Bose Smart Soundbar

Introduction

The Bose Smart Soundbar could be a great fit if you want a small soundbar that doesn’t sound too small. 

It’s only roughly as wide as a 32-inch TV, and will represent a stratospheric upgrade to any set’s speaker system I’ve seen at that size. Bose pulls out every trick in its arsenal to tease (moderately) powerful bass and sound that is both tall and wide.

Clarity is good too, although after comparing it to several in its price class and even below, there’s a certain synthetic or artificial character to the Bose Smart Soundbar’s presentation. 

You should probably only buy the Bose Smart Soundbar if its space-saving style truly suits your plans. But it does also have a solid spread of features for the money, including multi-room and Wi-Fi. 

Design

• Sub-70cm width is less than almost all TVs
• Minimal near-invisible soundbar controls
• Mini remote

You could argue some soundbars seem to forget that the entire purpose of this category is space-saving, that probably suits an innocuous appearance. Bose knows the soundbar game well. 

The Bose Smart Soundbar is less than 70cm wide. Whatever TV you have, no matter how small, you can be sure this soundbar won’t look silly beside it. And it’s not a showy design either. 

Its front is covered by a metal grille, and the only ornamentation on the top is yet more speaker grille, to allow for the upwards-firing drivers. A set of six white volume LEDs sits behind the front grille, but these dim when not needed, and a tiny red LED indicates the power status. Nothing excessive or flashy here. 

There are smart touches to the design too. Look around the back and you’ll see the cable connections are actually slightly recessed and angled at around 45 degrees to cut down how much wall clearance will be needed — all while minimising the amount this design eats into the soundbar’s internal cabinet space. 

You still shouldn’t push the Bose Smart Soundbar right up against a wall as it has two rear pass ports. But even then the official guidance is hardly onerous. “Keep the back side of the soundbar at least 0.4 in (1 cm) from any other surface,” says Bose. 

There are just two buttons on the actual soundbar, and these are little touch-sensitive areas on the top, not clicky buttons. They toggle the microphone and act as a context-sensitive “action” button. 

This is why I think most people will rely on the little remote instead, which has discrete buttons for volume, play/pause and to switch between Bluetooth and HDMI/TV sources. 

Features 

• Supports extra subwoofers, satellites and earphone connections
• Streams music over Bluetooth 4.2
• Alexa support

The Bose Smart Soundbar can be paired with rear satellites and a Bass Module subwoofer. But I think the particular skills of this soundbar shine when going solo — not that it won’t sound significantly better when upgraded with these extras.

Similarly, the soundbar can be paired with the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, those earphones providing surround sound channels. But I can’t picture many sign-ups for this.

You are not limited to TV sound either. The Bose Smart Soundbar has Bluetooth, using the quirkily ancient Bluetooth 4.2 standard (but it works just fine), or Wi-Fi. This allows for Google Cast, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect streams.

There’s even a microphone to let you talk to Amazon Alexa. And thanks to an Alexa plugin this can also control the soundbar’s own features. 

Bose does a pretty bad job of explaining what this thing is capable of — not mentioning half of this stuff clearly on its own website. However, it is a wide-ranging set of skills, many of which are typically left out of mid-tier soundbars in favour of more speakers. 

Setting the Bose Smart Soundbar up on the Bose phone app was painless, though. 

Connectivity

• HDMI with eARC
• No additional HDMI inputs
• Optical input on hand as a backup

The Bose Smart Soundbar is primarily an HDMI eARC soundbar. You plug it into your TV and you’re away. 

Alternatively, you can use the optical input if your TV does not support ARC. 

The Bose Soundbar does not have any extra HDMI inputs, which plenty of soundbars offer. These are used to feed the soundbar audio direct from the source, while then passing the video feed through to your TV. 

Other connections around the back aren’t going to be of use to many folks. There’s a 3.5mm connector for a Bose Bass Module — while they support wireless transmission, a cable can be used to side-step connectivity issues. Another 3.5mm is used to connect an IR receiver, should you want to be able to control the soundbar with the remote when further away. 

Finally, there’s a microUSB port marked “service” suggesting it’s not for use by mere soundbar owners. It’s there to should you need to force a firmware reinstall, based on what I’ve read online. 

Sound Quality

• Good sound scale and width for its size
• Solid clarity and respectable imaging
• Not the most natural tonality, and limited bass depth

Bose fits five drivers into the Smart Soundbar, which is not actually that many when you consider a couple of facts. This is a full-range bar, intended to do its very best to give weight to Marvel movie action, subwoofer-free, and it has height channels for Dolby Atmos tracks. 

Sharing its style with the older, similar Bose Smart Soundbar 600, there are two up-firing Atmos speakers, a centre channel and left and right-firing drivers. 

Call it spreading yourself thin if you like, but feed the Bose a Dolby Atmos soundtrack and it sounds remarkably wide and expansive considering what we’re dealing with here, physically. My reaction was a lot like that I had with the classic Bose SoundLink Mini. It’s small, but doesn’t sound too small. 

And the bass? While I remain impressed by what Bose has coaxed out of what amounts to a handful of small drivers and a couple of ports — not a passive radiator in sight, apparently — its limits are quite obvious. 

The Bose Smart Soundbar has noticeably shallower bass than the Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus, which is half the cost but is much (much) larger. You get rich, full-sounding audio for plenty of content, but booms, bangs and bass lines just don’t have the clout or heft of the best standalone soundbars, let alone those sold with subwoofers. 

I don’t particularly like the Bose Smart Soundbar for music either. Sure, it’s not bloated, has a decent sense of imaging and solid clarity for vocals. But something about its tonality sounds artificial, vocals massaged into a shape not quite their own. 

In isolation nothing sounds too “off” because the Smart Soundbar’s tonal balance is perfectly decent and mixes don’t tend to sound too muddled. But next to rivals like the Amazon or the Sony Theatre Bar 6, the Bose will not seem quite right when playing songs you know well. 

Part of this is likely down to the driver array. The only way for it to play a stereo mix without spreading it across multiple drivers would be to have sound pumping out of the left and right sides, leaving a giant dead zone in the middle. What you get instead is a version of that stereo mix spread across the side, centre and upwards drivers. 

Bose luxuriates, almost savours, in the compromises of small drivers. It has done for decades — see the Bose Acoustic Wave for proof, a hi-fi system that snaked sound through a lazy river of waveguide corridors to improve sound quality. 

The Bose Smart Soundbar is also fundamentally very similar to the Soundbar 600 from 2023, but does bring a new “AI” feature that claims to improve dialogue clarity. It does, but does not constitute a compelling reason to upgrade from the older model if you already own one. 

Reactions to the Bose Smart Soundbar may divide in the way other Bose speakers have. It’s not necessarily a purist-pleaser, but what it can create from a relatively small and neat enclosure should impress plenty. 

Should you buy it?

FAQs