Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have been using a Vizio M213AD-K8 under my gaming monitor for quite some time. I wanted something significantly smaller as the Vizio was roughly three feet wide. Initial impression is this sound bar sounds amazing and the build quality is great. Great stereo separation. Upward firing speakers even make stereo sound fuller while keeping good separation. I'm knocking one star off for each of the following reasons: 1. This is a copy and paste of the Bose SB600. The "AI" features they added offer nothing of real value and the AI voice enhancement is liked by very few reviewers. I think this approach was lazy. 2. PC gamers who are using gaming monitors will not like this soundbar. When not on sale, this soundbar is $500. It is usually on sale for $400. At that price, it should have an HDMI input like my Vizio M213AD-K8 that is a third of the price. In the PC world, 999/1000 gaming monitors don't have eARC passthrough for the HDMI ports. Even monitors like my Samsung G60SD with dual HDMI 2.1 ports doesn't offer this. Since the monitor builders are lagging behind, this could easily be remedied by having HDMI input on smaller soundbars like this as you can't connect a GPU to an eARC port to get audio. If someone at Bose reads this, please include HDMI input on your next SB600 variant so PC gamers can pass an Atmos signal into it using Dolby Access. If you want to really knock your next model out of the park, allow for full HDMI 2.1 passthrough (VRR Support) just like my cheaper Vizio M213AD-K8 can do. Sadly, the Vizio M213AD-K8 is HDMI 2.0 so I can only go to 120Hz at 1440p. PC Gamers need a soundbar like the Bose Smart Soundbar that can passthrough high refresh rates for 1080p, 1440p and 4K while keeping VRR functionality. Finally, offer a white variant. Black electronics died with Circuit City. Make these changes and promote the next model not only to console gamers that use TV's with eARC ports, but to PC gamers that need to passthrough their HDMI signal from GPU to the soundbar to their monitor since gaming monitors don't have eARC ports.

After lots of research and listening to different soundbars, I decided with this one and made the right choice. This is a picture of it in front of a 65 inch tv, nice sleek design, not overwhelmingly big, it’s a matte black so light doesn’t reflect off of it and distract you, sound is amazing, has a bit of bass even though it’s just a sound bar, will likely be adding a sub in the future. Boss app is super easy to use. Would 100 percent recommend

Love Bose products. The Smart Soundbar was easy to setup and pair with my Sony television and the Logitech Harmony remote. The sound is clear, easy to operate. It’s a keeper.

Bose is the obvious choice in any sound devices. Had a previous sound bar, it was time to upgrade this year and this model is soooo good. AI voice detection is a game changer and mixes the audio perfectly. From explosion, gun fire, to whispering/talking it's right on point. Plus with a top speaker, ambient noise sounds like it's in your living room with rain, wind etc.

Love the sound from this Bose sound bar. I purchase w/o the base box and I like the directional sound and being able to control it through my phone.

Great soundbar for a small room. Excellent voice reproduction; the bass is surprisingly good.

My husband and I enjoy watching movies now with our new Bose Soundbar. Before we had to have the TV volume up to around 40 to even be able to hear anything.

Great soundbar really clear and very loud Bose is the best

Very nice product.!! I’m super happy, nice sound friendly to use, my intention was to buy Sonos brand, but this is fantastic, I’m not regretting at all.!!

Perfect for my 32” TV in my living room next to my 65” TV that I play madden on. While I play video games on low volume, I can hear my smaller TV playing through my Bose sound bar so I don’t miss the news, sports and other programs

After I bought my TV, went back to BestBuy and was looking for a soundbar. I passed the open box items and saw the Bose soundbar. It was perfect and had a great price. Took it home and set it up and it’s awesome! Zero issues and the staff were very helpful and verified that it was in working order before i left the store

