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

I read the reviews but bought one of these anyway after the guy in the store assured me any issues with the DVD player had been fixed. WRONG. DVDs get stuck all the time. We probably give up on watching one out of every three movies because of the sheer frustration. Basically it goes like this: everything is fine until at some random (usually crucial) part of the movie the picture will pause itself. None of the buttons on the remote will work. You have 3 choices:

(i) Wait. Sometimes it will start again by itself, but usually only for a few seconds before it stops again;
(ii) Note the chapter you were up to, eject the disc, turn off the power, turn it on again, reinstall the disc, find the chapter and fast forward to the scene you were at. Don't sit back down though because 95% of the time it will happen again within 5 minutes; or
(iii) Note the chapter you were up to, eject the disc, turn off the power, put the disc in a laptop and watch it using headphones (nb. doesn't work if there is more than one viewer).

Read the reviews and do not be fooled: when it comes to playing DVDs this item is inferior to any $30 player you can buy in a service station. If you care about DVDs you WILL have to buy a separate DVD player as well as this item.

Other than DVDs I use this to play music through an Ipod or laptop. The sound is pretty good. However, a friend just bought a blu-ray player with an ipod dock built in (which can be controlled via the remote and playlists viewed on screen) and 5 wireless speakers for $500. It sounds about a million times better.

This item would be perfect if you live in a small apartment, don't watch DVDs and listen to the radio a lot or still play CDs. Otherwise you can get something twice as good for half the money.

The sound is really good. It's definately BOSE quality in that department. The only problem is, if it won't play your DVD's or music then there's nothing to hear anyways. We've had all the same problems with the DVD player not reading discs, turning off partway through and last night we watched a movie and this morning the system won't even turn on. We've had this one repaired once and now it's broken again. Definitely too high of a price for something that's not going to work. If you're set on getting a BOSE system, I would get one just for the speakers and then get a seperate DVD player and CD player to actually run your media out of. We will be replacing our system with something else and it would take a lot to convince us to buy a BOSE again.

I believe that these speakers are INCREDIBLE. I have this setup in my living room. My living room isn't huge, but it's not small either. The speakers fill the room with a solid and very clear sound. The highs and mids are GREAT and the lows are especially strong. It is AMAZING how much sound comes out of a system so small. You can hear EVERY detail from any movie you are watching from a pen drop, to any type of explosion. In my opinion, for the price and size, there is no better setup than the Bose 3-2-1 system.

I purchased Bose 123 GS speakers partly because of the hype about Bose products. The speakers do not work and the company does not stand behind their product. Page 55 of the manual states if the speakers cut out unplug the acoustimas module for one minute and plug back in. This happens constantly and if you are watching TV you will have to do this many times. I called the company twice and was told this was the cable companies fault. I have had the same cable company for twenty years and numerous kinds of speakers and never had this problem before. Bose knows about this problem because they have it in their instruction manual. I am out $1000 and I will never buy another Bose product.

I am not an audiophile / videophile so this will not be a technical review. All I can say about this is if you want a simple and clean home theater system and you don't already own a bunch of components this is a good route to take.

This was chosen on the basis of simplicity. One remote, one component, three speakers, one speaker cable, one power cord. It doesn't get any easier and considering how simple it is: it looks and sounds great for our requirements which were that it had to produce a good image for our projector (1080p) and it had to sound good. Sounding good for us means that when we watch movies the dialogue sounds good and the effects have a decent left to right going on.

That's it. And that's what we got and I'm happy with it. I'm not a huge Bose fan, but I'm not a hater either.

I can't give it 5 stars because I'm disappointed that the speaker cable was so short. If you have a room bigger than 10x10 or if you use a projector you will need to order a special proprietary cable. They are available up to 40 feet and the cost at the moment for the 40 FT cable was $19.99.

We also bought the speaker stands to keep the cables nice and neat and to avoid mounting the speakers to the wall since we are renting. The stands were $100 - ouch.