Home > Consumer Reviews > Bose Lifestyle V20 Home Theater System - Black

First time buyer/user of Bose. We were looking for good quality sound and small size. The design is very good: visitors cannot tell where the sound comes from: speakers were easily installed and incorporated in our current living room. The sound is great for movies and very good for music. The more dynamic the range the better the sound. It does well with PCM 2.0, 5.1, the mp3, wav files and nice with mono recordings.
Upgrading video signal is good too. Standard cable looks better on 40" LCD TV. It does well with trhough HD signal (no loss/distortion). I have Blu-ray from PC hooked to it (no HDCP conflict here yet). Looks great!
Issues: 1. We had handshake issues with a motorola cable box. 2. We had to return first unit as it had color distortion (Bose customer service is good). 3. Infrared signal comes from display so the other devices need to face the display, otherwise use the IR sensor.
SummarY: It's a nice unit, provides enough power, quality and upgrading of audio and video signal in an elegant, discrete design. It can satisfy the average consumer.

We waited over ten years before finally taking the plunge with Bose and it was well worth the wait. The sound quality is superb and it does everything I need it to do. I test ran it with Saving Private Ryan and finally re-experienced the theater quality sound I couldn't get with our Klipsch or Sony systems. HOWEVER, it took me two weekends to figure out how to make all the connections (DirecTV, TIVO, DVD...) work like they are supposed to; if I had it to do over again I would pay the Geek Squad or somebody to set it up for me. But now that it is up and running I only regret that we waited so long.

I bought this system and hooked it up. Sounded fantastic, but when I heard a V30 at a Bose store, the Jewel Cube speakers blew me away. The V20 gives you more mid range, the V30 gives more mids to highs. Both systems sound superb, but the V30's Jewel Cube speakers provided more detail and a crisper sound. I ended up returning the V20 for a V30. Both are amazing systems, but the clarity and the crispness of the Jewel Cube system impressed me to the point of shelling an extra g-note. Bottom line is you can't go wrong with either system, but definetly listen to both before choosing one.

I bought this system 6 months ago, replacing my older Bose acoustimass 10 Series II with a Yamaha htr-5460 what a disappointment. By no means I am a music expert but Im guessing the speakers are fine. The amp is what Im thinking is lacking. It does not fill the room with warmness like the AM10 had done in the past with music. And as for movies well lets just say I have not jump out of my seat in a long time. On the plus side the amp is very easy to tuck away and I planning on installing this system in my room.

We bought the V20 a few weeks ago and after paying a not-so-modest amount for it PLUS the separate wireless receiver for the back speakers and spending a few hours hooking it up and calibrating; it comes as a dissapointment that the quality of the sound that it delivers is nothing like the demonstrations they gave us at the Bose store; yes, it sounds good, but no, it is not worth two grand. After a week of trying to like this system, we decided to take it back to the store and bought instead a Sony system for less than half the price which already included the wireless component for the back speakers, an iPod dock and even a blu-ray player and the best part is that it sounds infinitely better than the Bose system. Needless to say, we are way more satisfied with sony than with bose.