Compatible with Dolby Atmos and packed with streaming features, the Bose SB900 soundbar aims to give your living room an audio overhaul.
While today’s 4K and 8K TVs offer a stunning picture, their super-slim design means they can be left wanting when it comes to sound quality. This is where it pays to upgrade to a sound system to help bring movie night to life.
Of course, not everyone has the budget or space for a true surround sound system with speakers spread across the room. The compromise is a soundbar that sits below the screen to deliver bigger, bolder sound.
The SB900 is Bose’s first Dolby Atmos-compatible soundbar, allowing you to get the most out of high-end soundtracks from Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs and select streaming services.
Along with the ability to throw sound around the room to create a wide soundstage, it also includes upward-firing speakers to help recreate Atmos’ sense of height and deliver a more immersive sound.
Review: Bose SB900 Soundbar
Australian website here Price $1399.95 RRP Warranty 1 year Other You can read other GadgetGuy Bose news and reviews here
first impressions
The Bose SB900 sound bar has a surprisingly slim design for one that packs so many speakers. At only 5.81 cm tall, it can probably sit on the bench in front of the TV without blocking the view of the screen. Alternatively, you can mount the soundbar on the wall, below a wall-mounted display.
The clean design features a glass top that includes touch buttons so you don’t spoil the front look. The upward-facing speakers are also subtly inset so as not to draw attention, ensuring it won’t look out of place in your living room.
There’s a thin LED light bar below the buttons that indicates the soundbar’s status in a confusing array of colors and patterns. It does not act as an electric light, supposedly so as not to distract you from your movie. There are times when you may find yourself wishing for some sort of front-facing display, such as the volume level or selected audio source.
On the back, you’ll find indentations that place the inputs at a 45-degree angle instead of pointing straight back, making it easier to wall-mount or push into the base of the TV without protruding cables getting in the way. .
One disappointment is that there’s only a single HDMI port on the back, along with digital optics. This is fine for running audio from your TV to the soundbar via HDMI eARC cables, but some people may prefer a second HDMI port as a pass-through so they can run sources like disc players to the soundbar and then run the picture outside the soundbar on the TV.
There’s also an Ethernet port on the back, accompanying the built-in Wi-Fi, to support the soundbar’s wide range of streaming features that make it easy to send audio around your home.
Indentations on the back help with cable management.
configure
While the soundbar looks pretty fancy, the remote control is pretty basic and clunky. This is partly because many of the soundbar’s advanced features can only be accessed via the Bose Music smartphone app (iOS/Android), which is required to set up the soundbar before first use
The app can link to a number of streaming services, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn, Deezer and iHeartRadio.
Acknowledging its limited access to advanced features, the physical remote has six preset buttons that you can configure to play audio from your favorite music services without ever reaching for the phone.
Initial soundbar setup includes calibrating the speaker to the room using Bose’s ADAPTiQ technology. Different vendors approach this in different ways. Some units have built-in speakers for listening to room acoustics, while others have an external speaker that connects via cable and can be placed around the room. Some Sonos units require you to do a rain dance with your phone to capture room acoustics.
With the SB900, Bose supplies headphones that connect to the soundbar via a long cable. The setup then tells you to sit in different places in the room, with the headphones on, so it can hear what you’re hearing and adjust the audio characteristics to suit.
If you want to pump up the sound, Bose offers an optional subwoofer for $949 and optional surround back speakers for $529. Of course, once you’ve gone through all that, you might have been better off looking at a true surround sound system.
Within the app you can access a two-band EQ, along with center channel and treble channel control. There’s also a dialogue boost mode, which is useful at night, so you don’t have to use the volume constantly to hear dialogue without waking the household during noisy scenes.
The underwhelming physical remote leaves you over-relying on the smartphone app to access advanced features.
Bose SB900 Sound Bar Specifications
Channels 5.0.2Audio formats Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital PlusInputs HDMI eARC, opticalConnectivity Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Dimensions 5.81 cm H × 104.5 cm W × 10.7 cm DPes 5, 75 kg Colors White or black
Characteristics
When it comes to enjoying movies and TV shows, the Bose SB900 sound bar is designed to support Dolby Atmos sound, thanks to nine speakers precisely arranged in the cabinet.
