Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
No highs. No lows. Must be Bose! Bose stands for "Buy Other Sound Equipment". Everything they make is cheap junk with a premium price attached. Wait until you have to order some proprietary replacement part from them- you'll be crying.

audioreview12785

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Visitors rate this review
2.50 of 5, 2.00 votes

Price Paid:  $3399.00 from Pinnacle Sound

Summary:
This review is for both the products and the store. The reason being is because two fold, one for the stores excellent customer service both before, during and after the sale and the products excellent design and specifications. Firstly the store, www.pinnaclesound.com is by far the best in ease of use and orderability. I found the product within seconds and could custom order my unit based on color, country of use and shipping methods. they accpeted american express directly and up to 7 other payment methods including www.escrow.com It is rare that a online company will use escrow.com as most online companies do not stock the items and drop ship everything. Pinnacle Sound doesnt drop ship and actually ships from there office in IL, USA. The shipping price is UPS actual cost and they shipped it the same day ordered. (which is REALLY RARE) I ordered the Lifestyle 48 system in Dual Voltage region free. The system arrived in 5 days with UPS and in perfect condition. this being my first transaction overseas is really optomistic. As for the system the Lifestyle 48 system has an enormous amount of specifications. It plays DVD, cd, mps burned to cd and also vids from burned videos off the internet. I have expanded this system to 3 rooms but can even go further by adding an additional 11 rooms. It comes in black, silver, and white and the wiring is more then you need for the average room configeration. the bass response is amazing and the cubes for trebel are directional and perfect both in sound and design. Its probably best to receive the unit and then map out the system to the rooms, as the cords are long need to be hid (in my opinion, behind the wall) The overall rating i want to give the Bose Lifestyle 48 systems is a 9/10. the reason i dont give it a 10/10 is due to the price, which is a little high but if you buy it from www.pinnaclesound.com you will save between $600 and $2100 off european prices..

Strengths:
Design, sound and expandability

Weaknesses:
price

Similar Products Used:
none

AV Guy

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Value Rating
 4 of 5

Used product for
1 to 3 months

Visitors rate this review
1.00 of 5, 1.00 votes

Price Paid:  $3999.00

Summary:
I had to write after reading all the posts on the Bose Lifestyle systems. While I have no experience with earlier Lifestyle systems, The Lifestyle 48 is a technology marvel. The sound quality is exceptional from the new jewel cube speakers and the Acoustimass module produces a very sold range of low tones. The mid and high ranges are equally good. I think the key to getting everything from this system is understanding the acoustics of the room. Speaker placement is vital. After running the AdaptIQ CD that came with the system, I moved my speakers to a slightly different location. This provided all the rich sound in the room I was looking for. I acutally replaced a Denon AVP 8000 Pro with 3 Sound Stream DA-1 power amps and 6 Amrita Audio custom speakers with the Bose system and all in all, I am very impressed with the performance of the Bose Lifestyle 48. The lights in the house no longer dim when I turn my stereo on and I have re-gained a ton of space in the room. Great sound and esthetics to boot, how can you go wrong. I'm very happy with the system and so is my wife and we all know that is also a major consideration. Also, the progressive scan DVD built into the Lifestyle 48 is awsome. Another interesting thing I noticed was; because of the reflective technology as opposted to direct sound that Bose uses, I get equally good sound when I am not in the room where the syste is. Another factor to consider is that the Bose system will support up to an additional 14 sound zones which, if you want to enjoy music on the deck while someone else is watching a movie in the family room, is a very nice feature. Even my Denon AVP 8000 couldn't do that and it was 2X the cost of the total Bose system. I would highly recommend a Bose Lifestyle 48 if you have the 4 grand to shell out for it.

Strengths:
Size, expandability, sound quality, digital jukebox

Weaknesses:
once you store all your CDs in the Lifestyle it tends to loose a little sound quality. This comes from the compression however, it is most reasonable given the functionality. It's not cheep.

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
check this out http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

Summary:
We decided to look at a purchasing a moderate home theatre system to go into our lounge. Consideration also had to be made as we didn't want huge speakers and need to use the room for other uses and not primarily a music/movie space.

My partner remarked how the Bose Lifestyles looked so small and pretty and compact and would be soooooo unobstrusive in our lounge. This is the SAF (Spouse approval factor)to take into account with these purchases.
Also someone had remarked to my partner previously that the Bose was a 'good' system, along with several other 'cool' comments.


We then borrowed a system from a friend for a couple of days and tried it out. It sounded OK but something didn't sound right. So after investigating how much $$$ was involved I deciding to see what other thought of the system. I let my fingers do the walking....I searched the Web and came across the excellent audioreview site.

Well...taking note of what most had written about this product, I was able to gather some info and line up some options for the Bose against alternative systems and also audio-dition these.

I'll cut to the conclusion straight up and all I can say is THANK GOD and I'll say it again THANK GOD I didn't fall into the hype and pay out some moolah to buy one straight off without listening to alternatives or geting a cross-section of reviews beforehand.

We listened to a range of receivers/dvd/sat speaker& sub combinations from specialist dealers within our price range .

THEN and only then we decided to go and audition the Bose in the shop to give it a fair hearing, as there may have been something wrong with out trial setup.

I was curious to get some details on the Bose system components from the knowledgeable sales person.
Well I got told that there were no fact/data sheets as Bose don't put these out. Other dealers had willingly supplied these sheets and also freely gave me photocopies of independant reviews and tests of their products and components.

I asked about the paper in the speakers, and was told that Bose used paper as it has the highest flashpoint rating before catching a hot speaker catches fire.????? Hmmmn shouldn't the material be geared to provide first and foremost a decent sound?.

A demo was then provided in the dealer home theatre setup. It was just the same as our 2 day demo. The Acoustimass module seemed to omit just the same one thud....thud...thudd noise consistently instead of the bass sounds of the other auditions. The midrange was lacking in comparison as well.
It wasn't even close, and seemed to be something that one could expect for say 50%-60% of the asking cost.


So...to sum up....A big thankyou to all those posters, you all know who you are.! and also to the site moderator who hopefully won't delete my small contribution as not specifically having actually owned a Bose Lifestyle.


Our new system arrives soon, which I feel is a great compromise between...cost..smallish speakers..great theatre and good CD audio....as well as including a dvd which the Bose didn't come with.



It is..
Denon 1601 Receiver
Kef KHT 2505 Home theatre system incl sub
Toshiba DVD

Cheers
Grant

Strengths:
slimline compact cd unit, amazingly small spreakers.

Weaknesses:
Price....No bass...Weak midrange...Some sort of gap in the frequency range of the system...

Similar Products Used:
Sony, Aiwa