Whether for the casual enjoyment of your favorite tunes or a more focused home theatre setup, a Bose soundbar makes for an excellent addition to any home. We’ve done the research to find the best Bose soundbars to help take your listening experience to the next level. We’ll be exploring what makes a good soundbar, when a soundbar is the right choice for your setup, and how to know which one is right for you.

The best Bose Soundbars: Our top picks

The Bose Smart Soundbar 900 is currently the top-of-the-line in Bose soundbars. We’ve spent some time hands-on with the 900 model and were impressed overall with what it brings to the table or the living room instead. The Soundbar 900 supports the Dolby Atmos surround sound codec, which is just a nerdy way of saying that the speaker is able to interpret and play back surround sound audio that was encoded using Dolby Atmos, which is a codec focused on creating immersive sound across multiple channels. A good number of recent movies and TV shows on the major streaming services use Dolby Atmos for their audio, so this compatibility will help you get the best sound of your favorite content.

The Soundbar 900 also supports Bose TrueSpace, which is Bose’s proprietary technology for up-mixing non-Atmos signals, which translated means this speaker can take audio that isn’t even in that fancy Dolby Atmos codec and make it sound even better by intelligently deciding what sounds go where to deliver an immersive theatre-like sound in your living room. Regardless of where your audio comes from, the nine drivers inside this soundbar will fill whatever room it’s in with rich sound.

During our hands-on review, we also noticed that the Soundbar 900 is quite a good-looking speaker. Whether this will hang under your wall-mounted TV or sit upon a console furniture in front of your TV, the Soundbar 900 makes a handsome addition to any space.

Last year’s model, the Bose Smart Soundbar 600, promises many of the features of the 900 series in a smaller and more affordable package. We were able to go hands-on with this speaker and drew a few of our own conclusions. One of the first things we noticed was how compact this speaker is. At just over 6 lbs the Soundbar 600 weighs almost half what the 900 series weighs and is about a third shorter, measuring just 27 inches across. This means the 600 model will fit nicely in almost any setting, even if set atop a snug piece of furniture or underneath a smaller television. We found the size to be its strongest feature.

The Soundbar 600 features five drivers facing all different directions, bringing an immersive sound into such a small package. The lower-end bass frequencies suffer a bit due to the small form factor, but it packs enough punch considering its reduced form factor. Just like the higher-end model, the Soundbar 600 supports voice control with Amazon’s Alexa, making streaming music on it a breeze when you don’t have your phone on hand.

The Bose TV Speaker does its best to bring Bose technology at an affordable price. Bose soundbars at this price point begin to lose some bells and whistles, like support for Dolby Atmos and feature simpler construction not necessarily designed for ultra-immersive sound. The Bose TV Speaker does still support Dolby Digital through its HDMI (ARC) input, which is simply a less advanced Dolby audio codec.

The TV Speaker generates sound with two angled full-range drivers, which should perform above and beyond what your built-in television speakers are capable of. This model makes a compelling companion to your console top setup or for use as a Bluetooth speaker to play music in your home.

Bose has just released the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar which will be replacing the 900 model at the top of their soundbar food chain. As with just about everything these days, Bose says this product takes advantage of A.I technology, in this case to help identify vocals against the backdrop of other sounds in TV and Films and boost them so that you can better hear characters speaking. The Smart Ultra Soundbar will support Dolby Atmos and Bose TrueSpace technology along with the new A.I Dialogue Mode. The soundbar will also be controllable by voice via Alexa and Google. Stay tuned for our full review once we get our hands and ears on the new smart soundbar.

The bottom line: What is the best Bose soundbar?

Achieving the best sound quality for your music or movies is one of the most important aspects of your home entertainment setup. We evaluated these speakers for sound quality, compatibility with most living rooms or use cases, and overall performance. While we found the Bose Soundbar 900 to be the strongest choice among these, there are still a few factors to consider. Firstly budget should be absolutely factored into any responsible purchase, and the Bose Soundbar 600 is our best value pick for a reason. It delivers an enviable auditory experience at a competitive price. Even if budget isn’t a primary consideration, you should consider the width of your TV or TV stand when deciding whether the 41-inch wide Soundbar 900 will fit your space. If you’re just looking for audio of a higher quality than your TV, then the Bose TV Speaker should work just fine.

Is a Bose Soundbar the best fit for my setup?

Bose Soundbars do an excellent job of delivering top-of-the-line sound in a sleek package. If you want your speakers to be more discrete than a multi-system setup spread throughout a space, then a Bose Soundbar is your best bet. Keep in mind that soundbars are by no means meant to replace a true 5.1 or 7.1 surround system with 5+ speakers, but what you get for the price and the size with these is impressive. You’ll note that the lower end of bass frequencies suffer in these models, which is par for the course in soundbars generally, but we won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Bose does sell separate “bass modules” (subwoofer), but at that point, you’re getting into a multi-speaker setup at a completely different price point.

How did we choose the best Bose Soundbar?

Bose releases a new soundbar for the lineup every few years and recommending the best one came down to a few things. We wanted to make sure we were recommending a soundbar that has been tried and tested across various use cases and in different environments. That’s important considering soundbars are often used for both music listening and watching TV and movies. The Bose 900 series had been tested by the team here at Pocket-Lint which gives us lots of confidence in making our recommendation. Bose has also made some of their older models redundant with newer releases, so we left those out of this review. In the end we consider the best balance of price, features, and availability for consumers wanting to buy a new soundbar. At the end of the day Bose is one of the leaders in speakers and home audio equipment and their soundbars are no exception. While you can’t really go wrong with a Bose speaker in most situations, these soundbars are definitely the cream of the crop.