Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini Review

Introduction

Bluesound has been making soundbars since 2016, but they’ve always been on the large side. In fact, all the way up until 2021, Bluesound Soundbars all looked pretty much identical. In late 2025, though, the brand shook things up with the introduction of the Pulse Cinema and Pulse Cinema Mini.

These new bars have a design that better matches Bluesound’s wireless multiroom speakers, and for the first time, there’s a soundbar for those of us with smaller TVs and living spaces.

It’s the smaller sibling that I’m testing today. It’s designed to be low profile and compact, while still offering powerful performance and rich, immersive sound.

Design

• Pill-shaped housing, backlit touch controls
• Fabric upper, aluminium chassis

The Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini makes a positive first impression. It’s dense and weighty, just the way you’d want a piece of high-end audio equipment to feel.

It has a friendly design with soft edges, looking a bit like an elongated pill. There’s a tight fabric covering over the entire grille, while the underside is smooth and matte black – at least on the black version that I’m testing. The tan version comes with a white underside.

It’s a tasteful design, but it’s unlikely to turn heads. In fairness, that’s what you want from a soundbar: the focus should be on the sound, not the speakers.

The Pulse Cinema Mini is just over 33 inches long, which means it’ll marry well with 40-50-inch TVs. I tested with a 55-inch set, but I use a fairly compact TV stand, and it certainly doesn’t look out of place. I think the full-size Pulse Cinema bar would likely overhang the edges of my stand, with its 47-inch length.

I was pleased to see that you get a wall mount included in the box. So if your TV is on the wall, you can affix this bar without needing to hunt for the appropriate gear. You also get all the cables you’re likely to need included. There’s power, HDMI, and even an Ethernet cable.

The controls are very minimal. There’s a gloss black bar on the top with a status indicator in the centre and two capacitive-touch controls on either side that illuminate when you get near them. The right-most buttons control volume up and down, while the buttons on the left are programmable using the BluOS app.

There’s no remote included, which is odd if you think of this as a traditional soundbar, but Bluesound is a Sonos rival, and Sonos never gives you a remote, either. If you really want one, you could always pick up the RC1 remote control for around £50.

In any case, the lack of a remote isn’t a real issue. All the important settings are handled in the BluOS app on your smartphone, and the same app will let you teach the soundbar IR commands from your existing remotes. I was able to get my TV remote controlling the soundbar’s volume within a matter of minutes.

Features

• BluOS wireless multiroom support
• Works with Alexa Skills
• Virtualised Dolby Atmos support
• Analogue, digital, and wireless connectivity

As mentioned, Bluesound is a Sonos competitor, and as such, it offers very similar wireless multiroom functionality across all of its speakers. I’m reviewing the Pulse Cinema Mini as a standalone product, but if you have the desire (and the funds), you could add wireless rear speakers and a wireless subwoofer for a complete home theatre solution.

Of course, with any wireless multiroom system, the app experience is paramount. Thankfully, Bluesound has nailed it. The BluOS app is speedy, intuitive, and easy to integrate with just about any streaming service.

The advantage with Bluesound, compared to Sonos, is that it does a little more to cater to audiophiles than its mainstream rival. For instance, it supports 24-bit/192kHz high-res streaming across the entire ecosystem, and you’ll even find the BluOS system integrated into high-end gear from the likes of NAD, PSB and Cyrus.

Obviously, I can’t speak to how well the multiroom functionality works, since I only have this single unit, but everything else I’ve tried has worked faultlessly. The BluOS app immediately found the soundbar. I connected it to my network, and I was streaming music from Spotify in no time at all.

Of course, there’s still room for improvement. It took longer than I’d like to figure out where the sound profiles for the soundbar were hiding, and bizarrely, if you turn off spatial audio, the soundbar reboots. The app warns you that it will happen, but it’s still a bit strange.

You can set a different sound profile for each input or source, and you can choose between Music mode, Movie mode, and Late Night mode. Each allows you to toggle on or off the Surround Upmixer, Virtualizer, and Volume Leveler, but there’s no custom EQ option. The different profiles make a big difference to the sound, but I would have loved to see some finer controls.

On the topic of virtualization, the soundbar supports Dolby Atmos decoding, but it doesn’t have up-firing drivers. So, any sense of height is purely DSP trickery. It can be quite convincing at times, but of course, it’s no match for actual upfiring speakers.

When it comes to connections, the Pulse Cinema Mini is quite well equipped. Optical and eARC are the primary ways you’re expected to hook this up to a TV, but you also get an analogue phono input and a USB-A for media playback. There’s also an RCA output for hooking up a traditional subwoofer, which is always nice to see.

Sound Quality

• 280W total system power
• 2.1 configuration with angled drivers
• 6x drivers and 2x passive radiators

The Bluesound Pulse Cinema Mini, despite its relatively compact dimensions, excels at creating a wide and immersive soundstage. My TV is usually hooked up to my (ancient) Sonos Playbase, and comparatively, the Bluesound feels much more 3D and immersive.

Watching the Golden Gate Bridge scene from Godzilla (2014) really let this soundbar flex its muscles. The combination of delicate raindrop sounds, sharp gunshots, and otherworldly roars makes for a magnificent soundscape that fills the room. It’s a powerful unit, too; it made my lounge feel like a cinema at around 60-70% volume.

The sound is exceptionally detailed and dynamic, but it’s not perfect. The main issue is the lack of sub-bass extension. The mid-bass hits hard, but the sub-bass is almost nonexistent. If you want that rumble that you feel in the cinema, then you’ll need to pair it with a subwoofer.

Unfortunately, if you want to do so wirelessly, that’ll cost you a pretty penny. Bluesound’s Pulse Sub+ retails for £749, essentially doubling the cost of your system. As I mentioned earlier, though, there’s an RCA port for hooking up a sub. So, if you’re ok with wires, you could elevate this setup without breaking the bank.

As an experiment, I tried it with my (also very ancient) 8-inch Gale subwoofer. It was truly transformative, to the point where I felt it was almost rivalling a high-end system of home theatre separates. If you’re looking for a true cinema-like experience, I’d say a subwoofer is an essential add-on.

My only other criticism is software-related. When watching Nolan’s Interstellar, I often felt like I wanted to give the dialogue a bit of a boost. To be clear, that’s the film’s fault, not Bluesound. However, with many competing products, I can choose to increase the volume of the centre channel or apply a Vocal Boost preset, but BluOS offers neither. I hope that’s something that gets added in the future.

When it comes to music listening, my experience was quite similar. The Pulse Cinema Mini sounds fantastic, so long as the music you’re listening to doesn’t utilise those lower sub-bass frequencies too much.

Listening to Innervisionsby Kuzich had me seriously impressed. The sound is detailed with punchy mids and a super wide soundstage that you can get lost in. When I tried listening to some dubstep or drum and bass, though, the bar was crying out for a sub. It just couldn’t deliver the necessary rumble without one.

Should you buy it?

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