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Credit: Illustration by Ian Moore and product image courtesy of Amazon.
The Bose Smart Soundbar wasn’t very well received by reviewers when it came out last year, citing small improvements for a larger price tag. But now with a $100 discount, we can have a serious conversation about who it’s good for. You can get the Bose Smart Soundbar for $399 (originally $499), the lowest price it has been, according to price-tracking tools.
The Bose Smart Soundbar is the successor to the Bose Smart Soundbar 600, which was already a very good soundbar—so needless to say, standards were high. Bose essentially made a new soundbar with more modern features, but didn’t upgrade the hardware, bringing into question the steep price increase, according to PCMag’s and many other reviews. If you already have a 600, it’s not worth upgrading even with the discount. However, if you’re looking for a modern premium soundbar that has enough bass to not need a subwoofer, then consider the new Bose Smart Soundbar.
Like most premium speakers, the soundbar doesn’t need a subwoofer, because it creates its own bass, but the output will never match that of a dedicated subwoofer. This works well for bedrooms or small apartments. But keep in mind you can always add a subwoofer and/or rear speakers. Speaking of which, if you own Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, you can connect them to the soundbar to work as rear satellite speakers, creating a pseudo-surround-sound system (only for you, though).
What do you think so far?
As the name implies, this is a “smart” soundbar, with wifi, meaning as long as you’re in the same wifi network, you can stream your media to it with AirPlay or Chromecast. The instrument separation is what makes this soundbar shine, which goes hand-in-hand with the AI Dialogue Mode feature for dialogue enhancement. But if you can afford to spend a bit more, the Sonos Beam Gen 2 is the best stand-alone soundbar you can buy.
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