Bose Smart Soundbar Review: Old Bar, New AI Tricks

The new AI Dialogue Mode feature only ups the ante. Audio brands are getting increasingly good at analyzing and reinforcing centralized effects, and Bose’s latest attempt is the best I’ve heard yet at raising dialog while balancing other elements. Toggling the mode on and off shows just how hard it’s working, letting the center channel sing while surround elements bounce off the walls and around the room.

The Smart Soundbar’s surround and height effects can’t match the immersion of larger Dolby Atmos soundbars like Klipsch’s Core 200 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) or the pricier Sonos Arc (9/10, WIRED Recommends), but it may just be the pluckiest mini Atmos bar out there. Its balance of acoustics, digital processing, and true up-firing speakers helps it outmatch the similarly priced Sonos Beam for sheer expansiveness.

Occasionally the bar can get a bit overwhelmed in the mids or shrill in the upper register, but it’s rarely muddy or sharp. If you need to take things up a notch, you can always build on with additional components (for a price), including Bose’s wireless surround speakers, subwoofers, and of course, the Ultra Open Earbuds.

AR Bar

After over a decade in the A/V space, it’s not often I discover a wholly new audio experience, but Bose’s new Open Earbuds–based Personal Surround feature delivers. This isn’t the first time I’ve linked a soundbar with headphones—Sonos’ Ace headphones (8/10, WIRED Recommends) have a cool TV Swap feature that lets you send audio from the bar to the headphones and back again, and Bose has long offered a similar feature with headphones like the Ultra QuietComfort (9/10, WIRED Recommends).

Personal Surround is different, though, in part because of the Open Earbuds. As the name implies, they keep your ear canals open to blend the piped-in audio with your environment, letting the bar and buds work in tandem. Simply Grouping the Open Earbuds lets you hear everything, but toggling on Personal Surround means you’ll get most of your sound from the bar itself, while the earbuds focus on surround and height effects. (You may also need to fine-tune the surround mix by tapping the main volume bar for Open Earbuds Adjustments.)

The result is a sort of augmented reality (AR) experience that seems to drop you right in the middle of potent Dolby Atmos scenes. It works brilliantly with video games, where effects like explosions or magic spells seem to erupt all around you. Film content like the “Amaze” demo from my Atmos demo disc or the shrinking scenes in Ant-Man are similarly spellbinding, seeming to cast effects like strafing spaceships overhead or popping gunshots right beside you to the point where you may start looking around you to see if you’re still alone.