Verdict: The Bose speaker elevates the already solid performance of the Bose soundbar. It’s a compelling solution for easy and quality sound without the clutter. It’s wonderful for movie-watching, music-listening, smart-speaker functionality, and convenient controls. Protip: (1) f you want to mount it on a wall, remove the rubber pads to access the mounting screws. I wish I saw that before ordering the wrong mounting brackets. (2) If you own more than one Bose soundbar / speaker, try the grouping function in the Bose app. It works quite well… better than the headaches of trying to group through the Alexa app. Initial impressions. It is a standard-looking soundbar with speakers on the front, top, and sides. It feels fairly heavy. The soundbar fits easily between the legs of our TV, and should work for most people. Included in the package are a remote control, an HDMI cable, a fiberoptic cable, a power cable, and manuals. Setup. Straight forward setup through the Bose app; it took care of everything… I didn’t even have to go to the phone Bluetooth settings. To control the speakers, you must be on the same WiFi network. Adding the speaker to Alexa is done through the Bose app and permissions in the Alexa app. App. The app is simple but definitely adds value to the experience. I love being able to control volume, source, equalizer, and grouping from the app. I don’t always have the remote handy, but… I have my phone! It’s really nice to adjust volume or source on the fly. Creating groupings is really just two taps, and ending groups is just one tap; it works flawlessly so you can build custom groups quickly if you have several Bose systems. For movies and TV. I am quite impressed with the sound. Voice is full and genuine, as opposed to echo-ish with the TV speakers. There is definitely an impression of surround sound. For action movies you can feel the action, and for something as simple as sitcoms, the audience laughing feels different (like part of the room with you) than the cast dialogue… pretty cool! I tested several content items with 5.1 but could not find anything to stream with Dolby Atmos, so I couldn’t test this feature. This thing is plenty loud. HDMI ARC works perfectly; everything turns on and can be controlled with the TV remote. Voice4Video is another convenient feature that lets you change your HDMI input through Alexa once you set it up (easy to do through the app). The app also allows the selection of different audio tracks (maybe for different languages, which happens on some sports TV programing). Music performance. The music experience on this Bose soundbar is wonderful; it fills the room easily with well-balanced sound. The bass comes through very well (I use +20). The mids are full, and the highs are crisp and clean. Unfortunately, I could not get Airplay to work on this soundbar… maybe it requires a software update. No issues with Airplay on my other Bose soundbar. Features. I love the integration with Alexa voice assistant. I wish it had direct Apple Music integration for people in that ecosystem, but I can access that music through the Alexa connection (must setup Apple Music in the Alexa app). Bose SimpleSync easily swaps sound from speakers to Bose headphones, which is convenient if you want to continue watching TV after your spouse goes to sleep… Things I love: - Wonderful sound for music and movie - Small but powerful package - Easy setup - The app is actually useful and convenient - Lots of features through the app - HDMI ARC integration works perfectly Things I don’t love: - Airplay is not working for me… I hope a software update will fix this. I use this feature weekly on my other soundbar. It’s a really important part of how we want to use the soundbar for music. - I wish there were volume buttons on the soundbar. Sometimes I just need to turn it down quickly and can’t find the remote. Luckily, I can use the app for that too. - I have not been able to group this Bose soundbar (or my other one actually) to music groups on the Alexa app. The Soundbar is there… I can control it through the Alexa app and add it to different rooms, but my “play music everywhere” group plays music on all my Echos around the house for cool room-to-room music, except… for the two Bose soundbar. That’s really too bad… Those are the two speakers I really want to hear out of that bunch! I know that this is a limitation in the Alexa app (can’t group non-echo devices), and not Bose’s fault, but it’s really frustrating that the tech silos continue to deprioritize the customer convenience with broad compatibility and integration. Overall, the Bose Smart Soundbar is a fantastic soundbar, packed with strong features, a useful app, and great sound. I highly recommend this for small-to-medium rooms for movie-watching and music-listening.

