$700 for THIS？ - JBL Authentics 500 Review #jbl #marshall

May the Lord protect us, I have the JBL 500 at max volume for 40 hertz. Are you looking for a massive powerhouse speaker that looks like it's straight from the 70s and also has a price tag that is like $700? Well, this might be the speaker for you. This is the JBL 500. It's a massive mamba-jamba 270 watt powerhouse. Let's unbox it. Let the unboxing begin. She's thick. Yeah! Massive. So, it's a beefy boy. Look at the size of my hand compared to this. It has the exact same controls as all the rest of the lineup there. It's got your moments button, which I haven't used a ton and I'm not particularly enthused about it. Your play button that lacks a rewind or a fast forward portion. So what's kind of cool about these is that you can actually just take off this front grill surprisingly. Three mid-speakers. Three one-inch tweeters. This is the middle one. And then you've got two side ones shooting up these vents over here. You have a sub! This is an actual woofer. The other ones it was just a passive radiator, but this is a 6.5 inch subwoofer coming off the bottom here. These are called, as they call them, the slipstream vents or ports. Here is the JBL 300. Really just looks like pretty much half of the JBL 500. As you can see, there's quite a bit more firepower going on on the 500 here than the 300. The 300 has considerably less speakers. This is kind of your main source for bass right here. This is the Marshall Woburn III compared directly to the JBL Authentics 500. Obviously the Woburn is taller, but the Woburn is also just a little bit thinner than the 500 here. You're looking at 150 watts versus 270 watts. So I think if you're betting on sound thrust, this is going to have the most power. This is the V12. This is kind of like the V10 or the V8. As you can see, it's got a 3.5mm input here. Just a tiny little one. But on the Marshall, you get RCA! So if you're serious about doing record playing, really the Marshall is your one hope for that. From my understanding, I don't play records a lot, but I know RCA is a huge component. So there you go. You only get that with the Marshall. It also has an HDMI, so you can hook it up direct to a TV. One thing I will say I still much prefer on the Woburn here are the controls. It's just so much easier to tell where you're at versus the glowing lights on the JBL. It has specific increments. You see it. It's clear as day. It's just better. We're putting this thing up to full volume. I'm scared to use this thing at full volume. It's so loud. May the Lord protect us. I have the JBL 500 at max volume for 40Hz. What the hell is that? Alright. Let's do... That was like 120 almost. Holy crap. Now, I've used the Wi-Fi in the 200 and the 300 and have had limited success. It's kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure kind of thing, and I find it very frustrating. First of all, all of the apps that you use through the JBL One app are terrible. The interface is so stunted compared to the actual music apps that you would use if you're using Bluetooth. The other is when you're using Amazon, there's no way to tell if you're actually using a song in a higher quality bitrate or Dolby. So it's great that this thing has Dolby Atmos, but you don't really know what you're getting. I did find a track that apparently uses Dolby, and this is what it sounds like. Raindrops? Quick addendum to Amazon Music here, you can cast directly from their app onto your Wi-Fi device. I didn't realize that earlier. But, even when I did that, I would set the settings to best quality, and it would only cast in SD. So, I don't know what you can do about that. When I tried to use the Tidal app, when I would press play, nothing would happen. I just couldn't get it to work. So I go over to the computer and I try to cast from there, and I finally do find the cast button. However, you do have to upgrade to cast it, which is kind of frustrating because the fact that it didn't work on the app in the first place, and there's no stated reason for it not working, doesn't give me a lot of confidence that it's necessarily going to work when I upgrade my subscription. If you want to use Tidal, it's a choose your own adventure thing. If you want to use Spotify, well, tough luck, because I looked for the JBL 500 in their Connect Devices portion, and it's just not in there. The big thing about listening to very high quality audio bit rates is that it's kind of like buying a luxury car, where you don't realize you need premium fuel, meaning you need an entire other system of tunnels to work through to get that higher bit rate. That can go down a very deep rabbit hole that's way too detailed for this video. Just know that Wi-Fi high quality audio doesn't just happen. You've got to work at it. So let's go ahead and listen to the JBL 500 next to the Marshall Woburn and its little brother, the JBL 300. Now it's loud, loud, loud. We're invincible. You and I get, we take a spin, down the highway. Never let go. So we drive to the show, and we shout, we don't know how. And it's never gonna die. We're invincible. This thing is a powerhouse. If you're looking for a very expensive speaker that delivers just oodles of bass, this is the one to go for. This thing gets way louder than the Woburn. There's absolutely no question. And it is a significant step up from the 300 as well, which the 300 is actually still louder than the Woburn, which I found very surprising. In terms of music quality, I thought that the Woburn still had a better presence on the mids and the highs. Now you can tune the JBL, but it's always gonna tend to have a bit more of a neutral muted sound, which some people might find very appealing. If you're looking more for vocals, the Woburn might be a better choice, though I still think this is a really good experience. So do I think this is worth the $700 they're asking for it? I think it's a little overpriced. I could see the value in it because you are getting quite a bit of sound for that $700, but I don't know. That is a lot to put down, and there's a lot of other full sound systems you could start getting into when you start paying upwards of $600. The JBL, if you love the looks of this one, go for it. You've got the Wi-Fi that'll probably get upgraded in the future and actually work better instead of being all clunky mess that it is right now. And yeah, it's a good speaker overall. It's a solid product. It just really comes down to, what do you want? Is this thing better than the $300? I would definitely say so. I actually think the $300 is, again, that kind of meaningless middle ground. If you really like this style, I'd either go for the $200, or I'd step all the way up to this thing. An extra $250 and you get a world more of sound. So if you watched all the way to the end, I commend you. That's very unusual that most people watch to the end, but leave a comment. Let me know what's going on in your day. Say hello. So I'll see you later. Bye!