So for the last year and a half, the Bose Smart Soundbar 300 has been my favorite sandbar to use and recommend. And if you were to pair it up with an external bass module… the 300 should be able to satiate most people in a small or medium sized room. But if you have a larger room… then you’ll might want to upgrade to one of Bose’s other sound bars. So today we are going to break down Bose’s current smart soundbar line up, and see which one is right for you.
Now as of early 2022, Bose’s current smart soundbar line up consists of the 300, 700, and 900. Now there is a 500… but it looks like bose is currently phasing that soundbar out… cause you can’t buy a new one these days. Now there is also the Bose TV Speaker… but it is vey basic for my taste. Its speaker set up is not all the impressive, it does not have Airplay support, and it doesn't have app support.
Now when it comes to pricing, the 300 has a retail price of $450. $50 more than the last time we covered this sound bar. The 700 has a retail price of $800 and the 900 has a retail price of $900. Now like I mentioned earlier, the 300 should be able to easily fill a small or medium seized room with sound… but if you have a larger room than you’ll want to go with either the 700 or 900. Now even though the 700 and 900 look identical at first glance… they are very different from one another.
Now for simplicity sake, in this video we are going to only focus on the soundbar themselves. However with any of these soundbars you can add either one or two external bass modules… and or you can also add surround sound speakers. But in this video we are only going to focus on the soundbar themselves and point out their nuance differences. Nonetheless, if you want to pick any of these soundbars up, they’ll be linked down below.
Now first lets talk about the design of these soundbars. Now all of these soundbars share the same subtle design language. They are all fairly low profile, and they all have a metal grill on the front. They all also have a subtle indicator light on the front that only illuminates either when you are adjusting the volume, or interacting with your voice assistant. Really, the only design difference here is that both the 700 and 900 have glass tops to them, where as the 300 has a plastic top to it.
But personally I kind of prefer the plastic top on the 300… because it doesn’t cause a reflection like the glass tops found on these other soundbars… now I know this is a very minor issue, and I know Bose added these glass tops to make the 700 and 900 look more premium… but to me it can be distracting. Now depending on your set up or viewing angle… this could be a none issue… but I though I would point it out. Nonetheless all of these soundbars mostly disagree when watching content in a dark room. Which is good, because a soundbar is supposed to be heard, not seen.
Now when it comes to overall dimensions… all of these soundbars have a hight of 2 and quarter inches, and a thickness of 4 and quarter inches… what’s really only different here is the length. The 300 has the shortest length here coming in at 27 and a half inches… and you should have no problem placing this sound bar almost anywhere, the 700 has a length of 38 and a half inches so placing this soundbar might be a little harder… and the 900 is a little longer coming in at 41 inches. Now you can wall mount any of these soundbars if you wanted to… but their wall mounting kit is sold separately. So don’t go looking for it in the box.
But now lets talk about what does come included in the box. Now all of these soundbars come included with a 5 foot power cable. Now the good thing about these power cables is that they don’t have external power bricks. So you don have to worry about hidden them, and it makes wall mounting this soundbars a little easier. However, these power cables are pretty short… so they could be a little hard to weave through your home theater set up.
Next up is the HDMI cable… both the 700 and 900 come included with an HDMI cable in the box. And this is good… because you want to use an HDMI cable with these sound bars for 2 reasons. The main reason is, so that you can fully enjoy your content that will might be using an audio format that requires a higher bit rate than an optical port can provide. Think Dolby Atmos on the 900. But also, you are going to need an HDMI connection if you want to use the Voice4Video feature on these soundbars.
Where as the 300 only comes included with an optical cable. So you are going to have to get your own HDMI cable. Now you are still going to be able to enjoy your content if you use these soundbars with an optical cable… but with an optical cable you are not going to be able to enjoy your higher quality audio formats… But also from a usability standpoint… optical cables are not as flexible or durable as an HDMI cable. Which could be a factor when you are trying to wire these soundbars into your set up.
