Soundbars are a wonderful way to improve on the deficiencies of the TV speaker without putting obnoxiously large speakers all over in the living room. In addition, their ability to pair with subs and rear speakers wirelessly is a dream. The beautifully designed Bose soundbar 900 makes it not only bearable but aesthetically pleasing to have it sit next to your TV.
My Use Case
I have been working on building a traditional home theater system in the basement for years. My desktop monitor is serving as a TV. After realizing that my basement is full of kids toys and I might have to continue with the current arrangement for many more year, I started looking at the soundbar options for my living room. I needed it took good, sound good and have minimum wires as possible. I understood that a soundbar system cannot compete with a traditional dedicated channeled home theater system. Finally, I wanted it to be easy to operate as anyone using the TV will be interacting with it.
TGF Review Summary
Description
Beautiful looking soundbar with a great sound. Annoying HDMI / CEC connectivity can be a show-stopper.Positives
- Beautiful design
- Good sound
- Airplay 2 support
- Easy integration with Bose accessories
Negatives
- HDMI/CEC issues
- No network file access
Early October 2023, I purchased the Bose soundbar 900 because of previous positive experience with the older Bose lifestyle system. Furthermore, since I expected the sound to be thinner than a traditional home theater system, I wanted to buy a flagship soundbar. It was also selling at a good discount because newer Bose Ultra soundbar was newly launched at that time. The potential of adding a wireless sub and wireless surround speakers was perfect to complete the home theater system in my living room, while keeping my spouse happy.
About Bose 900 Soundbar
The soundbar design is beautiful with a glass top and metal grille. The corners are rounded. The backside has the ports for HDMI, ethernet cable, power cable, and optical input. I was surprised to see the soundbar was pretty long at least for my entertainment system. Luckily, no part of the soundbar was hanging out. There are two buttons on the top left that are hardly visible. One is to mute the mic and another is to activate voice assistant. There is also a LED indicator that flickers and glows in white or red color to indicate the status of the soundbar. The soundbar comes with a minimalist remote. I was surprised by how little features the remote has considering the previous Bose Lifestyle home theaters and most A/V receivers have huge remotes. Do not throw away your other remotes, this little guy might not be able to able to operate all the other connected devices.
Setting up the system was fairly easy. I used the Bose Music app on iPhone to complete the setup. Adding the Bose 700 bass module to the home theater setup with the Bose Music app was a breeze. I strongly recommend running the ADAPTiQ especially after pairing with a bass module or surround speakers. I feel that ADAPTiQ calibrates the system to function as a coherent system rather that disparate sounds coming from different speakers.
| Date of release | September 2021 |
| Dimensions | 2.29" H x 41.14 W x 4.21" D |
| Weight | 12.68 lb |
| Available Colors | Black and White |
| What's in the box? | Soundbar 900, Remote control with batteries, ADAPTiQ headset, HDMI, Power cord, optical cable |
Over all, I found that the Bose Music app to be good and covers most of the functions such as turning TV on, pairing bluetooth devices, running ADAPTiQ calibration and playing music using Airplay 2. When I could not find my Bose remote, I was able to accomplish most of the task using the Bose Music app.
My initial sound test with Terminator 2 was little underwhelming. As a caveat, I was watching the movie at night without blasting the volume to prevent my kids from waking up. The main thing I felt missing was the rumble of a dedicated subwoofer. My retest with the Bose 700 bass module was way better and made the home theater system sound more complete. That said for listening to music on the Bose 900 soundbar has always been enjoyable both with or without the bass module.
My setup of the soundbar is on an older Samsung TV from 2012. The TV only has an ARC HDMI not an eARC connection. eARC HDMI is required for Dolby Atmos output. Talking about the HDMI connection cannot be complete with mentioning the HDMI CEC issues. The HDMI connect is supposed to wake up the TV, this way you can use the Bose remote to turn on both speaker and TV. However, this feature is very glitchy and hasn’t been resolved with any software updates. Sometime, the TV will turn on with loud volume coming from the soundbar, while the other time there won’t be any audio. Bose has multiple setting to resolve these issues, unfortunately, none of the options have solved these issues for good. At this time, I have disconnected the HDMI connection from the TV to soundbar for everyday TV use to keep my wife happy. I connect the TV to the soundbar before a movie. I highly recommend potential buyers to be aware of this issue and test it out during the return period, if these issues surface with their TV and if it does whether any of the workarounds work for you. Another minor feature that I miss is the ability to stream music on my network. However, it can be worked by having the tablet or laptop access the music on the network and play over Airplay or bluetooth.
On a positive note, I want to give a shout out to the Bose chat support. When I reached out to them that my Open Box Excellent condition Bose 900 from Best Buy arrived without a HDMI cable, they immediately shipped me one free without even any shipping fee.
Competitors
The Sonos Arc one of the main competitor of Bose soundbar 900. In a way when I did my research, it seemed like Bose is playing catch up in this segment. The other systems I was considering were the new Bose Ultra, Yamaha True X Bar 40A, and Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus.
The Bose Ultra seemed like an incremental update to Bose 900. That too the update seemed mostly on the firmware and not the hardware. With sound systems you almost want a hardware update to make it seem like an true upgrade. Most of us would keep a music system for a decade, if not more. Hence, an upgraded hardware in new systems, provide a compelling reason to purchase a newer model. In all, I felt the price differential was not justified considering the discounts available on the Bose soundbar 900.
Yamaha True X Bar 40A seemed like a great soundbar at a lower price point. Unfortunately, I couldn’t demo it and very limited information was available online as it was newly launched when I was planning to buy the soundbar.
Comparing the Bose soundbar 900 against Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus might not be fair considering the AMBEO plus was selling at more than double the price of Bose 900. The Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Mini might be a fair competitor. While I strongly considered Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Plus, I felt that I could use the extra money saved to complete the home theater system by adding Bose 700 base module and surround speakers, while still buying a flagship model.
Is it worth buying?
Considering the discounted price point and the sound quality, I would say it is worth it even in 2024. That said if you want to setup the system once and expect everything to work perfectly, this might not be the product for you. If you are still feeling adventurous after knowing about the quirks, it might be worth buying it with the intension of testing it out during the return period. I hope that Bose does listen to its consumers and resolve these issues through an firmware update or at least in the future versions of the soundbar.