The Bose Smart Soundbar — released in 2024 — has a lot to live up to. The Bose Smart Ultra soundbar (from 2023) impressed us with its balanced sound and Dolby Atmos, so how does its more affordable cousin perform? Could it be one of the best soundbars?
The Smart Soundbar has one feature never seen before in a Bose hi-fi setup: it can link directly with Bose Ultra Open Earbuds for a (reportedly) fully immersive experience. But, that’ll cost you an extra $300 for the buds themselves. It’s nice to have, but perhaps not realistic for those limiting their soundbar budget to $500 in the first place.
Despite my cynicism about the open earbuds feature, the Smart Soundbar makes up (to some extent) for that with its mostly pleasant, balanced sound. It lacks proper thumping bass — a lack of subwoofer will do that — but it’s still a punchy yet compact soundbar that’ll suit beginner setups.
I’ll analyze every feature of this $500 soundbar in this Bose Smart Soundbar 2024 review.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Cheat sheet
- What is it? All-in-one soundbar with smart home integration
- Who is it for? People who don’t want to splurge on a multi-speaker setup just quite yet
- What does it cost? $499 / £499
- What do we like? The small soundbar packs a punch
- What don’t we like? Bass performance is lackluster without the pricey extra subwoofer
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Specs
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Price & availability
The Bose Smart Soundbar is $499 from Bose U.S. and £499 from Bose U.K.. If you want to buy it with the open earbuds, it’s $798 from Bose U.S.. For the full Smart Soundbar setup, which includes the soundbar, two channel speakers, and a subwoofer, that’s $1,397 from Bose U.S..
If you’ve got a little extra money to spend, I’d recommend getting the $1,397 setup. It comes with two surround sound speakers for ‘true’ Dolby Atmos, and a subwoofer for ultimate bass. I’ve recently tested the $1,699 JBL Bar 1300X, which has a 11.1.4 channel system, and was blown away. If you want a fantastic home cinema setup and money is no issue, I’d definitely check out the JBL Bar 1300X and the $1,796 Sonos Arc Ultra Immersive setup.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Design & controls
- Compact design
- Don’t lose the remote
- Minimal on-bar controls
The Smart Soundbar is pretty small — just 27 inches long. This means it’ll fit on even tight setups like mine. I was able to place the soundbar on my TV stand with no sliding around or stability issues.
The soundbar doesn’t look quite as beautiful as others I’ve tested, like the Polk Signa S4 ($399), which is frankly gorgeous. It’s sleek and stylish, but its casing looks quite plasticky, and the mesh covering on top isn’t the most appealing design I’ve ever seen.
Unlike Samsung’s remotes, the Bose Smart Soundbar remote looks flimsy and low-quality. The buttons are made of a tactile, dust magnet, silicone-type material, which I found to look aged quite quickly. However, that silicone-type material means the buttons are quite satisfying to press, so you win some, you lose some.
You’ll need the remote, though, so don’t lose it. The soundbar itself has only two controls — the on button, and the mic mute button. The mic is for smart home commands.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Features & setup
- App integration
- AI dialogue mode
- Some features locked behind secondary purchases
A word of warning if you’re buying a Smart Soundbar secondhand: if it won’t connect to your home Wi-Fi network, it’s because the soundbar is already set up on the previous owner’s. You’ll need to factory reset before it will work. I learned this the hard way — I mustn't have been the first journalist to test out this specimen.
After that initial hiccup was dealt with, I connected to my home network easily. I’ll chat about this more thoroughly in the ‘App’ section below, but you can allow other members of your household to connect and control the soundbar with their phones, or you can block them for ultimate control.
The Smart Soundbar has Chromecast built-in, so you can easily stream music directly from your phone. I tested this with Spotify and it worked seamlessly. For Spotify users, the app links directly to your Spotify app.
However, with Spotify’s incredible jam and speaker sync features already, I found this one of the less impressive features. There’s also Airplay for Apple device owners — again, this worked perfectly with my iPhone 16 Pro.
It’s unfortunate that the key features require secondary purchases, like the open earbuds synchronization, and to make the most of the bass you’ll need a separate subwoofer. If you have other Bose speakers, you can link them directly in the app.
Other soundbar + subwoofer combos I’ve tested, namely the Polk Signa S4 and the Samsung HW-B650 ($249) cost a fraction of the Bose Smart Soundbar, and sound much better even without secondary purchases.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: App
- Must-have app
- Secondary speaker sync
- EQ control
I think the Bose app is a must-have with this speaker. I guess it does what it says on the tin — it’s a smart soundbar, right? Of course, you can use the soundbar analog-style, but I found it only great with the app.
