Well it looks good, sound is diperse adequately on a small room. I bought it used so cost effective for me.

Cabinet is light, suspect its durability. Lacks bass so you will need a sub. Go for the 301 if you dont have a sub.

I got the Bose 201 series III for free from my BIL. I use the Bose with a Marantz NR1403 surround sound receiver. The Marantz is very good sounding for a SS receiver/amplifier. (I do prefer higher-end tube amps for stereo).
The Bose produces a somewhat diffused, yet warm sound. Taking a look inside I find no crossover for the 6.5" mid-bass driver and a cheap 5uF electrolytic type cap for the paper tweeter. The cabinet is well constructed. So, I got a good set of cabinets.
I removed the tweeter and replaced it with a vintage Audax TM025F tweeter. The difference was huge. Highs became crystal clear and for some reason the mid-bass seem to clear up, yet the tweeter does not play lower than 2000Hz at -12db. I replaced the electrolytic cap with a paper/oil by Obbligato. The is another step up in performance. Now I am hearing good sound.
Not to stop there, I installed a 2nd order crossover and highly regarded Peerless HDS 830874 6.5" mid-bass speakers. For whatever reason, the Bose stock 6.5" mid-bass sounded better. Smoother overall, and a warmer sound. Now, the Bose driver should sound a bit shrill due to no crossover and playing at high frequencies in the speaker break up range. But, the Bose 6.5" speaker is full range like a Fostex FE168EZ and the break up mode is well controlled. It becomes a freak speaker with the mods.
So, buy this Bose 201 used, replace the tweeter with a 1" dome tweeter that can play as low as 2000Hz. Add $10 a pair Obbligato capacitors and enjoy a speaker that sounds as good as $500+ speakers.

These are Not for a serious sound person for sure, To me they sound kind of flat and muddy. It's true they don't carry much bass. But for the average person in small room their ok . If you added a sub woofer they would sound much better. I personally don't think there worth the price and your paying more for a Name.. I would recommend the Yamaha studio monitors for around a hundred more. their excellent!

Zildjian 102 you surely haven't heard anything but just BOSE have you. 1st of all, 8 inch is not a "subwoofer" but only a woofer. Generally you will need at least a 10 inch to be able to reproduce extra low frequencies. And 6.5 inch doesn't mean its better than 4 inch, for a great midrange the cone has to be light and fast to reproduce mid frequencies accurately without cone distortion especially in high volume...this is what BOSE failed to achieve, if you are saying bigger cones is better than smaller ones than take a look at KEF Blade, one of the worlds finest speaker which only uses 5 inch "woofer". I've audition these 201, 203 and there are absolutely no detail and neither focus at all, and it did struggled to reproduce acoustic guitar notes accurately. Moving on to the tweeter...just excessively bright and unbalanced compared to the mids/lower mids. For the same amount of money, most of us whose understand more about sound reproduction will rather go for Cambridge Audio S30 or Q Acoustic 2010 or stretch a bit more to get Kef q100. BOSE so far is just good at aggressive marketing and advertising, what you are hearing with Bose is the reflective tweeter reflecting in a room inaccurately to give you a fake soundstage and colouration tricking your brain that the speakers are "loud for it's size". The only decent speaker in the BOSE line up is the 901 but then again it's way too overpriced, you can get better speakers at that price.
The only Bose-bashers out there are the ones that listened to other speakers and know what accurate speakers are and not speaker coloration.
The ones that love Bose are the ones that already bought it.

NIce speakers for my small room.. great sound but needs a sub with the Sony amp I am using. Nice clear highs and good mid range but not much bass. this could be the amps fault and not the 201's.

I just replaced a pair of older Polk 8T "towers" with these Bose 201 Series V. The 201s sound less like a 'speaker-in-a-box' than anything I have run across in a system of this size; that is, no audible coloration in the low-mid (voice) range I wall-mounted these with the Bose brackets specified for the 201/301s, but had to modify the bracket so that it would not be visible peeking over the top. The brackets evidently work fine with the 201 Series IV, but a larger connector panel on the Series V forces the bracket to sit too high. A bit of hacksawing and filing fixed this. Very impressed with the sound of these when used in conjunction with a Miller/Kreisel powered subwoofer.

I have a pair of bose 201 as main, vcs 10 center and bose 161 as surround, wharfedale SW 150 sub in 5.1 setup. Tell you what? it amused me. sound is realistic in movie and music. bose 201 absolutely outperform any bookshelf speaker with its size pertaining to (woofer and tweeter). I wondered why some people say negative things on these product. BOSE 201 just need a decent sub for good movies.

Very crisp clean highs, great mid-bass and excellant power handling compared to others with more than twice thier rating!! The small size makes them easy to place in most homes.

Very, very and did I say very? Poor construction!
Paper covered particle board? 1/2 Inch
Easy damaged.
Easily a higher rating from me if not for the poor construction.

I got these speakers in a deal for a Harmin Karden AVR-225, Bose 201, center and surrounds for $400.00. It was a deal I haven't regreted. So, being pushed to a SOLID 75 watts is nothing for these speakers. Bass can get a bit off but if you have even a small sub like my weak Yamaha...no problem.

First, I do like the highs of these speakers, they can reproduce very clearly the absolute highs you'd expect in some music, and the bass is there, it can be superb at mid to low level volumns. I have rocked to a wide variety of music with these and today listened to some classic Ozzy (Revolations, Mother Earth) I was very pleased at the range I heard. Rescently I had been listening to Metallica and I had to switch to an old pair of JBL S-38's to see I was missing anything.

My answer to that was that I had been, though a very shallow one. The JBL (right before I blew a mid) was difinatly more refined in the mid-range. I was hearing things that the Bose missed. Currently I'm trying to set up the Bose to a better mid level. But I had changed nothing for the JBL.

My JBL were rated at 175 watts or so, but apparently the Bose stood up better. Being that they cost me at least 3 times less, I could not be more pleased. Again today when I was listening to the Bose, at very high levels of volumn, I caught highs the JBL did not produce. Over all the Bose have a good sensitivty, a great wide range sound and a good price for what you get. (Even in the store). I have a great ear for music and many a friend has asked about my set-ups, even when they own the same things.

Be patient and listen to these little dolls and it will pay off! Try moving them around, adjusting the cut-off setting on your amp and sub, and let thier little foot print rock.

Similar Products Used:

Cerwin Vega, JBL s-38's, n-24's, n-center. Yamaha, sub and 8" bookshelves. Technics and Harman Karden Recievers

good bass, strong mid, and sounds like 5.1`

none

but i wonder how 151s or 301s sound

if your thinking about a set of good bookshelf speakers these are the ones!!! they have good bass and a strong mid range there somewhat small and styleish. the direct reflecting thing works it sounds like 5.1 out of a 2.1 system. these are good speakers.

Customer Service

good

Similar Products Used:

pioneer xbox 360 surround and 1st gen bose 201

Price/perfomance

best in smaller rooms

I've used these 201's for over ten years as my computer's speakers. They are great. I regularly get compliments from people who hear them for the first time. Many of those people spent tons on specialty computer speakers. I have them right on my desktop. I won't compare them to the M&K S100's that are the backbone of my living room's surround setup because they are two very different systems meant for two very different applications. I power the speakers with a Pioneer receiver with 100 watts/channel in sterio mode.

If you want to light up a room in the 12x12 to 14x14 range then these speakers are hard to beat. If you have a larger space look elsewhere.

Customer Service

none req.

Similar Products Used:

Various boom boxes