Polk Audio MagniFi Mini Soundbar Review

About eight years ago I flew to Paris for the first time. Immediately, the police detained me at the airport, because I had a jacket with a hood, a hood on my head, my face was wrinkled after an early rise and wine, my friend had a crazy smile - in general, that’s another couple. After checking the documents and explanations, they let us go guiltily and gave us useful parting words about clubs and bars. Taxi, an hour from the Saint-Germain area, a cafe on the street, wine and coffee, a cigarette (smoked back then), phoned the person in charge of the apartment, and here he appears on the horizon, bad English, a bottle of wine as a gift, going up to the third floor without elevator up a twisting staircase, smell of a very old house, VERY small apartment, quick familiarity with the environment, the person in charge leaves and leaves us alone.

So that you understand: a small, small room, a table, two windows at an angle - the top floor - a kitchenette, a huge double bed is folded and a good watercolor is pinned to it. Two steps and you're in a doll bathroom with a shower. Two steps, and you are at the hanger, when the bed is on the floor, you can jump straight into the shower from it.

As a new local acquaintance later told me, these twenty (or less) meters are the norm for a young promising Parisian or Parisian. It’s great to sleep on a huge bed, fold it up, drink coffee quickly, quickly run to the office, don’t litter the fabric locker with things (there’s nowhere to put them), a month’s supply of provisions will not fit in a small refrigerator - but this is not necessary. Honestly, I didn’t get used to that apartment for ten days - but we slowly got into the rhythm and now I remember with warmth, the bed there was really very comfortable, and it was very tasty to drink wine with cheese bought in the “supermarsh” downstairs , and smoke out the window, take a look at the city - it's cozy. I later found out that this folding bed was made in Italy and cost about ten thousand euros, so here's a small apartment for you.

I'm all for what. A thing called the Polk Audio MagniFi Mini was born for a reason. In asian countries, not everyone will understand it, but sales in Europe are very good for the Polk brand, which is not as well known as the same Bose. It's all about the miniature size of this sound bar or, as it is also called, the sound bar. For a small apartment or a small room, this is just a godsend and people, of course, immediately understand all the charms of such a device. It fits in a limited space, the subwoofer can be hidden under a stool or chair, you can connect a TV, laptop, smartphone - anything to it. Moreover, the subwoofer is connected without a cable, which allows you to spread the device to different sockets. In general, let's get acquainted, the thing is pleasant and for sure many of you will want to at least look at Polk in the store.

Design

It's nice when the creators of this or that thing keep the idea to the end, all the components of the set are harmoniously combined with each other.

You want to touch a nice remote with a rubber top, the soundbar has a rubber insert on top - if you wish, you can use the buttons here, the shape of the subwoofer echoes the remote and the central panel. The fabric is stretched well, nothing is knocked out anywhere and does not stick out. There are two light indicators on the front part, they will tell you which playback method is selected, the system status.

The subwoofer connects wirelessly, there were no problems with synchronization.

In general, I did not have any problems with assembly and configuration. In the box, the whole set is located in convenient recesses, there are all cables, and optics, and HDMI, and 3.5 mm, they did not become greedy.

Accordingly, this gives you a lot of opportunities to establish a connection with a TV and other equipment - for the test this time I connected the MagniFi Mini to an iMac, when I wrote an article for another site, I used a system with a TV. There is also HDMI ARC, sound transmission via HDMI, if you suddenly have problems with such a connection (some users complain), go ahead, plug in optics, no one has any questions with it.

A long audio cable will also come in handy, as you can see, it is quite possible to hide the MagniFi Mini on the “leg” of the iMac.

You can select the type of connection using the remote control, it also activates the night mode (less low frequencies), setting for movies, sports programs and music.

Connection

As I said, MagniFi Mini was created with an eye on small rooms, if there is not enough space, but you want big sound for TV, here is a ready-made solution for you. Therefore, you can connect the gadget in a variety of ways, above I talked about optics and HDMI, the ubiquitous AUX is also here, from the exotic - Google Cast. On IOS, for example, in Google Home you see Polk, set it up in a couple of minutes, do not forget to turn off VPN on your smartphone so that there are no problems.

Using Google Cast, you can stream music from different services to the soundbar, the simplest is a Google account and Google music, but there is also Deezer, TuneIn, Spotify and all sorts of exotic services like 7digital Music. The idea of ​​Google Cast is very similar to AirPlay, service-enabled speakers are distributed across rooms, you can send the same music or sound from different services to them, and manage all this stuff from your smartphone.

For me, the most working scenario is to run Proton Radio on the soundbar via Google Cast and work quietly. Here the question about Bluetooth naturally arises, but Google Cast does not depend on the range, it does not load the network too much. For a person who is not familiar with the technology, a plug can occur only at the setup stage.

By the way, Bluetooth is also there! It is activated using a button on the top end, but then you know - the Bluetooth menu, search, connection, do not go far from MagniFi Mini. The maximum range is about seven meters.

Sound

You can get acquainted with the internal device here in this picture, two tweeters (high-frequency drivers), four mid-frequency drivers, a class D amplifier, a 6.5-inch driver is hidden in the subwoofer. In terms of design, everything is traditional, the components are packed tightly and it is clear that the engineers tried to make a big sound in a small package.

Did it work? It turned out with a number of reservations, but without reservations it would not work at all. Keep in mind that the sound here is adjustable and you can try to push out the mids using the setting for listening at night or by choosing the volume in one mode or another. Of course, the middle suffers and cannot help but suffer - the size of the soundbar is too small, something had to be sacrificed. In one of the articles about Polk, I already advised using Night Effect during the day, a useful life hack.

On the other hand, my friends came to my office, I turned on the music on the Polk Audio MagniFi Mini, offered to evaluate it - everyone said that it was good, but if you turn up the volume, the sound quality is lost, the soundbar starts to bubbling. If you don't pick up the sound, it won't buzz.

In general, don’t think, I’m not trying to defend a piece of iron, for some commercial reasons - I really like the idea of ​​MagniFi Mini, I know everything about the main drawback, a weakly expressed middle, but I’m ready to forgive everything for the size and for the impression of the sound in in general.

To sum up - when watching a movie, turn on Night Effect if you can’t understand your voice well (here, of course, a lot depends on the voice acting), while listening to music, don’t make it very loud so that wheezing does not appear. Otherwise, the sound quality is good, and here all the critics want to say - look at the size of this little one! She SOUNDS even next to a huge TV!

Conclusion

In retail, Polk Audio MagniFi Mini can be found for $300, in some places there are promotions, you can buy cheaper. If you don’t have enough space in your home to install a soundbar, then here’s a great option for you, you bought it, quickly connected it and don’t worry - moreover, in the future, if you buy another device with Google Cast, you will be able to create a multi-room system. If you move to a bigger apartment, Polk will come in handy in the kitchen, in the nursery or in the country.