Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Bose Smart Soundbar 600 one-ups the Sonos Beam with up-firing drivers

Simon Cohen
By

Bose’s latest soundbar, the $499 Smart Soundbar 600 is the company’s latest volley in the cat-and-mouse game it plays with Sonos. In 2021, Sonos updated its compact Beam soundbar with Dolby Atmos capability, giving it a feature that Bose’s similarly priced and featured Smart Soundbar 300 didn’t possess. The Smart Soundbar 600 addresses that gap and even moves the needle just a bit further by integrating up-firing drivers, something the Beam lacks. It will be available October 20, but you can pre-order it starting October 10.

Bose Smart Soundbar 600.
Bose

For those who may not be steeped in Dolby Atmos minutiae, the 3D immersive sound format takes advantage of height as well as left/right/center and rear surround speakers. But not all Dolby Atmos soundbars possess dedicated, up-firing drivers to bounce those height sounds off your ceiling to your viewing position. The second-gen Sonos Beam is one of these soundbars, and it uses virtualization to create that sense of height instead.

Recommended Videos

Virtualization can be very effective, but it’s rarely as good as dedicated drivers, so we expect the Bose Smart Soundbar 600 to have an edge in this area. It’s also got a set of side-firing, racetrack-shaped drivers which can spread the sound out to the sides, and a dedicated center driver for dialog.

Bose Smart Soundbar 600.
Bose

I was treated to a demo of the Soundbar 600 at the September 2022 launch event for the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II, and if that was any indication of its audio prowess, it’s looking like Bose has another excellent speaker for buyers to choose.

Related

When you’re not listening to Dolby Atmos content, Bose says that its TrueSpace tech will intelligently upscale stereo or 5.1-channel content into an immersive mix, giving you an Atmos-like experience for all of your movies and shows.

Like its previous smart soundbars (300, 500, 700, and 900) the Bose Smart Soundbar 600 can be expanded with Bose’s collection of subwoofers and surround speakers, and you can make it an element in a multiroom speaker system, with the Bose Music app acting as your mission control.

Bose Smart Soundbar 600.
Bose

The soundbar is equipped with Bluetooth, and Apple AirPlay 2. It has Chromecast built-in, and you can use it as an Amazon Alexa smart speaker thanks to the built-in mics. If you opt for Alexa smarts, you’ll also be able to use Bose’s Voice4Video feature which lets you control a connected TV with a few simple voice commands.

Speaking of TV connections, the one downside to the Smart Soundbar 600 (the same downside as all Bose and Sonos smart soundbars) is that it only has a single HDMI ARC/eARC connection, so you can’t connect an external video source like a streaming media device and passthrough video to your TV while the soundbar handles the audio.

Bose Smart Soundbar 600.
Bose

Like the Sonos Beam Gen 2, the Smart Soundbar 600 is quite compact, at just 27 inches wide and only 2.2 inches tall. That makes it the perfect size for a lot of small-to-medium-sized rooms on its own, or larger spaces if you add the additional components.

We’ll get our hands (and ears) on the Smart Soundbar 600 very soon, and when we do, we’ll be back with our in-depth review so you can see if this is the Bose speaker you’ve been waiting for.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
Nakamichi increases the price of its Dragon 11.4.6 soundbar
Nakamichi Dragon Surround System Review

Nakamichi says that it can no longer afford to sell its wild, 11.4.6-channel Dragon soundbar system for its original price of $3,500. Once the original pre-order inventory of 1,000 units has been spoken for, the company will up the price of the Dragon to $3,900.

Preorders on the first batch of 1,000 Dragons haven't started yet. They begin on August 3 at 9 a.m. PT.  It's possible that Nakamichi is using the threat of a price increase as a stick to ensure that its first 1,000 units see rapid sales, however, the company claims it has to charge more in order to offset unexpected costs associated with both the production of the Dragon as well as complexities involved in the shipment of these systems to customers.

Read more
How we test soundbars
Showing the depth of the Samsung Q990B soundbar next to a Samsung S95B OLED TV

If you’re in search of better audio from your TV, a soundbar is the fastest, easiest -- and yes, sometimes the cheapest -- solution. But given that there are hundreds of models from dozens of manufacturers, with features and prices that run from basic to bombastic, how on earth are you supposed to pick just one?

That’s where our soundbar reviews come in. We don’t just test them; we think about who they’re for. Tons of EQ settings might be just what the enthusiast wants. But for someone who just wants to finally hear dialogue clearly, it could be overkill. Same thing goes for extra surround speakers and multiple inputs and outputs. And then there’s always the price question: How does it compare to other models that cost about the same?

Read more
Samsung adds HW-Q900C to its lineup of 2023 Dolby Atmos soundbars
Samsung 2023 Soundbars.

Samsung has been pretty quiet about its 2023 lineup of Dolby Atmos soundbars since it announced the new collection back at CES 2023, but we finally have all of the models, prices, and features. As we already knew, the latest flagship is the HW-Q990C, a monster 22-driver, 11.1.4-channel system that carries forward the legacy of the HW-Q990B from 2022 -- a soundbar that deeply impressed our reviewer. However, it's now joined by the HW-Q900C -- a more affordable version for folks who don't need the 990C's surround speakers, but who nonetheless may want to add them at a later date.

Also new to the collection are two C-Series models that bring the price of better TV sound down to $200 or less. Here's the full lineup.
Samsung Q-Series Dolby Atmos soundbars
In addition to Dolby Atmos compatibility, Samsung's Q-Series soundbars feature Q-Symphony, a feature that lets a compatible Samsung TV enhance the soundbar's own performance through the use of the TV's built-in speakers. Version 3.0 of Q-Symphony also uses the TV’s sound algorithms to analyze each scene to match the TV and soundbar outputs.

Read more