It’s two tweeters, four transducers, a center tweeter and these two dipole transducers that fire up.
Bose’s PhaseGuide psychoacoustic technology helps bounce sound around the room to create a sense of surround sound, but naturally can’t fool you into thinking there’s a speaker behind you.
One of the strong points of Dolby Atmos is the sense of height, although it’s obviously not as impressive from a soundbar shooting upwards as it is from a true surround system with ceiling speakers. When you’re not listening to an Atmos soundtrack, Bose TrueSpace technology delivers stereo and 5.1-channel sound to recreate that sense of height. There’s no way to turn it off, which might frustrate purists.
The lack of support for DTS, downmixing to PCM 2.0, may also frustrate some people, depending on what’s in your video library. Many Blu-ray movies do not offer Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Instead, they include a 7.1 DTS-HD soundtrack that, in a non-DTS sound system, lets you hear enhanced 2-channel sound.
The soundbar also has a lot to offer music lovers, with support for Chromecast, Apple AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect for streaming from home devices including smartphones, tablets and computers.
There’s also two-way Bluetooth support, allowing you to connect your devices to play music or connect Bose Bluetooth headphones to listen to music or TV sound.
This internet access is also used compatible with Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. You can call them with their activation phrase or press the button on the top of the soundbar to get their attention, which seems awkward considering most home entertainment equipment has a button remote control activation. There’s also a mute button on the soundbar when you want your smart assistant to stop listening.
Bose Voice4Video technology extends Alexa’s voice capabilities. In addition to controlling the sound bar, it can also control your TV and connected devices.
Bose SB900 sound bar quality
Out of the box, the sound is a little underwhelming, but the ADAPTiQ calibration helps bring it to life with a fuller sound. The bass still feels a bit snubbed at the default settings, but you can increase that to your liking.
The Bose SB900 soundbar offers an impressively wide soundstage, but the sense of height is less pronounced than rival Atmos soundbars such as the Sonos Arc, Samsung HW-Q90R, and LG SL10YG. You can also adjust the height setting to make the effect more pronounced, which only makes a slight difference.
The soundbar does a great job with Dolby Atmos soundtracks, keeping everything in line with the moving car fight scene in Deadpool. When it comes to the height feel of the Atmos, the B-24 bombardment in Unbroken isn’t nearly as impressive as I’ve heard from other high-end Atmos soundbars.
The quality becomes a bit uneven when you’re listening to 5.1-channel audio and relying on BoseTrue to extrapolate it, such as the lobby fight scene in The Matrix. It can get a little cloudy in places. BoseTrue’s attempts to add a sense of height are most noticeable when it comes to high-end sounds like glass breaking and bullet shells hitting the floor.
When it comes to music, the SB900 can hold its own, but sounds a little bright if you favor the richer sound of its Sonos rival. It works admirably with nuanced music like acoustic guitar and jazz, but can get a little cloudy in the middle when the hard rockers take the stage.
GadgetGuy’s take
The Bose SB900 soundbar ticks a lot of boxes, especially if you’re already a Bose fan and have Bluetooth headphones that will connect to the soundbar. It looks great in your living room and is packed with streaming features to blast music from your various devices.
The soundbar does a good job with Atmos soundtracks, although that sense of height isn’t the best in the business when it comes to soundbars with up-firing speakers. Be sure to compare it to the Sonos Arc, especially if you’re taking full advantage of Sonos’ wider multi-room ecosystem.
Would you buy it?
Maybe, but only if I was sure the Sonos Arc wasn’t right for me
Bose SB900 Soundbar: Listen (Review)
Adding Dolby Atmos and a host of streaming features to your living room, the Bose SB900 soundbar is the complete package.
positive
Dolby Atmos
Chromecast/ AirPlay 2/ Spotify Connect
Two-way Bluetooth
negative
Height feeling not so…