Now rule of thumb… you should always try to use an HDMI cable with your soundbar. The Optical cable is really only included just in case your TV does not have an HDMI port with ARC or EARC support. And I am just being blunt here… if you have a TV that doesn’t have ARC or EARC support… then you should upgrade your TV before buying one of these soundbars.
Now one port that both the 700 and 900 have that the 300 doesn’t is an Ethernet port. Now you don’t necessarily have to use the Ethernet port on any of these soundbars because they all have WIFI. However, if you do plan on constantly using your soundbar as a smart speaker, or if you plan constantly using Airplay with these soundbars… and if you plan on using these soundbars in an area of the house with spotty wifi… then its will might be worth it to you to use the ethernet port on either the 700 or 900. But again, I am just being blunt here… if you have spotty wifi around the house… then you should upgrade your wifi set up. Amount many things… it will also improve your streaming experience. Your content won’t buffer.
But if you don’t want to use wifi on these soundbars… you don’t have to. You can always connect to them using trusty old bluetooth and stream music to them that way. But personally I would recommend that you use wifi on these soundbars because it is more convenient.
Now like I mentioned earlier… all of these soundbars have voice assistant capabilities. And you can use either Alexa or google assistant on either of these soundbars. However, if you want to use Bose’s Voice4Video feature… then you have to use ALEXA.
Now Voice4Video is pretty robust… you can set the channel on your cable box, and you can switch between your different HDMI inputs. Voice4Video is very robust… but it is very slow. So personally I still prefer to use my remote. Voice4Video is only for those niche cases where you can’t find your remote. Or you are just too lazy to get up.
But now lets talk about what’s under the hood of these soundbars. The 300 has a single frontward firing tweeter, which is then flanked by a pair of frontward firing woofers, which those are then flanked by a pair of bass chambers, and at each end, there is another woofer which is angled out at a 45 degree angle. But then there’s the 700… just like the 300, it has a single frontward firing tweeter, which is then flanked by a total of 4 woofers… 2 on each side… and then we’ve got our bass chambers. Unfortunately there are no 45 degree woofers here. And finally there the 900… the 900 has the same set up as the 700… however, what make it special is that is has an additional upwards firing woofer on each end. Giving it DOLBY ATMOS support.
Now what Dolby Atmos is, is that its an audio format that allows creators to place individual sounds in a 3 dimensional space. And thanks to the upwards firing woofers on the 900… the 900 can bounce sounds off of the ceiling. Making it sound like there is stuff above you. So for example, lets say that there’s a helicopter on the screen… the 900 can make it sound like it is above you. Where as with the 300 and 700, it is going to sound like it is coming at you. Or it is going to sound like it is at the same level as you.
Now all content doesn't automatically have Dolby Atmos… the creator has to use Dolby Atmos… however the 900 will automatically upsample your content… and will automatically try to add that extra level of verticality in your audio. Now in general, the standout characteristic of the 900 is that is has much better instrument separation and it sounds much more spacious than both the 700 and 300. Making the 900 sound more realistic.
Where as the 700 really does sound identical to the 300… except it gets noticeably louder and it has a little more bass. However, the really curious thing about the 700… is that it sounds much brighter than both the 300 and 900. The highs are really exaggerated on this sound bar. So much in fact that I had to go in and lower the treble on this soundbar to make this sound test work.
Now in this soundtest, 700 is playing with its treble set to -20… where as these other two soundbars are playing with their stock EQ’s. Now both the 700 and 900 are playing at 70% volume where as the 300 is playing at 85% volume and the TV is playing at max volume.
So like you may have just heard… any soundbar is going to sound better than your TV’s built in speakers. Your TV most likely just has a pair of downward firing speakers that bounce sound off of the table, don’t get all that loud, and become a rattling mass at higher volumes. Where as that isnt an issue with any of these soundbars.
