Home > Consumer Reviews > Bose 3-2-1 GS Series II DVD Home Entertainment System - DVD surround system - radio / DVD - silver

I bought this system at a Bose Outlet store after listening to it at Circuit City. When I first listened to it, the small speakers blew me away. I was interested in it in the first place because I was hoping for a two-speaker solution that would simulate surround sound. I didn't (and still don't) want to run wires all around the ceiling of our TV room to reach speakers hung on the back wall. I bought into the Bose hype about bouncing sound off the walls to achieve a virtual surround effect. Maybe it works in a smallish room that's all hard surfaces, but it doesn't work in our TV room, which is 16' by 22' and has floor-to-ceiling windows with soft blinds on one end and an open staircase on the other. That stipulated, I'm still pretty satisfied with this system after fooling around with it for a couple of weeks.

We have a 55-inch Sony LCD rear-projection high-def TV with many, many inputs and outputs. All the sound runs through the TV, and an optical cable takes it from the TV to the Bose "media center", which processes all the digital audio whatnot and sends it on to the two little speakers. I don't use the Bose DVD, which seems kind of cheesy, actually. We have a Sony "upscale" DVD player connected to the TV with an HDMI cable.

To cut to the chase, I now find that I get the best performance from this system by putting the speakers (on floor stands) on either side of the TV and toeing them in (angling them toward each other) just slightly -- maybe 15 or 20 degrees. This seems to give a real sense of separation between left and right without messing up the "center" of the sound. I think solutions will vary with different rooms, but this is what's working for me.

I think my expectations for this system were unreasonably high going in because when I listened to it the first time at Circuit City, I was standing very close to it, which was the only way to listen to it there. It was almost like listening through earphones, so of course all the effects were heightened in a way they never would be in my own TV room.

Bottom line: This system delivers a remarkably good sound as far as my ears can tell (but I'm no audiophile). I listened to it side by side with a KEH KIT 100 (another two-speaker solution), and the Bose sounded much better. I saved $100 by getting a "factory-renewal" system directly from the Bose outlet store, and I've had no problems with it.

The Bose 3-2-1 Series II is pricey, for sure, compared to five-speaker systems, but if you're like me and you don't want to hang or bury wires everywhere, it could be your answer.

By far, the absolute WORST purchase I have EVER made in Electronic equipment!

The DVD player can't play over half the DVDs out there (and I am NOT even including monoaural which is in excusable.)

It overheats in 2 seconds and I constantly have to un-plug and re-plug in the AC to reset the thing so that the sound comes on.

Every time I get a new DVD, I have to cross my fingers and pray that it will work....maybe 50% of the time it does.

I have another $39 DVD player I got from Target, that works better.

Unfortunately it is WAY past the return date otherwise I would exchange this for a piece of equipment that wasn't such an over-hyped piece of garbage.

I am STUNNED by the rave reviews people are giving this thing !

If you think this is a dvd player, you are wrong. It will sometimes play dvd's, however sometimes it will not. I have returned the media center for repairs 2 times in the first six months. I now possess a new media center--still skips and stops on its own. Bose was not receptive to my problems and required threats of legal action to exchange it.

If your life is perfect and you need something to spice it up, please try this product. It should take a couple of years off your life.

My neighbor bought this system, mainly because his wife liked its compactness and sleek look. Sure, I have no argument against that---about the only thing Bose is good for is pretty looks. Actual performance and value, however, is uniformly dismal with Bose products and this one is no exception.

This system claims to deliver "surround" sound basically by running some funny algorithms on the music, i.e. using funny equalization and minute time delays. The result? A thin and distinctly unnatural sound, especially when listening to music, or any movies that have lots of midrange-intensive orchestral music. It's OK if all you watch is explosions and car chases though. The bottom line is that there is NO substitute for having bona fide surround speakers, as well as bona fide decent electronics not just pretty little cases which Bose does so well.

For less than half the price of this system, you can get an Onkyo boxed system which blows it out of the water effortlessly in all departments. That's what my neighbor did, even though he lost a lot of brownie points with his wife---but now even she has to admit the Onkyo sounds a million times better.

Below is my experience with this product after owning it for 2 weeks.

Pros:
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1. Amazing sound especially when watching DVD movies
2. Very good progessive scan DVD picture quality
3. Simple, compact and all-in-one design
4. Remote control can work with various TV's, Cable boxes and VCR's
5. Can play both NTSC and PAL DVD's

Cons:
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1. Expensive
2. No HDMI output
3. Non-intuative remote control
4. No headphone jack


Overall, I love and chose the Bose 321 because of the sound quality and compact design. I got this system because I wanted a compact all-in-one media center and I was not interested in getting a HTIB with 5 speakers. I looked at Denon (2 products), Sony and Samsung.

I use this on my 23" Samsung LCD TV using Monster component video cables and while I would have preferred to take advatange of its HDMI capabilties, the reality is that I am very happy with this image quality. Movies such as Lord of the Rings, The Matrix and Hero look and sound fantastic. Prior to this I was looking at the Sony DAV-X1 which is much cheaper and more feature-rich. However the internal turmoils between their consumer electronics and media divisons convince me this would not work for me. For example, my PAL DVDs cannot be played on the Sony whereas on the Bose it was no problem. I am of the opinion that Sony is a directionless company and this is reflected in their products.

To be fair you do need to have the right kind of room to take advantage of their TrueSpace 2.1 surround sound feature. My couch is up against the wall with the media center located 12 ft in front of me. According to Bose the speakers should ideally be 3 feet away from the TV. Sometimes TrueSpace works and sometimes I can't hear it. I believe this is true among all the other competitors in this market line and that neither one stands out ahead of the other. If surround sound is really that important to you, then you should get a 5.1 system. This product is perfect for a small room as it takes advantage of the echos of the room where it can fake a 3D sound and would probably not be ideal for a family size rec-room.

The audio quality from music CD's is very good and while I wish this had an iPod port as found on the Denon, I am very content using the Aux port.