I have been waiting for the right soundbar to come along for my bedroom tv. I own a few other major competitor soundbars and they are on my family room and basement tv's, but none have them have been the right size, and then i’ve been indecisive wheter to have a subwoofer or not. Most smaller ones without the sub didn’t do a whole lot more than my tv speakers. The tv is an older oled tv, but it came with a good dolby atmos built in speaker set, so there was no rush. It was basically the company’s low end soundbar built in the back of the tv. I had seen older versions of this unit on demo before at stores, and knew it was going to be a good unit, but I finally picked this one after all these years, and it's because I’m getting old and tired of having every streaming service have horrible volume level consistency. Cable used to be bad, but now I generally have to keep the volume lower than I like because the ads will pop on at a rupture your ear drum at normal volume on most services. I'm tired of having to watch many shows now with subtitles on. This model came out and I saw ai dialogue mode, and it claimed to enhance without loss of other action. I have messed with many settings on my tv and other soundbars to try and enhance the dialouge, but most make the rest of the actions suffer significantly. This promised to not compromise the rest of the effects for the dialoge. So far, this does impress. Set up was very easy for the most part. Plug in, download app, follow along. It took me a minute to get the hdmi arc set up on my tv, but I also have the optical hooked up just in case. I wanted to make sure when I can I could use dolby atmos mixes. I have tried this with a well known album’s 50th anniversary dolby atmos mix, and it sounds fantastic. I have tested a few streaming movie services, and 4k disc movies, and the directional sound is super surprising from one set of speakers at the front of my room. There was a helicopter going by in one of the scenes and it went by from left to right, and then you could hear it behind and explosions around/behind me. I have paired this to one of the popular voice assistants, and several streaming services, and so far it works excellent. As for the size. It sets low and to the back of my tv stand, and for it’s size, outperforms one of my competitors that us at least 6 inches longer and ¾ of an inch wider and ½ inch taller. The bass on this is fantastic, mixed well with the right amount of treble that a sub is just not needed. I am able to utilize my tv’s remote to control the volume, which means I can keep my current set up to one simple remote. The price point for this is at the lower end premium price, many choices that are good at a lower price, and many more higher than this. I Have one that is about double the cost of this, and really this does as good as it does, minus the sub the other has. As for the ai dialogue mode, excellent. On day one I made sure I found action movies, talk shows and toggled the feature on and off, and this really does fantastic, way different than other diologue enhancing modes I’ve tried. I also don't worry about the ads anymore because the clarity of this allows me to keep the volume down I can hear quiet parts still. Connectivity wise, this comes with an hdmi cable and optical cable, but if you get a wired sub, you will need a cable, and this does have Bluetooth, but no 3.5mm jack. I am glad I finally went with this, and I am now able to turn off the subtitles again. I really find no flaws with this and give it a solid 5.

