Bose Lifestyle 135: Great product, but only for a select few!

You can always trust Bose to come up with new, exciting products. Their products are known to offer near audiophile quality with ease of use, which may put commercial, run-of-the-mill products to shame.

The Bose Lifestyle® 135 home entertainment system is a single speaker (+ woofer) system that attempts to match a regular 5.1 channel setup.

I opened the box to be greeted by a small box full of cables. It had several and separate cables for each country-specific connector. The main elements of this system are:

- Sound bar (which can be placed on a table or mounted on the wall) - This is really sleek and this is the only item that produces mid and high frequencies for a 5 channel experience.

- Wireless Acoustimass® module for low frequency reproduction - Yes, its wireless! The only wire that goes into it is the power cable.

- ADAPTiQ audio calibration system - Bose claims that it analyzes the way your room's dimensions and other variables affect sound, and then automatically adjusts the sound of your speaker system to the acoustics of your room.

- Remote Control (works on RF) - a real superstar!

- Dock for iPod or iPhone

The best thing about this system is the ease with which you can set it up. The on-screen display guides you on anything that you may like to do. It even detects sources, and helps you set them up properly. Bose remote can be used to control your TV, DVD player, Apple TV, Satellite PVRs and the system guides you on the same. It is extremely intuitive and anybody can set it up just by following the instructions on the screen.

Pairing the wireless Acoustimass was child's play. I did not even realize when that happened. In case the Acoustimass is off, the system gives a visual indication in the form of a red LED in the center of the sound bar.

And thus, with very few wires and parts, we have a home theatre ready.

Standalone, the system produced very good sound for both music and movies. It's impressive that a single speaker, with the help of an acoustimass, is able to do such a good job. It's actually brilliant!

But when you compare this to an average home theatre system, things look different. It's a compromise when you compare this product's sound output to a serious 5.1 setup. You can feel it in the sound distribution, the clarity and even, the low frequency reproduction. On top of that, it comes with a heavier price tag. At a higher volume, my ears felt tired after about 40 minutes of uninterrupted listening on this system. With several other systems, I can go on and on for hours without any fatigue.

This is undoubtedly the best sounding sound bar available today, but not a great home theatre system. In its current form and performance, this system is only meant for those who have constraints on space, but not on money. However, this is an excellent effort and I am confident that the engineers at Bose will take this product to the next level. This may very well prove to be the future of home theatres.