Bose New Smart Dolby Atmos Soundbar, Bluetooth Soundbar Speaker with Voice Control and Amazon Alexa Built-in, Works with Google Assistant Capabilities, Black

I have had the Bose smart sound bar for a day. I like the voice clarity on movies and tv shows. Big issue for myself and wife understand the voices. I just returned the new Samsung Q900D, the latest tech for sound bar sub and rear speakers. My Samsung TV is a series 6 and lacks some of the important technical features to justify the vey high price. Also the remote lacks features and displays unless you have the latest Samsung TV. I am impressed with the AI that drives the voice clarity. So far, good product. I might ad the sub and rear speakers that match new smart bar.

This sound bar is worth more than my TV and the build quality shows it. It’s very well made compared to very cheap speakers. That said, it’s also super pricey. It comes with all the cables you need to connect directly to your TV.

It comes with a remote but you can also control it via your phone app. You need the phone app to set up as well.

This is my first wireless bluetooth speaker so I thought I’d try to connect it wirelessly to my roku TV but despite multiple attempts at trying, it would not detect the speaker when I tried to connect wirelessly. The instructions has no section to connect wirelessly to your TV, only says to use the cables. From what I read from the instructions, the “wireless” part for this speaker refers to allowing you to connect subwoofers wirelessly to it or connect to it directly with your phone and use it as a bluetooth speaker. It’s not referring to itself as a wireless TV sound bar.

That said the sound quality is pretty good. It’s very clear. I hate watching movies and tvs where the dialogue is very hard to hear (mumble or bad sound mixing) and the AI dialogue does make a difference. It’s a bit weird at first because the speaking is clearly amplified and clear but you get used to it quickly.

The sound settings you can control are center and height channel, bass, and treble. You can also add an audio delay if needed. This particular speaker does not have room tuning feature which at this price point, I feel like it should.

In terms of sound quality, it’s good but I don’t notice a significant improvement over my $100 sound bar. The only time I can tell a difference is the cinematic “brrrrr” base noises that are very rare and only at the intro credits or when opening some apps. Otherwise it’s hard for my to notice the sound quality most of the time unless I really listen for it.

The only bugs/tech issues I found were:
1. HDMI power/audio sync did not work with auto-wake/sleep. Basically by default it goes to sleep in 15-20 minutes. However, when you use your TV again, it would not self-wake. Your TV will detect the speakers and use them for sound but there will be no output unless you manually shutdown and power up the speakers. I tried all the HDMI power options and none of them fixed this. Only way I could fix is to turn off the auto-sleep so that it just doesn’t goto sleep at all. It does still turn off when you turn the tv off though so that’s a good solution for me.
2. The volume control has a very noticeable delay. Maybe 1 second or so.
3. The owners guide/instructions link on the APP leads to a dead link, still hasn’t been fixed since I started testing the speakers

All in all, it’s a very well made speaker. For me though I don’t see it as worth the price over <$200 speakers. If you can use all the features such as connecting your own subwoofers, AI voice control, spotify/air play, have bose earbuds that can sync with it then it might be worth it to you. If you don't need all those features or aren't able to use them, then I think a simple speaker will be good for most people…unless you are an audiophile with good ears that can notice the sound difference.

I have had nearly every brand of soundbar in this sweet spot price range of $400-$1K. Most of the soundbars I use on a daily basis are larger by a good 12 inches than this. The Sonos Arc and the JBL Bar 9.1 are heavier, larger and have additional features for example removable surround speakers on the JBL. I also have the Sonos Beam, and this Bose I would consider a direct competitor to that more compact version of the Sonos architecture.

Setup on this Bose was a breeze other than the typical ARC recognition issues I always have on my newer Hisense 7U tv. After a few reboots of each it worked just fine. Sound is good, especially speaking, which seems to be a real focus of this product. Makes sense, if you aren’t making a full-size soundbar which would have a lot of drivers pushing 360 imaging, instead as here to focus on the most common use of a compact unit which would be watching tv.