Bose is a long standing audio brand. While venerable, controversial and simultaneously famous and infamous, Bose has long stood as a cornerstone in the home audio market. Bose’s latest Smart Soundbar is a refresh of the previous Smart 600. Bose has simplified their 2023+ offerings by standardizing on TV, Smart, and Ultra Soundbars. The Smart sits right in the middle with a 3.0.2 speaker arrangement. So is the Smart Soundbar going to be famous or infamous? Luckily this seems like a good product with some compromises. The Smart Soundbar first and foremost is a soundbar that is space conscious. Like many trendy Bose speakers over the years, the Smart Soundbar highlights its volumetrically small stature as a selling point. Due to its short 28” length, it will easily find a home under practically any modern TV over 42” in size. Inside the box you’ll find the soundbar, remote, power cable, HDMI cable, and optical cable. Given the retail price of $499, I applaud including all necessary cables to get the soundbar hooked up to practically any TV made in the past decade. The remote is a small little rubberized flat affair with 8 total buttons with quick access to the input array, volume, mute, and play pause. The soundbar itself is a 3.0.2 Atmos setup. That’s a left, right and center channels with 0 subwoofers and 2 height channels. Overall this means the soundbar can generate a fairly immersive experience by flexing the height channels. These top side drivers reflect sound off your ceiling and add do a fairly good job. There are a few ports on the back, but it boils down to power, HDMI, and optical. There are also IR and Sub ports with 3.5mm jacks that aren’t even mentioned by the user manual. My assumption is that the sub outputs subwoofer appropriate analog audio and the IR is for input from an IR blaster common in many home theater setups, but I was unable to confirm. Hooking up the speaker is relatively painless. I replaced an existing soundbar that was already hooked up via eARC, so plugging in the speaker’s power and HDMI got me up and running in seconds. CEC worked flawlessly with my Hisense TV, but I was surprised when I dug into settings that the CEC control has lots of compatibility settings in the app (more on that later). Volume, and power control worked, but one interesting thing was that CEC volume didn’t show the LED volume indicator that would appear when using the native remote. Downloading the app on iOS was easy enough. To enter setup mode, hold the music and mute buttons for 5 seconds until the power LED glows amber. The app itself prompts you to do this after you select the Bose Smart Soundbar. It will prompt you to setup the speaker, and guide you through WiFi connection, AI dialog mode, and some other settings. In the app you’ll find source selection, audio adjustments, and instructions for voice assistant setup. Technically this soundbar does support Alexa, but I don’t set this up due to there already being Echo Show devices in my living room. There are 2 microphones for voice assistant features, so if that’s your thing it’s here. CEC has a large array of settings for compatibility, which I appreciate as there are always slight incompatibilities. Input wise, there is a nice array of streaming capabilities. Specifically Chromecast built-in, and Apple AirPlay work flawlessly. Bluetooth is also an option. All these mean your soundbar can be used not just for your TV listening experience, but also music streamed from your phone. Sound using Bose’s TrueSpace allows upmixing of Stereo with height channels to add more immersion. In practice this gave a feeling of the room being filled with more audio that you’d expect from a small 28” soundbar. The Atmos handling seemed to work well, with fairly good use of height channels. Passthrough of lossless audio from eARC seemed to work, but there’s no indicator light showing Atmos. In fact, it’s worth mentioning that there are really only 3 LEDs, the left and right showing volume up and down, with the middle being power status making a small area on the left of the soundbar light up. Now sound quality, it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, Bose outputs a lot of very smooth, warm, and crystal clear sound from a very small package. The other side is that it is a very small package, so once the volume increases, the speaker gets overwhelmed and starts compressing and losing details. Overall, if you're listening at medium volume in an apartment, it is the perfect speaker: it won’t annoy your neighbors, you’ll be able to hear dialogue very clearly, and feel immersed. However if you’re trying to fill a large space or trying to have a theater-like experience, this speaker will struggle. Perhaps pairing the Bose Smart Surround and Bose Subwoofer 500 would be able to add enough volume and presence to give you the full home theater