Bose Smart Soundbar 600 review

Audio veteran Bose shores up its speaker portfolio with a compact, all-black slab intended to take down the Sonos Beam. The Bose Smart Soundbar 600 is a simple yet powerful home theater solution in the middle of its soundbar line. Bose has a couple of tricks that elevate this Dolby Atmos soundbar above others, but does the 600 series get lost between its budget-friendly and premium counterparts? Time to learn more in our Bose Smart Soundbar 600 review.

• Bose Smart Soundbar 600: $499 USD / €550

The Bose Smart Soundbar 600 hit the shelves mid-October 2022 and slots in nicely between the Bose Smart Soundbar 300 ($449 at Bose) and Bose Smart Soundbar 900 ($899 at Amazon). Bose’s Soundbar 600 shares many of the same comforts as the Soundbar 300, but the speaker arrangement more closely resembles that of the 900 series. Two upward-firing speakers separate this 600 series soundbar from the pack of other similarly priced options. Speaker elements aimed at the ceiling bounce the sound back down to you. This design makes it sound as if audio effects are truly coming from overhead, which is key for convincing Dolby Atmos content. Budget soundbars usually rely solely on virtualization technology to simulate height.

A high-quality plastic encases the five-transducer system (3.0.2 channels). Aside from the coveted up-firing drivers, there are two side-firing, racetrack-shaped transducers, and a center speaker. On the back, you’ll find all the ports, allowing you to connect to your TV via HDMI eARC or optical input. There’s also a service USB port, an optional wired IR blaster connection, and a wired subwoofer output.

There are a few ways to control the Smart Soundbar 600, the most obvious of which is the eight-button remote control. With this in hand, you can cycle through input options, adjust or mute the volume, and power the soundbar on/off. To mute the integrated microphone array, you need to press the microphone icon on the soundbar’s touch panel. Next to it, you can tap the circle icon for voice assistant access.

While I’d have a hard time picking this soundbar out of a line of others, the unassuming design helps it blend into your living space. Bose lets its speakers do the talking here, and the upward-firing drivers deliver quality Dolby Atmos audio content.

When watching the movie Dune (Dolby Atmos audio through HBO Max), the ethereal soundscape feels all-encompassing. During the scene at 00:16:35, a spaceship lands and really sounds like it’s coming from above. I prefer the height effect during the ship’s descent through the Smart Soundbar 600 compared to how the AirPods Pro (2nd generation) reproduces this scene with Spatial Audio and head tracking.

String instruments underscore the film, and high-end detail is easy to hear; its output never diminishes the actors’ speaking parts. This soundbar (and soundbars generally) won’t win any awards for sub-bass reproduction, but the upside is that dialogue almost always comes through clearly. If you’re hard of hearing, you can even enable the Dialogue Mode through the Bose Music app to make voices more pronounced.

Dolby Atmos content sounds great through the Bose Smart Soundbar 600, but what about non-Dolby Atmos content? Bose’s TrueSpace feature upscales stereo and 5.1-channel content for a Dolby Atmos-like effect. The intro scene of Bad Travelling (5.1) from the Netflix show Love, Death, and Robots, is significantly enhanced through the soundbar compared to when I watch the scene and listen through my TCL TV speakers. That said, the fight scene in Bad Travelling doesn’t sound as immersive as similar fight scenes in Dune. Bose’s formula pulls a lot of weight with standard stereo mixes from YouTube, and I find this jump in quality more impressive than watching 5.1 content. This perceived dimensional improvement is particularly apparent when I watch the short film LIMBO, featured on the YouTube channel DUST.

Unlike some other smart speakers, this soundbar is surprisingly easy to set up. While some may detest the need for a mobile app to get the most out of a $499 USD product, the Bose Music app does the trick and presents an accessible interface. From the app, you can adjust the loudness of the audio channels along with the bass and treble. You’ll need to interact with the app to set up Bose SimpleSync, which works with non-Bose products. This way, you can have synchronized multi-speaker playback without buying many Bose speakers. (SimpleSync is optimized for Bose products, of course.) You can even pair multiple wireless headphones to the soundbar, keeping all the headsets in sync while each person chooses their own volume level.

The main drawback to the Bose Smart Soundbar 600 is that audio content sounds more immersive when I sit on the floor in the center of my living room, rather than on the couch against the wall. You’ll encounter this difference in quality with any comparable soundbar, though. Sitting in the middle of my room, 1.7 meters (5.5ft) away from the soundbar makes me feel as if I’m centered in the action because the up-firing speakers’ sound waves reflect off my ceiling directly down to me. Sitting on my couch, 3 meters (10ft) away from the soundbar, I feel like I’m off center from the action. Everything still sounds good from the couch, as I’m still able to perceive audio height effects, there’s just something to be said about optimal seating placement. For review purposes, the floor seating arrangement is bearable but could be a pain for long-term use. Listeners who don’t want to redesign their living room may turn to a soundbar with more transducers, or invest in satellite speakers to complement the soundbar.

Other than that, the drawbacks extend to the remote collecting oils from your skin, and the fact that you need to purchase your own wall-mounting bracket, but that’s about it.

Bose Smart Soundbar 600 specs

There’s a lot to keep track of when researching the Bose Smart Soundbar 600. Here’s a list of all the important specifications you may care about.

	BOSE SMART SOUNDBAR 600
Size	56 x 694 x 104 mm
Weight	3.13kg
Channels	3.0.2
Audio specs	5x full-range transducers Enclosure: Bass reflex
Audio I/O	Optical digital HDMI ARC/eARC Subwoofer output (3.5mm)
Video outputs	HDMI 2.0b
Wireless audio connection	Bluetooth 4.2 Wi-Fi 2.4/5GHz Apple AirPlay 2 Chromecast built-in
Streaming services	Amazon Music Pandora SiriusXM Spotify TuneIn
App	Bose Music app (iOS/Android)
Controls	Remote: buttons Soundbar: touch
Price	$499 USD

As far as unibody home theater products are concerned, Bose nails it with the Smart Soundbar 600. Priced at a reasonable $499 USD, Bose teeters on the edge of premium, offering support for Dolby Atmos, good design, smart features, and an app. The only thing missing is DTS:X support. While DTS:X appeals to Blu-Ray fans, the most popular video and music streaming services favor Dolby Atmos.

Pricier options like the Denon Home Sound Bar 550 and Sony HT-A3000 soundbars debuted with $649 USD and $699 USD price tags, respectively, and both lack upward-firing speakers. On top of that, Sony’s is just a 3.1 system, compared to Bose’s 5.0.2-channel system. In all fairness, those Denon and Sony products support DTS:X.

Hardware aside, the Bose Music app is a breeze to use. Its interface may seem comically basic to the advanced audiophile, but that’s not who this soundbar—or any soundbar—is aimed at anyway. Bose presents just the bare necessities in its app, giving you control over what matters most: dialogue clarity and immediate source switching.

You could grab the Sonos Beam, which currently costs ($509 at Amazon), but you’d be giving up height speakers that improve the overall viewing experience. For movie buffs caught between two soundbars, the money you spend on the Bose Soundbar 600 will be well worth it—the same might not be true for people mainly listening to music.