Bose Lifestyle 600 review

Top critical review

3.0 out of 5 starsMany aspects are "meh", but when it comes down to the audio experience, it's amazing!

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017

Sound quality is fantastic.

Setup was pretty easy packaging well done, however I had issue with one of the omnijewel speakers not working. I swapped the speaker onto a different base station to isolate the issue to the speaker vs the base or something else and the issue remained with the speaker. I called technical support for assistance and that experience was horrible. It was outsourced offshore for what it's worth. The first person did not have training on the product and had to transfer me to a special team. That person could not grasp the issue at all. She had me doing worthless generic trouble shooting steps such as unplugging the system, checking my HDMI connections, checking my satellite box, etc. She kept saying I needed to do a better job explaining the issue or she wouldn't be able to help. The issue couldn't be any clearer: There are 4 omnijewel speakers included, one of them doesn't produce audio. How is that complicated? She clearly did not know anything about the product. Finally she said that I could send the entire system in for warranty service. I kindly informed her that was not an option. If I was going to go through the trouble of packaging everything back up it would be a permanent return. We went in circles a bit on this and I asked to speak to a supervisor on the matter. She refused initially and pretty much said "this is how it is". I had to raise my voice to eventually get a supervisor on the line. The supervisor was more polite and understood the issue the first time I explained it. He did also suggest the return of the entire product, which again I informed would be a permanent return if that was their solution to fixing a single speaker. It does not benefit either us to ship the entire system back. Why would they pay all that shipping after all? After some discussion, I convinced him to pursue the option of returning the single speaker. While he had me on hold to research, I tried moving the speaker in question to a third base and miraculously all 4 speakers started to work. I'm a little weary of this being a permanent fix, since it did not work in the first two positions (being very certain the base connections were solid in those tests), however I have not had issues since and it has been a few weeks. In my opinion, this level of customer service is pathetic for such a high end product.

The sound experience is pretty amazing. As good, if not better than a trip to the cinema (I managed a small theatre circuit for 10 years). I gave it a whirl with the movie "The Magnificent 7" and was blown away. I was legitimately concerned that the neighbors would worry about the sound of the gunshots and the volume wasn't more than half way up.

The controls are pretty sub par for what I would expect for a premium system. For music apps, from what I can tell so far everything has to be controlled through the app on your phone or tablet. I don't see any way for onscreen controls on the main receiver. I can skip to the next song on the remote, but short of that I see no way to launch music apps or anything on the system without the use of a phone/tablet.

It would be nice to be able to listen to music while using a different source. For example, I play a lot of Madden on the PS4 and like to jam out to music at the same time. This is not possible. I can understand most people probably wouldn't require such a feature, but seems like something that should be doable with today's technology. I have to listen to my music on a different system when playing on the PS4. On this same note, it would be nice to be able to throw music from my PC over WiFi. This doesn't seem possible unless over bluetooth, which I haven't tried since the PC is in a different room.

Not many options to tweak the sound (base/treble, individual speakers, etc). I fiddled with it once and was very disappointed with the flexibility there, however I have not even considered having to meddle with it further as the sound quality has blown me away.

Not sure what's up with the complaints that it's not truly a wireless system since the rear speakers and subwoofer require external power. The only alternative would be battery powered, so good luck with replacing the batteries constantly if you truly need a wireless solution.

Hard to decide on a rating for this because of all the disappointments between customer service and usability. While those are very lacking, it definitely outperforms acoustically. Even with the disappointments, I do not have any regrets with my investment so far.

Customer service - 1 star
Usability - 2 stars
Functionality - 2 stars
Audio Quality - 5 stars

Overall I think 3 stars is fair.

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