feeling, but it’s something to keep in mind as those units are $399 and $499 respectively as add-ons. If you don’t want to add a subwoofer, adjusting the bass in the app up to +40 or +50 adds some presence without pushing the soundbar too hard. I’d say it’s one of the clearest perceived soundbars I’ve ever heard. It seems like Bose almost pulls details out too far, with some sound effects over emphasized in my opinion. For instance in Inside Out, the control panel seems to be teaming with sound effects that seem to be over-detailed. That said, these aren’t harsh and really do add immersion in most cases. The AI dialogue enhancement is quite good, but I found turning it off I still had quite nice dialog clarity without sacrificing audio balance overall. With the AI dialogue on, the dialog is emphasized at the expense of background sounds, and I found Overall, I really like the dialogue clarity, and ability to really highlight details that might disappear with cheaper soundbars. Top end is limited, and the bass, while impressive for its size, would be best complimented by a Bose Smart Bass Module 500 ($499 MSRP). That said, for a compact and unobtrusive CEC controlled soundbar, it offers a lot in a tiny package.

Bose first made a name for itself by making tiny surround sound speakers that produced larger than expected sound. This new smart soundbar reminds me of that because it's way smaller than you'd think it would be if you heard it before you saw it. It's plenty loud enough to fill a large room but also with great clear sound. Throw in WiFi that makes it compatible with all the major music streaming services and Alexa as a smart assistant and you've got a winner. PROS - Small Footprint, Big Sound - Impressive Bass without an actual subwoofer - Alexa Smart Home Assistant Built in - Works with AirPlay and Chromecast - Can add Subwoofer - Works with RokuTV out of the box - "Dialogue" enhancement CONS - No Google Assistant (maybe in an update???) - Subwoofer sold separately (If you need window shaking bass) - Not built for easy wall mounting If you're looking for the smallest soundbar with the biggest sound and the smartest features, this might just be it. As soundbars go, this one is definitely on the smaller side, but you wouldn't know that just by listening to it. It sounds as loud and as good as many other much large soundbars I've owned or experienced. And the sound is excellent which is what I'd expect from any Bose product. You can add a subwoofer to your setup (purchased separately) but you might not need to. This soundbar produces impressive lows - they won't make your sofa rumble or anything, but just as far as sound goes, it certainly gets the job done. The soundbar also has a cool feature that you can turn on if you have a hard time hearing/understanding dialogue when watching tv - it makes spoken dialogue a little louder than it would naturally be which is cool. What really sets this soundbar apart besides it's great sound are the smart features which currently includes Alexa Built-in, Chromecast Streaming, AirPlay Streaming, Spotify Streaming. Alexa works great - the mics pick up my voice just as well as any of the Echo devices I own. There's a little light bar on the front that comes on when Alexa is activated so you know she's listening. This eliminates the need for a separate echo device in the room you have the soundbar in which is great. I'll be using the soundbar for music streaming as much as anything else so having AirPlay and Chromecast streaming capabilities was very important to me and both work great! I can add the soundbar to speaker groups in Google Home for whole house music streaming and I can easily send music to the soundbar via AirPlay. I wish it also had Google Assistant built-in (you can control it using Google Assistant on a separate Google Home Speaker, but it's not built-in to this right now) - I have another smart speaker that has both Alexa & Google Assistant and I love that. It's possible Bose intends on adding this in the future since it already works with Chromecast and Google Home and I can see what looks like 5 little LED lights behind the front grille just under the Alexa Light Bar that look they might be intended for use with Google Home Assistant commands. BUT there's nothing that says that will happen so I'm just wishful thinking at this point. As far as design goes, there's not a lot to say about this - it's a fairly plain and simple design. Looks like a typical soundbar. It does have speakers on the top for Atmos simulation as well as on the front. The soundbar is designed to sit on a shelf or something under the TV. There's no mounting brackets or anything like that in the box. Overall, I'm impressed with this little guy. It doesn't take up much space but provides excellent sound and really great features that best most soundbars on the market!

