Samsung HW-Q990F vs JBL Bar 1300XMK2

Jul 05, 2026 12:40 PM By RtingsUser3697671

1

Hi before I took the membership for the difference in sound it was showing all sorts of samples to hear but blurred and only available with full membership but after taking membership i cannot find a single sample, that seems a bit misleading. But anyway my key question is, I listen to variety of music 90% of the time and movies maybe only 10% of my usage, between the Samsung Q990F and the JBL 1300 MK2 which is the definite leader in sound quality for music, movies don’t matter that much to me, but for music I need to know because i just subscribed to a membership only to find equal scores throughout which weren’t helpful, so as someone who has heard both for long periods of time which is better for music and where are the samples if they’re actually available

Hey there, and thanks for your question. When it comes audio samples, we don’t provide these for soundbars - just for headphones, where we’re able to make recordings that accurately represent certain facets of their performance (like noise isolation).

That said, choosing between these two bars for music is genuinely extremely difficult as both bars score so well in objective tests. If we’re splitting hairs here, the Samsung does get a touch brighter in the treble range which can introduce some harshness with certain songs. The JBL also has a dedicated ‘Music’ mode which sends a stereo signal to the satellites, to ensure the tunes sound closer how the mix engineer intended. Still, the two bars are neck and neck for everything else - the only reason we recommend the Samsung is because of its pass through capabilities and lower latency, which likely won’t matter for you.

Given the JBL is a fair bit cheaper, I think this is probably the way to go with you. Equal scores like this really don’t happen very often and in this case Samsung even own the JBL brand! So we’d side with the more affordable option.

Hi before I took the membership for the difference in sound it was showing all sorts of samples to hear but blurred and only available with full membership but after taking membership i cannot find a single sample, that seems a bit misleading.

But anyway my key question is, I listen to variety of music 90% of the time and movies maybe only 10% of my usage, between the Samsung Q990F and the JBL 1300 MK2 which is the definite leader in sound quality for music, movies don’t matter that much to me, but for music I need to know because i just subscribed to a membership only to find equal scores throughout which weren’t helpful, so as someone who has heard both for long periods of time which is better for music and where are the samples if they’re actually available

Mar 18, 2026 05:35 PM By LumberjackPlaid

6

Tied scores! How is the reliability of these brands? Does one seem more premium build quality than the other? Any software bugs?

Thanks for your question. We don’t score long-term reliability, so I’d be careful about making a definitive brand call there. Both are premium systems, but Samsung has had the more visible recent software baggage because of the well-documented 2025 Q990D firmware incident that led to them offering some free repairs, while the JBL Bar 1300XMK2 seems to have a few scattered reports of update/app/setup issues rather than one single widespread failure. On build, both are flagship-tier, so I’d treat this more as a feature/performance choice than a reliability slam dunk for either brand. Soundbars in general don’t go through the same wear and tear as headphones, so as long as you’re careful when installing and moving your system, you should be okay. My other recommendation would be to try and delay firmware updates where possible (personally, I think this is good practice in general), to see if there are any reports of problems before you update.

Hope that helps!

Tied scores! How is the reliability of these brands? Does one seem more premium build quality than the other? Any software bugs?