Unlike traditional soundbars, the Bose Solo is housed in in large flat box designed to sit underneath your TV rather than in front of it. See all digital home reviews.
The plain-looking design is about 7cm tall so won't push your TV much higher than it already is. However, at just over 52cm wide you could fit the Solo on a shelf underneath provided you have some spare space. Bose says you can fit up to a 42in TV on top of the Solo up to a weight of 18kg. See all audio reviews.
Like most soundbars the main connection is an optical input. Once plugged into your TV's output, the Solo will provide the sound for anything you use, from games consoles to Blu-Ray players. There are no HDMI inputs.
Read our: Sonos Playbar review.
Bose Solo: where are the inputs?
In fact, there aren't many other inputs at all. There's a coaxial digital input and stereo phono jacks. The USB and 3.5mm ports are for service use only. Cables are provided so you won't have to buy any, but the Solo is quite limiting as there's no easy way of connecting devices such as smartphones to play music because there's no Bluetooth.
Bose provides a credit card-sized remote control with the Solo but it's about as basic as you can get. It simply has buttons for power, volume and mute. The soundbar is compatible with universal remotes though.
Inside the Solo there are four drivers and two bass ports. We immediately found the sound quality to be better than our Philips test TV. However, there are a number of areas in which the Solo is a bit of a let-down.
The speaker setup of the Solo means the soundscape is dominated by the mid-range and bass. Bass is punchy and the mid-range is mostly rich but a lack of tweeters means the little top end gets drowned out by everything else.
This might not be so bad if you could adjust the levels with a simple equalizer but that's not possible. When listening to music, bass was often overpowering but there's no way of toning it down.
When watching terrestrial TV, the Bose Solo sounds good but vocals are a little hard. It's a little like having a decent centre speaker as part of a surround-sound system. By this we mean the sound seems to come from the same place – there's little stereo separation. The situation improved when we watched a Blu-ray movie but with no virtual surround feature the Solo isn't suited to film enthusiasts.
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Comments
Juan said: For buyers it is important not only to read editors reviews but also from real users In this way you know how objective is the reviewer
Ian Kirkpatrick said: My Solo is excellent for music - but on TV programmes the Base is quite loud when there is annoying background music Bose recommend tweaking my LG TV equalizer Listening to music through the TV from my PC at the moment - the sound is really spectacular I can switch between Solo and TV speakers at the touch of a button - so no problem Would highly recommend
Chris Martin said: Glad to hear that you like yours Out of interest why are you reading a review of a product you already own
Hitheringwaters said: Im listening to my Solo right now and theres no way the tweeters are being overpowered The tweeters are sweet and clean