While I have never maintained that Bose products tend produce what purists might consider “audiophile-quality” or “summit-fi” sound, what Bose products *are* able to do, they tend to do with aplomb: produce rich, full-bodied, often highly immersive sound-fields out of simple-to-use yet impossibly small enclosures. The Bose Smart Soundbar continues this trend by providing what is likely the largest-sounding Dolby Atmos sound-field you can possibly get from a slim & unassuming enclosure that doesn’t eat up a lot of valuable shelf space or obscure the bottom of a flatscreen TV sitting on a tabletop. In terms of presentation, the Smart Soundbar is about as unassuming as you can get. The construction feels reassuringly solid, & the enclosure is entirely black with minimal branding & only a few small & thankfully non-intrusive LEDs up front for power/connection status indicators & the Alexa feedback light. Some metal grillwork covers the front, side, & top-firing drivers, but otherwise, this soundbar is so nondescript it simply melts into the background. You’ll get optical & HDMI (for eARC audio) cables in the box along with a small remote as well as minimal documentation for hookup. However, do be warned that the power cable is laughably short for a home theater component—it didn’t even reach the power strip on the floor directly behind the media console it was sitting on (YMMV). You will also need the Bose companion app to finish setup; but fortunately, it’s a very intuitive app that does offer some useful options for tweaking performance & functionality including independent adjustments for center channel & height channel volume levels as well as treble & bass adjustments. However, be warned that the pack-in power cable is laughably short—we had to use an extension cord because it didn’t even reach down to the power strip behind the media console it was sitting on. Along with optical & HDMI inputs, the Smart Soundbar also works with Bluetooth & Wi-Fi for music streaming. We found the eARC setup over HDMI made for the most seamless setup in our master bedroom. Toggling TV power would turn the soundbar on & off & our TV recognized the soundbar as an Atmos-capable playback device & the soundbar responded to my TV’s volume adjustments—I did not need to reach for the tiny remote at all until I wanted to change inputs to try streaming audio. The built-in Alexa worked exactly like any of our other 8 Echo Dots we have scattered around the house—it answered queries, streaming music, & operated other smart-home devices…I would imagine that Google Assistant integration would seem just as familiar to those entrenched in Google’s smart-home ecosystem instead. Our master bedroom is reasonably large with very high ceilings; I currently run a discrete 5.1.4 home theater setup fed by a 120w/ch Dolby Atmos-capable receiver using THX Select-rated bookshelf speakers all around with up-firing height channels at the top of each satellite. What ultimately surprised us was just how close to that setup the Bose was able to get in terms of sheer output & spaciousness of the sound field, as well as overall richness, fullness, & clarity of the sound…and all without any dedicated sub or satellite speakers of its own. Yes, you could definitely tell when we switched from the 9 speaker/1 subwoofer setup to a single soundbar, but the difference wasn’t as dramatic as I expected it to be. Those of you short on space (or funds) for a beefier/costlier HT setup are probably not going to miss much going with a far more streamlined & economical all-in-one solution like the Bose Smart Soundbar. But what surprised us even more was how well the soundbar’s A.I. Dialogue Mode worked to enhance vocal clarity over that produced by our HT system’s dedicated center channel speaker. This is something both my wife & I have been struggling with lately as our hearing gets a little worse. We spun up a few movies & shows that have traditionally given us a hard time hearing conversations & hushed dialog…we were honestly taken aback by just how much better voices & conversations sounded using the Bose. Ultimately, while we were switching back & forth between the dedicated 5.1.4 system & the Bose Smart Soundbar during one of the Twilight movies (where a lot of dialogue is irritatingly whispered), my wife asked if we could keep the soundbar in the bedroom & find somewhere else in the house to put the dedicated HT system. It would be hard to give a more glowing endorsement than that! I also tried using the soundbar in my home office as a PC speaker. Unfortunately, neither my MSI motherboard’s integrated HDMI output, nor the HDMI output on my RTX 4090 video card, would recognize the soundbar as an audio playback device. I may try an HDMI audio extractor at some point just to see if I can get it to work, but I was able to use the optical cable for PC audio output. Using that optical connection, my PC reported support for high-resolution audio all the way up to 24-bit/192,000Hz; unfortunately, my Windows PC only recognized the soundbar as a 2-channel device rather than a multi-channel/Atmos-capable playback device. The Bose will automatically try to multi-channel “Atmos-ize” any incoming signal, including the 2-channel audio from my PC, but sitting so close to the soundbar dramatically reduced the depth of the resultant sound field. That’s not to say I didn’t like the results—as a PC speaker, the Smart Soundbar really cranked over a smaller set of deskside monitors…but the sense immersion or “sonic envelopment” was simply more pronounced & palpable in a larger room & sitting further away. The Smart Soundbar also has some interesting flexibility built in. Yes, you can integrate some of Bose’s wireless satellite speakers or bass modules to really flesh out a complete & more powerful sound field, but you can also pair the soundbar with a set of Bose Ultra Open Earbuds. When connected, they will act as personal surround speakers for anything playing from the soundbar. I don’t have a set of those buds myself, but it’s an intriguing feature that, if executed well, might really add some oomph to the listening experience without requiring so much additional equipment or expenditure to get it. While there is a lot to like here, there are a few areas where I think Bose may have missed the mark just a little bit. For example, the remote is a) tiny, and b) unlit. This may not be a huge problem if you integrate the soundbar with your TV over HDMI eARC in such a way that you don’t need to reach for the Bose remote very often. But if you do want to make any adjustments from the couch or bedside (assuming you don’t have your phone nearby to use the companion app), you’ll be hard-pressed to do it in a darkened room with this remote…assuming you haven’t lost it already in the cushions, blankets, or under a set of keys on a crowded nightstand. We thought the voice assistant integration was pretty cool & ultimately would allow us to jettison the smaller Alexa Echo devices from our nightstand. But you also must remember that the speakers that Alexa/Google Assistant will use to respond to queries & commands are the same ones that may have just been belting out a raucous & lively movie soundtrack. The first time we asked Alexa a question after a movie finished playing, we had to scream at the soundbar to make it stop responding because the voice was piercingly loud. If there’s a way to set the voice assistant volume separately from media/playback volume, I certainly didn’t find it. But assuming that capability is simply not on board, it is something that is sorely missed for those times when we engaged with Alexa for more than something that warranted just an “OK” response. The minimalist approach used for provisioning onboard controls also feels like Bose maybe took things just a little TOO far. There are only two touch-sensitive buttons on the soundbar itself, one to mute the microphone for voice assistant input, & one to activate the voice assistance manually (for when said mic is muted)…but that’s it. There is no power button, no volume control, & no way to switch inputs. While you could use a voice assistant for some of those functions, it would be nice to have a way to manually make those adjustments when casually walking by the soundbar, especially as a few additional touch-sensitive buttons really wouldn’t take up any more space on the top of the enclosure. Finally, while it is true that Bose has managed to engineer a small soundbar that admirably produces a very spacious sound field, those of you who watch movies/TV shows with particularly active or directional surround-sound tracks & effects may be slightly disappointed--the soundbar simply does not do discrete surround sound very convincingly. In particular, object panning & isolated surround channel effects come off as diffuse & non-specific, despite the noticeable sense of depth you get from the soundbar’s all-around-you style of sound field. For some, this may not be a big player in your decision-making, especially if you have limited space to work with. But along with a steady diet of Hallmark+ movies & character-driven sitcoms & procedurals, we watch a lot of fantasy, sci-fi, & action movies. The Bose Smart Soundbar will do its best to give the soundtracks from those latter genres some sense of space & dimensionality, but you aren’t going to be wowed by helicopter sounds realistically passing overhead or a starship whooshing by on the screen as the sound of the engines pan along from front-left to rear-right. These nits aside, the Bose Smart Soundbar really is a fantastic performer, especially when you take into account its small & compact form factor…definitely recommended!

