dolby Atmos and DTS:X: both object-based 3D formats are decoded, plus Dolby Digital.
• HDMI eARC: the enhanced Audio Return Channel sends the TV's sound to the soundbar over one HDMI cable, with enough bandwidth for Dolby Atmos.
• 4K passthrough (HDR10, Dolby Vision, HDCP 2.3): sources on the three HDMI inputs pass their 4K HDR picture on to the TV.
• PureVoice: JBL's dialogue enhancement keeps voices clear when effects get loud.
• Room correction: the calibration measures the listening zone and the position of the surround speakers.
• TV remote: over HDMI-CEC the TV remote controls volume, mute and power; the bar can also learn IR commands from a TV remote.