14 out of 15 people found this review helpful.
Against All Odds
Date of Review: Dec 17, 2004
The Bottom Line: Even though the sound is acceptable, nothing justifies the premium price for this system.
After using the basic Bose Wave Radio for over a year, I had become strongly irritated by the arrogance of Bose, which in my opinion are nothing more than a scam to rid people of their hard earned money. I do not own this system, but have used it extensively at my school. I find it outrageous that every single room in my school has one of this things, which cost over $1000 a piece! Mind you that money comes out of my tuition so in a way I've paid many times for this product.
I am graduate music student and as a part of many of my classes I have to often give presentations, which are based mostly on Classical music examples. As I already pointed out every room in my school is equiped with one of this systems, so they have become a part of my life.
In reality there is nothing particularly wrong with the sound the system produces, unlike it's smaller sibling the wave radio. It has a much wider stereo imaging, decent power for a smaller room, comes with a built in CD player, and is fairly compact. It could've been a decent bedroom system if it didn't cost 10 times what it's worth.
The truth is that there's nothing this system is capable of that could not be achieved with a decent $200 executive micro system, which in many cases will not only be much smaller, but will sound times better than the Bose. Not that the Bose system sounds terrible, but this is not a $1000 quality sound.
It will never stop to amaze me that at that price, for that quality, and features, there are still buyers for the Bose products. I am going beyond this music system here, because every product the company puts out has outrageous claims, even more ridiculous price, and performance that is unacceptable for the class the company pretends to belong to. I think it's time for Bose to get back down to earth and present some more realistic claims for their products.
A few features on the system that are just amazingly wrong. The cd loading system is top loading manual - something that only the cheapest boom boxes use, and reminiscent of the old tape decks. The display is also located on top, which for my presentation purposes is incredibly inconvinient, because when I want to que to a specific track or time, I have to walk over to the system to be able to see the display readout. On top of that the display is not backlit and pretty hard to read depending on the viewing angle. Come on guys! for $1000 we should have at least gotten a large easy to read display. Next problem is the remote - like the smaller radio it is a credit sized remote with flat surface buttons, impossible to be used by touch in the dark. I understand that compact style was the leading concept here, but remote controls are supposed to bring convinience to electronics. And while on the subject of buttons, it's probably worth mentioning that the ones on the unit itself are pretty larger, but rubbury with uneven feel when pushed. The sink in and give the feeling that they might not come back out. The whole feel of the system is of a cheap plastic prototype model of the 70s.
The design has a lot to do with this overall feeling. I am sure that there are quite a few people out there who would really love that old time look, but I personally would never display this system in my home. Especially the ivory colored one, which looks like the case of one of the first computers to hit the market. The charcoal system looks a little more modern, but still from up close, the plastic looks really cheap. Not to mention that plastic is not the best material for speaker acoustics.
I wish I had money to buy one of this and take it apart. I have a very strong suspicion that the loudely marketed Wave Technology is nothing more but a hollow space in the back of the plastic case that provides a passive ressonance for the sound. Sound is transfer through most materials, and it is pretty hard to guide it in a specific direction, so those claims seem pretty unrealistic to me. This is also audible because the source of the sound is clear with this system, it does NOT have the room filling capabilities the company promises. I don't know what they mean by large rooms, but a school classroom should definitely qualify, and in the ones I've used it in the sound is nothing to be amazed by. Again it is not bad, and certainly times better than the Bose Wave Radio, but not nearly as good as some similarly sized, but much cheaper executive mini-systems.
I am sure that as long as there are people out there who'd drive Buicks there will be buyers for Bose products as well. To me though, there are many a lot better choices out there, and Bose, a lot like Buick, is the last thing I would ever consider spending my money on.