First and foremost let me say I am a BOSE woman. I have like 3 portable speakers that I've had for many years which actually influenced my decision to try a soundbar, this soundbar. Purchased this Smart Soundbar to pair with my Samsung S90D tv I got during Black Friday. I hooked it up directly via HDMI since I read reviews of how the bluetooth is shotty. Garbage speaker stopped working the same day!!! The connection would lag when turning it on with the tv. You'd have to wait sometimes 2 minutes for it to sync and start outputting sound, that is until it wouldn't connect at all and stopped outputting sound. Honestly the sound is better from the tv than with this soundbar. RETURNING this weekend and definitely not worth the money even with the sale. Most of the new tvs that have the Dolby integrations sound great without soundbars anyway.

OVERALL SOUND QUALITY: When operational, this Bose Smart Soundbar provided an enhanced and digitally sounding immersive front beaming soundstage in a scaled down footprint. Movie dialogue is crisp and crystal clear, Bose got that right. And I was somewhat taken aback with the mid-to-upper-bass range that was emanating from a system without a dedicated subwoofer, just two small rear soundbar bass ports. Note that you will need to purchase the optional sub-woofer, and optional set of rear satellites, for a true 5.1.2 sound system. Nevertheless, very impressive for movies and more volume than I will ever require for our small finished attic. Larger rooms may not fair as well and you could be better served with Bose’s Ultra system. Now I was disappointed with DVD/Blu-Ray Concerts that had an overly digitally processed “ghost echo” soundstage unless I set the DVD players from 5.1 to 2.0 (stereo). Although streaming directly from “Music Services” (Sirius-XM) or Bose’s free TuneIn service sounded very good without any ghost-echoing artifacts. CONNECTIVITY ISSUES: From day one, I had nothing but intermittent connectivity issues. Specifically, both WiFi, along with HDMI, disconnecting. Add to that is an application that occasionally fails to find its soundbar and that renders the Bose setup features inaccessible. Seems to work during the day after resetting and reconfiguring, but the next day, if not latter the same day, there would be zero sound output and/or no network WiFi connectivity. Just to be clear, I use three competitor’s soundbars that do not exhibit these irregularities connected to our WiFi-7 mesh system. Even after working with Bose support three times, this system fails to provide a consistent soundbar solution without numerous restoration attention. FIRMWARE UPDATE: I manually had to update the original firmware from 8.0.16 to 9.0.11. Per the manual, the firmware was supposed to self-update at night OTA, but after two nights when it did not, I followed the Bose web-site instructions to manually download the current firmware update. (I am speculating it could not update at night because of the lost connectivity issues?) Note that this updated firmware did not resolve my soundbar’s current connectivity issues. SOUNDBAR BUTTONS: There are only two capacitive sensing buttons on the top of this soundbar. One will turn OFF/ON the microphone. While the other is the Alexa Action Options. Missing is a way to turn this soundbar on/off, control the volume, or select the source material from the soundbar. Not even a rear “reset” button. The miniature remote control can provide these functions, but is small will no doubt be misplaced or get lost between couch or chair cushions. If the Bose Application was consistently stable, that could be an acceptable backup. Note that I do not talk to my IoT devices, so Alexa is a non-option for me. BOSE SUPPORT: I must acknowledge that the Bose Support representatives I worked with were all top tiered professionals. And I am impressed at the very short phone hold time to reach an actual person. Each of the three techs knew this current model soundbar and were able to get it functional walking me through different procedures. Thank you! I will also admit the connectivity issues I experience may not be Bose’s fault. Could be my 2019 Insignia HDTV, could be my home WiFi-7 mesh system, could be my 2024 Android-14 phone. Or could be attributed to a combination of all of my collective technology. There are numerous other reviewers that express positive reviews without mentioning connection failures. Only a small percentage of users for Bose soundbars appear to experience similar issues. When I have time, I am considering setting up at my daughter’s townhome, a completely different environment with a new HDMI e/ARC HDTV, just to confirm or eliminate my home being the problem. Will update this review if/when I do with the outcome. NITPICK EQ: I wish there were Equalization (EQ) defaults, that are user configurable, with options that would allow different “presets” to accommodate different media. Examples: When listening to movies, a “MOVIE” preset, or listening to music, a “MUSIC” preset. Plus, a “NIGHT” preset to tone down the low end and raise the vocals at lower night-time bedroom volumes. Currently, users must open the application and tweak the numerous settings for each of these three examples. Then reverse those steps to return back. RATING: For overall sound quality in a small footprint for movie content, this system excels and would have earn a solid 4-Star Rating for it numerous features and better than average bass-response without a dedicated subwoofer. But due to its intermittent connectivity issues (HDMI & Application), it basically renders this system useless for my family (they will not be able to perform the required reset procedures) and this Bose Smart Soundbar earned itself a 2-Star Rating. Therefore, I cannot recommend this system to others at this time. Hopefully a future firmware upgrade can provide resolution.

