We’ve come across a handful of Bose products in the past ranging from headphones, both large home speakers and compact ones, and even their car speakers. Although this time, we’re faced with their home theater surround speakers which is their latest set of high end speakers. If you’ve been reading our reviews from this manufacturer then you’d be as excited as we are to try these out. Here is our Bose Lifestyle 535 Series III review.
Design and Construction
The package consists of the main control console, 4 satellite speakers, one center speaker, and the Acoustimass subwoofer module. There is also the AdaptIQ that helps setting up the home theater, but we’ll get to that later on.
Except for the subwoofer, we’re really impressed with how small and compact the speakers are. Its black hue makes it easily blend in any setup in the living room and since they don’t take up much space, could be easily placed almost anywhere.
Gaming setup with Lifestyle 535 installed.
This was the setup that we did. It was installed in a fairly small room with the subwoofer on the floor, right side of the television, while the satellite speakers were distributed around the couch.
Center speaker
Acoustimass bass
The central console has a flap-door protection that reveals one out of three HDMI ports and a USB slot in addition to the physical navigation buttons .
A total of three HDMI ports, a USB, and 2 HD component A/V inputs are what you’ll find on the center console, both front and back.
Setup
Setup was easy thanks to its software that will guide you step-by-step into putting your home theater together. It shows you which of the color-coded cables to put into the ports and will tell you when you plugged a cable into the wrong port. The kind folks from Bose installed the whole thing in my room and took around 20 mins to finish.
Bose AdaptIQ
As mentioned earlier, the package has an included AdaptIQ that is essential in the setup process. It’s basically a headband with microphones built on it.
The process makes you wear it and will ask you to move to five different locations around the room where you would usually stay. The speakers would then play a sound which will be picked up by the microphones to measure the distance and calibrate them to make sure you get the same sound quality in different areas of the room.
After this, everything was good and ready to go. We’ve got both our PS4 and Xbox connected to the main console (since a total of 6 HD video and audio sources could be plugged in) and right off the bat, we could choose which gaming box we wanted to use — a pretty sweet feature since it eliminates the hassle of switching between remote controls.
Sound Quality
Now let’s get to the most important part — how well did these top-of-the-line home theater speakers fare in terms of sound quality? We first turned on the PS4 and played Far Cry 4. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s set in the mountains of Himalayas so you find yourself surrounded by trees, animals, and since it’s an action game, there are big guns and explosions.
With your character being in the middle of the forest almost puts you in the middle of it as well. Sound was realistic as if almost real, with the chirping of birds and howling of wolves.
Once things get ugly and you start hearing bullets flying around from a distance you can go to it by simply listening to the gunshots. The precision of its surround sound makes it easy to pinpoint the direction where the sound is coming from since the sound effectively goes around as your character also turns.
As we’ve expected, sound quality was top notch but that’s not something new. It’s because of its Acoustimass bass speaker that got us swept away. It delivered low, solid blows of pure power when we started firing the heavy machine gun. It was a treat for the ears.
Mids are also well-put together and were delivered with gusto. As for the highs, We watched an action movie that had a scene with a lot of glass shattering, and people outside wondered if there were actual glass breaking inside the house. It was that natural-sounding.
It also has an impressively wide range of sound frequency that made us hear the distinction of different levels even when sounding as a whole.
You’ve seen that the room it was set up in was fairly small, but we’re confident that it could fill up a large room with ease due to its powerful drivers. We’re also glad to report that clippings or distortion were non-existent while watching Blu-Ray movies even when we turned the volume way up. It only gets overwhelming when it comes to action-heavy scenes due to the authoritative kick of the speakers — most especially the woofer.
Surround and satellites
There are some speakers that come close to the sound reproduction of the Lifestyle 535 but I personally haven’t seen one that came in these compact sizes. With the clarity and power of the sound you wouldn’t guess that it came from such minuscule speakers.
Conclusion
This flagship speaker from Bose deserves to be the headliner in its home theater series. The speakers are easy to squeeze and blends effortlessly into any living room, sound quality is life-like, you have a subwoofer that pumps out chest-shaking lows, it easily fills a large living room, and finally don’t forget about its easy setup.
What does it ask for in return? Php1K short of Php200,000.
The Lifestyle 535 indeed is steeply-priced but we’re convinced that its performance makes it well-justified. It is also a good investment if you love watching movies/playing games and require nothing short of amazing when it comes to sound quality. Would I get it if I had that kind of money? Most probably.
Bose Lifestyle 535 Series III specs:
Type: Home theater speakers
Channels: 5.1
1x horizontal center channel speaker
4x Direct/Reflecting Series II speakers
1x Acoustimass module
1x central console
3x HDMI ports
1x USB port
2x high-def component A/V inputs
Price: Php199,000
What we liked about it:
- Compact satellites
- Superb sound reproduction
- Excellent for movies and next-gen consoles
What we didn’t like:
- Doesn’t accommodate external hard drives via its USB port
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