Customer Ratings & Reviews

I bought this sound bar at my local Best Buy yesterday. Why? We like the British shows on TV, but they are increasingly hard to understand. This is our sixth Bose purchase, and our first unsatisfactory one. The optical guide from our Sharp TV to the sound bar failed - we blame Sharp. The coax connection from Sharp to the sound bar failed - we blame the poor Bose connection. We finally succeeded by bringing audio from the cable box to the sound bar. The remote was successfully capable of programming our Sharp TV, the sound bar, and the Verizon cable box. It failed on the LG Blue Disc player. Worst of all, the Solo 5 cannot be registered on the Bose website. Sad. Is it better than our Sharp speakers? I want to say yes, but I just can't justify it.

Good size for the sound effects. Need to adjust volume every time. Overall a very good product.

great sound bar . Awesome sound experience . It gave theatrical experience to my living room

I bought this sound bar to use in my bedroom instead of TV speakers. Love it.

Installed this unit in a finished basement. Sound is excellent!

I have the volume maxed out and it is not much louder then my TV which was not loud enough. So the for the reason I purchased it its not much of a benefit. I do bluetooth it to my iphone and it does provide slightly better audio that way.

Ok. So I had a Vizio sound bar for about 5 years. Just the other day it decided to drop out. So I went to Best Buy to see what they had. First the display had been acting up and all the sound bars on display weren't working. So was sure what I was going to do. After I see only ONE sound bar was working within the budget. The Bose solo 5. Pros It's a Bose It wasn't insanely priced It's loud It's got some good bass Comes with optical cord Bluetooth Cons No exterior buttons Have to use the remote to turn volume up down and on/off so now I have yet another remote laying around. Every other sound bar( that I couldn't preview sound on) had external buttons. What make Bose so special they don't include them.

This sound bar was marginally different from my Samsung TV's speakers but not what you think of as "better." I've heard Bose speakers in many setups and this was not nearly the high quality I'd expect from a Bose product.

I listened to the store demo at my local Best Buy for about a year before I pulled the trigger on this for Christmas 2018. I liked what I heard in the store and I was prepared to have less bass and a more balanced sound with lots of clarity. I did everything right including of course the optical cable hook up. It just sounded HORRIBLE.... worse than my internal TV speakers. Flat.. zero depth...zero stereo separation.... nothing like what I heard at the store. It sounded like two little cheap crappy speakers in an oversized sound bar. I am 60 years old and a musician since the age of 5 so I know a little bit about his stuff. For you Techies who want to find the weak link in my chain of gear that would explain this horrible phenomenon, I have a 100Mbs cable Internet connection with a pretty expensive 2 channel Linksis Wifi Router so the TV is alone on the 5Ghz channel. Amazon Fire TV Box into fairly new Sony Bravia. Optical out to Bose Solo 5. My old Altec Lansing 2.1 system from the 90's plugged into the digital audio out on the Sony Bravia sounds light years beyond the Bose Solo 5 in the Optical Output. I don't get it.... except... when I went back to Best Buy to check THEIR connections, the Bose Solo 5 was not hooked up to the optical output on the TV. Instead, the Optical Input on the Bose went into some location hidden within the display. It did NOT go to the optical out on the TV - so that tells you something. I so wanted this thing to do what it does while both my kids and their spouses/girlfriends came home for the Holidays... but it was universally agreed upon that it is just a horrible piece of electronic equipment.

HAVE HAD THIS FOR ABOUT A WEEK AND HAVE HAD NOTHING BUT TROUBLE TRYING TO PROGRAM REMOTE THE TV AND CABLE BOX. SOMETIMES HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET PROGRAMED BUT MOSTLY NOT. HATE THE REMOTE. CANNOT BELIEVE BOSE MAKES SUCH A USER UNFRIENDLY REMOTE. VERY UNCOMFORTABLE TO HANDLE. CAN'T BELIEVE REMOTE IS NOT BACK LIGHTED. WOULD RETURN BUT MARKED UP REMOTE WITH NAIL POLISH SO COULD SEE BUTTONS IN DARK. FINALLY--ONLY USE BOSE REMOTE TO TURN ON AND OFF. BACK TO USING REMOTE THAT CAME WITH CABLE BOX. HAS BASICALLY BEEN MORE TROUBLE THAT IT'S WORTH.

This is the worst product from Bose I have ever bought. I have bought multiple products from Bose over the past several years. I just bought it today and was expecting to just plug it in connect the optical audio to my vizio tv, make sure the remote had batteries in it, turn the sound bar on and expect it to work. The sound bar does not turn on. There is no power light to indicate if it even has power coming in to it. I have double checked the optical connection and the power connection. This is a big disappointment. The troubleshooting tips in the manual just say to check that the cables are connected correctly and they are. I don't have time to mess with this. I expected it to work out of the box. I have a lot of work to do today and this is a weekend day when their customer support is not open. I didn't want to be spending hours on line trying to figure out how to turn it on. Also I was not expecting the remote to want to be a huge one in all remote, I would have been very happy with a small remote that just turned the sound bar on and maybe had a volume control on it. Glad I bought this in the store because it is easier to bring back, I am just short of time and I don't like the hassle.

I don't think this soundbar is worth the money, I have had it roughly 2 months and it seems to have already gone fuzzy when a regular tv show has some bass. I have adjusted the Bass all the way down, but it still seems to make the fuzz/rattle sound. I would expect this from a Vizio brand, but not from Bose. I actually heard a samsung that sounded much better than this one at a friends.

I had these speakers for 1.5 years and they just died on me. Out of warranty and would have costed $100 to be fixed (only $200 new). They worked fine while they lasted but not the quality I expected from Bose. I would not recommend these speakers.

Good for tv watching. Clear voices. For music buy a better model.

Poor customer service! wanted product to work and took several phone calls for them to realize it doesn't work on sharp aquos t.v. After all I put up with trying to get this to work would not recommend this product!!!!!

Not compatible with Sony Bravia bought at Best Buy. Neither Sony, Bose or BB could assist with setup. Only returnable for product as only 15 days to return. Don't buy at Christmas as you might exceed return policy.

There great tell about year 3 when it starts to not turn on, you unplug and it comes back then one day that does not work anymore, now just will not turn on. and after the warranty runs out. did research its a common thing, so buyer beware.

I bought this as a gift for my mother. She was so excited when she saw the “Bose” name. Her bedroom TV has weak sound and even on MAX, she cannot hear the dialog sometimes. When I used the Bluetooth connection to play music from my phone, the sound was pretty good. Once I connected it to the TV with the included optical cable, the sound was terrible. It was no better than the TV speaker output, completely defeating the purpose of buying it. I couldn’t believe the volume didn’t go higher. My mom was so excited when she opened her gift, it really upset me that the gift was ultimately useless. She told me if the volume didn’t go higher, get my money back. That’s what I did. Disappointed!

I specifically bought this because of the comments on how it made speech clearer. Was looking forward to using the dialogue button to help me understand what people were saying. In all fairness to the product I will state that I wear hearing aids in both ears. Sometimes speech, usually from a movie or TV drama is so mumbled that I cannot understand what is being said. Installation was a snap but after it was installed I noticed absolutely no difference between the sound from the TV speakers or from the sound bar..Dialogue button on or off made no difference either A total waste of money at least for my ears. I returned the product.

Huge universal remote that is not universal. I have a new Samsung TV and Time Warner cable box. It took forever to get them programmed and still not working right. The remote will not turn the TV and cable box on and off, no matter how many times I follow the directions. So now I am stuck with two large remotes. I guess universal doesn't really mean universal. Very disappointed.