I have used numerous and continue to use a few soundbars in my home. These range from $100 Vizio soundbars up to $1500 Sennheiser premium soundbars. Each one brings something to the table whether it's fantastic pricing, top tier sound, size considerations, ergonomic advantages or more. I tried before to integrate an LG GP9 "gamer" soundbar into one of my gaming PCs several years ago, but the $500 "gamer" soundbar was terrible. After that, any soundbar worth using was usually too big to fit into my 32" display ergonomics and the ones that did fit did not have good sound. The Bose Smartbar seemed to check all the boxes I needed on paper. A quality soundbar from a known top tier brand that actually fit perfectly with the width of my 32" display and was low enough and compact enough to work ergonomically. Inside the box, you will get the Soundbar, a remote, optimal and HDMI cable along with some very limited literature with a QR code to download the Bose app. Looks wise, it is solid black with limited lighting, very solidly built and feels of high quality. The soundbar itself can be configured via optical, Bluetooth and ARC (HDMI) so you have plenty of connectivity options to your devices. I was initially going to go Bluetooth but then realized my motherboard has an optical out, so went that route. It will not work right out of the box unfortunately and you will need to install and use the Bose app available for iOS and Android. Also, unfortunately, you will need to register an account to use the app properly along with accept the normal TOS. Once you're into the app, setup and usage is really straight forward and I was up and running in about 5 minutes. Sound quality wise, it is good. It is very good for it's size. Maybe I was still fostering many previous bad experiences using soundbars with my PCs, but I was pleasantly surprised at not only the sound quality but separation of the highs and mids while gaming and playing back some choice audio selections. The downside, as always with a soundbar, is the lack of deep and meaningful bass and this holds true for the Bose Smartbar because the only, true way to achieve that good punch is with a subwoofer. You can add a subwoofer to the Bose Smartbar. The good news is the bass is good enough for my use and I am actually quite pleased they're able to get a passable amount of bass from such a small package. The sound has a good richness to it overall and does not sound hollow or empty. Overall, I am very pleased with the Bose Smartbar. It is compact, offers good sound, has a decent basic remote and is easy to set up and use. The sound output is above average for a soundbar this size and the build quality is solid. For the same price, the Bose Smartbar absolutely crushes the former "gamer" soundbar I had used in every aspect. The only negative I can think of is the account creation requirement just to use the app but that is a minor complaint.

The reason I bought it was to install it on my gaming computer and I only have one HDMI input to connect from the HDMI output of the graphics card etc 4090 and I can connect and I can't be recognized by the computer either without any way to make it work, all the methods don't work and the Bluetooth of this bar has latency, so there is no recommendation to play on the computer through Bluetooth. I can't make the sound quality so good since Bose only makes these for TV