On the app you can control things like the volume of specific channels. For example, you can increase the bass and decrease the treble for certain movies, or if you’re listening to music via the aforementioned Airplay or Chromecast. This is such a small complaint, but when you increase the volume, ‘1’ is ‘10’, and ‘2’ is ‘20’, etc etc. Why not just keep it as 1?
As with the JBL app, you can adjust audio delay if your soundbar and movie falls out of sync. I really like this feature, as sometimes technology just has a little hiccup like that.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Sound quality
- Inconsistent Dolby Atmos performance
- Clear dialogue and good high-frequency performance
- Bass disappointing without subwoofer
As with all my soundbar reviews, I put the Bose Smart Soundbar through a series of tests. I watched movies, TV, and listened to a lot of music.
Movies
I watched ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ first. In the opening scene, the clinking of metal as the jets landed and took off were clear. These quiet, high-frequency sound effects were clearer than the Polk Signa S4. The Bose Smart Soundbar’s treble is super clear on default settings, and the whooshing of rope sounds were balanced and audible over ‘Danger Zone’.
Next, I watched ‘Alien: Romulus’. For this movie, I upped the bass to 100 and enabled AI dialogue mode. I found that the increase in bass overpowered the speech, even with AI dialogue enabled, so I put the bass back to 50 and disabled AI mode. Immediately the dialogue was a little harder to hear, so I quickly enabled AI dialogue again. Even with this mode enabled, some of the dialogue was a little muffled.
In the scene where a spaceship shoots off into the ether, I could hear the metal zooming through the air clearly. When I upped the treble to 100, it was a little pinchy at loud volumes, and some of the scenes grated on me a little. It’s a shame there aren’t genre-specific EQs in the Bose app.
Next, I watched ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’, which has a vast range of underwater scenes that are renowned for their Dolby Atmos performance.
In the opening scene, Sam’s voiceover was a little harsh, and the rustling of leaves pinched my ears. The treble was definitely too tinny, so I upped the bass and lowered the treble again. Throughout this movie, I was disappointed by the tinny speech — definitely a symptom of a poor central channel and no subwoofer.
The scenes where the characters are riding the flying creatures were quite immersive, and I could feel the disturbed air flapping around my ears. However, it wasn’t as impressive as the Samsung HW-B650’s 360° performance, which really blew me away.
When one of the sea clan characters walked out of the water, I could feel the dripping water and the waves caress my ears. It’s a little frustrating that the Dolby Atmos performance is inconsistent — some water scenes sounded fantastic, whereas others were disappointing.
For the full cinematic experience, you’d need some extra surround speakers and a sub, which is more $$$. If you want a Dolby Atmos setup on a budget, I’d recommend the Polk Signa S4.
TV
To test the TV audio quality, I watched ‘Toxic Town’ on Netflix. Surprisingly, I was much more impressed with the TV sound quality than blockbuster movie sound quality. Bose setups tend to be designed for TV crowds, so this checks out — TV series sound much better than movies on the Bose Smart Soundbar.
The soundtrack was clear, bassy, and tight. The opening credits’ ‘dust’ sound effect blew across the screen and across the soundbar with zest.
Speech was much clearer on TV series than movies, even without AI dialogue mode. I would recommend this soundbar for TV fanatics over hi-fi movie enthusiasts.
Music
I played music directly from my iPhone 16 Pro using Spotify Connect. I listened to ‘RWTD’ by Sleepazoid with Bose’s default audio settings. I was a little disappointed, so I upped the bass until I found something I was happy with, which happened to be 100.
The track was infectious and groovy, and the bass was considerably louder. However, it wasn’t as impressive as a sub + soundbar combo, of course.
Next, I played ‘Garden of Eden’ by Lady Gaga. In the second verse, the music shifted to the left side before floating back into the stereo mode. I really liked how this sounded, and the percussion kept shifting to the left and right right at the end of the track.
I was really impressed with music playback, especially considering how disappointed I was by the movies. However, you don’t buy a soundbar for music — you buy it for movies and TV. As I’ve said earlier, if you’re a hi-fi fanatic, the Bose Smart Soundbar won’t do you any good.
Bose Smart Soundbar review: Verdict
If you’re in need of a soundbar with awesome, pain-free smart home integration, the Bose Smart Soundbar could be a fantastic option. There’s built-in Chromecast, Airplay, and Spotify Connect, which links up with other smart home systems like Google and Amazon.
It’s a fantastic option for building a smart home system piece-by-piece, but if you’re a home cinema enthusiast, I don’t think this will impress you. Without the subwoofer and separate channel speakers, there’s little Dolby Atmos translation, and the bass is somewhat lacking.
Despite this, I still found the sound quality great for watching TV and listening to music. All I’m saying is that those looking for a top-of-the-range Sonos equivalent will be disappointed.