The app is easy to install, just scan qr code, register and it found my soundbar immediately – unlike my experience with Sonos. Don’t get me started with Sonos either not finding products or requiring reconnections. So far the Bose is just always paired on startup with no issues. Music sounds “good”. Not great, not fair, but good. I believe if you are not pairing this with a subwoofer you will likely want to set the app equalizer to the full +10 on the bass, which depending on the music is either sufficient or still a little shy. I have a Sonos subwoofer but not sure I will be able to cross-connect; based on forums I doubt it.

All in all, as stated before – this is a very clear competitor for the Beam and performs very similarly. The Atmos works well extending the height, especially if you tweak it to +4 or so on the app. Listening is comfortable and nothing stands out as being problematic especially after pushing up the bass. I like the visual display on the front and nice to have the front and top functionality to separate the stereo image and height portion of the sound.

For the price, this is a good solid buy. I would recommend it for a bedroom tv or compact environment like and apartment.

Quality wherever you look at it, there’s no doubt about it. The build is completely solid, high-quality plastics, a well-sized remote with a soft plastic finish that feels quite premium. The included cables are of good quality, although fairly standard, nothing special—this is just regarding what’s visible. It performs well for the price it’s offered at.

The sound is good. If you don’t have a similar speaker, you’ll notice the massive difference due to the spatial sound it generates from the moment you turn it on, which gives you an idea of the type of audio it can produce for music or a good movie that takes full advantage of its capabilities. If you already have a speaker of similar size, you can also detect the difference—perhaps not as impressive but still noticeable between one system and the other.

When playing music, either directly from the TV or from one of the apps, the sound is quite good, with defined bass or strong lows as long as the audio transmission quality is good. I mention this because after playing many songs, the speaker sounded like a $50 or $100 one. However, when switching apps and playing the same songs, the difference was quite remarkable and better, where it seemed to lack bass, and those increased considerably, drastically changing my first opinion. Therefore, it’s crucial to notice what we use to play music. The same applies to the quality of the service we use for movies.

With the app, you can manage all available speaker options, almost entirely replacing the need for the remote. It’s quite clear and functional. The only thing I found not so optimized was the volume control, which has a noticeable delay when moving the slider, and the control isn’t very precise as it increases in large blocks, perhaps by 10% or more. This problem doesn’t exist when using another app, as you can use the phone’s audio control, which works normally and is quite precise.

The total volume it can produce is quite large. For a large room, it has no issues. I even think using more than half the volume seems too much for a room measuring 5m x 7m.

Installing the speaker was relatively easy—just a few clicks and about 5 minutes to configure everything necessary, nothing complicated. The only slightly unpleasant thing is needing to create an account to use these functions.

Overall, it’s a high-quality speaker with very strong and clear sound, enough for a small or medium-sized room, maybe even for a larger one using more volume since it has plenty. It has good material and finish quality, compatibility with different apps, and, above all, everything works well when connected.

We have tried several brands and types of soundbars – and wasted lots of money trying to find one that would provide nice, crisp dialogue for our 86” LG TV. FINALLY came across the Bose “Smart” Dolby Atmos Soundbar. As with most Bose components, it was easy to install – just plug it in, connect the HDMI (or optical) cable to the soundbar and TV, set the TV output to HDMI, watch and listen. That’s it.

There are no preset listening modes like sports, movies, etc., but the bass, treble, “center” and “up” (referring to the top and front speakers) options/controls are adjustable through the app. Bose does an excellent job describing their system so so I’m not going to repeat it here. I’ll just say that this Dolby Atmos version is the best we’ve found for dialogue – AMAZING how it perfectly “fills” our 86” screen. However you do lose some sound depth because of the focus on dialogue. That’s okay with us for now but we will probably add on another module to get that true richness Bose is known for.