India, Aug. 17 -- I own a JBL soundbar, so technically, I should have stopped thinking about soundbars a long time ago. I had already made my choice, connected it to my TV and settled into my routine. But then I started hearing Bose and Sony soundbars in other people's homes.

One movie night here, another conversation there, a friend's recommendation, a few too many reviews and suddenly I was comparing soundbars again. Before I knew it, I had turned a perfectly normal TV upgrade into an unnecessarily serious investigation.

The problem was that Bose, JBL and Sony all had something going for them.

And that made choosing just one surprisingly difficult.

To be clear, this is not a lab comparison where I placed three soundbars in the same ...