Bose TV Speaker (2nd Gen) Review

Design

Bose has changed the design of their TV Speaker slightly for the second generation: it now has rounded corners. It still has the slim, low profile and fits comfortably underneath most TVs.

There are two LEDs on the front: the left LED is for the status of your TV’s audio (white for regular sound, green for voice enhancement) and the right LED is for the Bluetooth feature. The LEDs are completely off when the speaker is off, so no bright light shines in the bedroom at night.

On the back is a port for the power cord, an HDMI input for ARC (an audio option on newer TVs), an optical audio input, and a standard 3.5mm audio input jack if that’s all your TV has. The Bose TV Speaker only comes with an HDMI cable, so an optical or 3.5mm cable would need to be purchased separately.

Performance

I’ve had a long journey with soundbars for my TVs over the years. I initially started with a full setup: a Sony 5.1 wireless surround speaker system. I absolutely hated it. Aside from the fact that speakers constantly cut out because of Wi-Fi interference, I didn’t like that the rear speakers, which sat closest to me behind the couch, played the music and background soundtracks and overpowered the dialog coming from the center speaker.

Next, I thought I would go for a simpler, wired Samsung soundbar with a subwoofer. Even with bass on the lowest setting, music and explosions would be way too loud, so I would have to lower the volume, but then I couldn’t hear the dialog and would have to turn it back up. It even had a feature to decrease the dynamic range of sound, but that made the situation worse: sure, it would lower the volume of explosions, but then it would make the dialog even lower and would take a minute or two to “recover” back to normal volume levels. By the way, you’re probably wondering about my own hearing and, yes, I have tested my hearing and it is fine.

Then I discovered the Bose TV Speaker (1st generation), and I finally have beautiful, balanced sound. Who would have thought that I would have better overall sound from 1 simple speaker (with no subwoofer) as opposed to a 5-speaker system? The dialog enhancement feature on the Bose TV Speaker is just icing on the cake: it brings out the dialog even more over the already great sound. No more rewinding or constantly adjusting the volume to understand the dialog.

Like the first generation, the voice enhancement feature works by boosting the common frequencies of human voice. This can also amplify some non-voice sounds, and if the show you’re watching has music, you may find that it favors higher frequencies of the music. Is it enough to make me rush to the remote to disable the feature every time a song comes on? No, and the feature might actually help you hear the lyrics better.

The speaker also has ample bass with the option of increasing and decreasing it based on your preference. Is it enough to rattle the windows and shake the house? Not quite, but I still find the bass to be powerful enough for most movies and shows even without adding an optional subwoofer.

The Bose TV Speaker seems to do a good job of balancing out the loud and soft parts of a program, and I typically find that I can just set the volume and not need to mess with it for the rest of the movie (what a concept, right?).

What’s different between the 1st and 2nd generation of the Bose TV Speaker?

The second generation of the Bose TV Speaker continues this excellent sound quality with maybe just a little improvement to the left and right sound separation and a little bit more clarity to the voice enhancement feature. Otherwise, aside from the rounder design, the 2nd generation is almost indistinguishable from the first. In fact, I didn’t have to change the IR codes in my Harmony remote for the new speaker.

Features

• Voice Enhancement: Probably my favorite feature! Just press the button on the remote, and the LED turns green to let you know it’s on. The speaker “remembers” the setting, and if you had it enabled when you powered off the speaker, it will be enabled when you turn it back on.

• Auto on and off: You can set the speaker to automatically come on when it detects audio. It will also turn itself off if it is silent for 20 minutes. If you’re using HDMI ARC, the TV can control the speaker directly. However, I found that this feature worked better on the 1st generation of the speaker; the sound doesn’t seem to reliably turn on the 2nd generation version of this speaker.

• Bluetooth: In addition to TV audio, you can also hit the Bluetooth button on the remote and then pair it to your phone for music playback. If you’re listening to a podcast, you can also enable the Voice Enhancement feature for Bluetooth mode as well. I was able to link it up to my iPhone quickly, and music sounds amazing on this speaker!