Now from a performance standpoint, the 300 is going to get loud enough to easily fill a small or medium sized room with sound. However if you have a larger room then you will want to go with either the 700 or 900 because they both get significantly louder than the 300. And they both have a little more bass as well. However, from a performance standpoint… the 700 and 900 get equally as loud and they have the same amount of bass. But I do have to point out that at higher volumes… the highs on the 700 do like to distort a little bit. Which is very weird because distortion is not an issue with either the 900 or 300.
However, like I mentioned earlier… the standout characteristic of the 900 is that it has much better instrument and sounds much more spacious than the 700 and 300. The 700 really just sounds like a louder version of the 300… where as the 900 sounds completely different from these other two soundbars.
So overall, the 300 is going to be just fine for a small or medium sized room… and if you were to pair it up with a bass module… it should be able to please most people. However if you have a larger room then you will want to upgrade to either the 700 or 900. But just to be blunt, I highly recommend that you skip the 700 and go straight to the 900. I truly feel that you are going to get a much better bang for your buck with the 900, because it is going to do a much better job of immersing you in your content than the 700 can… because it just sounds more realistic. The 900 has much better instrument separation and thanks to the upwards firing woofers… it is going to give your audio a much better senses of verticality.
However, something the 700 does have over these other two soundbars is that it comes included with a universal remote. And this is a very nice remote. You can use it to control your sound bar, you can connect it to your TV, your cable box if you still have one of those, or you can connect it to your blue ray player. And the button layout of this remote adapts to whatever it is connected to.
Now I think this remote is great and all and it puts these other two remotes to shame… but I still highly recommend that you go with the 900 over the 700 purely because of sound. And besides, personally I never really use these remotes… I always just use the app.
Now all of these soundbars connect to Bose’s app. And from here you can do a few things. You can adjust the volume, see what’s playing, skip though your music and you can change the source. You can also very easily go in an adjust the EQ on these sound bars. Now like I mentioned earlier… it is a must to lower the treble on the 700. I honestly do not know why it is so bright. Where as with the other two soundbars, you don’t have too. But with all of these sounders I do like to raise the center channel so that dialog is more pronounced… I also like to raise the bass on all of these soundbars, so that I can feel what’s happening on the screen… and with the 900, I also like to raise the hight channel so that the verticality affect is more pronounced.
However, one feature that is exclusive to the 700 and 900 is the adaptive EQ. Basically, you are going to get this thing and plug it into either the 700 or 900. You are then going to place it on your head, which is not big head approved by the way. And while these soundbars play a sound you are going to sit in different areas of the room. And this way these soundbars are going to calibrate themselves to better fit your room.
But finally lets talk about pairing these soundbar up to other speakers. Now if you have multiple bose smart soundbars or bose smart home speakers… you can pair them up together and get them all to play in sync. So you are going to be able to fill your whole house with music.
But also, thanks to Bose’s simple sync which is found on all of these soundbars… you can pair a Bluetooth device to any of these soundbars and also get them to play in sync. Now if you want to can pair a portable bluetooth speaker to your soundbar… or you can also pair a pair headphones… so this way you can watch your content late at night, and not have to worry about waking people up.
Now simple sync is supposed to be product agonistic… so it works with more than just bose products. However I have found that it works best with bose products… because not all brands will work with simple sync. Because for example, I just can not get my Sony 1000XM4’s to connect to any of these bose soundbars.
So with all of that being said, if you are looking into getting a soundbar… and you are considering getting something from bose… I think that it is a fairly easy decision here. You honestly can’t go wrong with the Bose Smart Soundbar 300. This little guy will have no problem filling a small or medium sized room with sound… and it has a good amount of bass all on its own. However, if you were to pair it with a bass module… it should be able to satiate most people.
But if you have a larger room then you will want to upgrade to something larger. Now since the 700 really is just a louder version of the 300 with a little more bass… I highly recommend that you skip it and spring with the 900. The 900 really does sound completely different from both the 700 and 300. The 900 has far better instrument separation… and thanks to the upwards firing woofer… its audio has a sense of vertically. So the 900 is going to do a much better job of immersing you in your content than the 700. I truly think that you are going to get a much better bang for your buck with the 900 than with the 700.