Review: Bose Wave music system. Good things come in small packages.

Overview:

For sound aficionados out there, or for those of you who simply need more gigabytes to store your music than NASA has access to, you already know that the Bose brand is synonymous with quality and clarity of sound. The latest Bose Wave music system is no exception, and with features including a CD player, radio, MP3 capabilities and the all important digital clock, it not only sounds good, but can be used in a multitude of ways. Priced at a high-pitched £399 the question remains, is it worth defaulting on your mortgage for?

Review:

No matter what kind of music you listen to be it R&B, jazz, rock, pop or the classics, there is one critical aspect which transcends all differences: the importance of sound quality. It is this elusive perfect marriage between treble and bass that made us decide to invest in the A-listed Bose Wave music system. For those of you who aren't entirely sure what I'm talking about, it's that radio/CD player that is always cryptically advertised in newspapers and on bits of paper that fall out of magazines but can't be found in shops, making this sound system just that little bit more different from the start.

After setting up the Bose Wave music system, we stepped back to admire our handiwork (at taking it out of the box and placing it on a table). The first thing that struck me was just how stylish it looked in an otherwise garish apartment. All of a sudden the bad carpet didn't matter, because the first thing that your eye was drawn to were the sleek curves of the Wave. The only unfortunate aesthetic element is that it's only available in two shades of grey or, as we had purchased, white which to be perfectly honest is bordering on a greyish/white.

Monochrome filter off though, as this is a Bose, what I'm sure you're more interested in is the sound quality. The Wave music system comes with a demo disk which plays both speech and music to highlight the clarity of Bose sound under different circumstances. After ramping up the volume, everything that came out of this small-sized sound system was crystal clear and of a quality you would expect from a much larger unit. There was no distortion at all even though the volume was loud enough to get a party going 2 suburbs away. Even when we placed it next to the TV, we couldn't detect any interference which is apparently thanks to an ingenious magnetic shield around the speakers, Jetsons style.

How is the sound so good considering that the system is smaller than a case of beer? Well the Bose boffins have outdone themselves with their dual waveguide speaker technology. Each waveguide is 66cm long, but is squished to resemble the mid-section of a trumpet in order to fit the technology into a compact design. They are tuned to amplify speaker output and is the techie reasoning behind the rich, full sound.

The latest Wave music system features CD player, radio and has MP3 capability covering all bases of music source. The clock alarm is also a great feature as you can set it to your radio station of choice and instead of blasting you out of bed in the mornings, it gently starts at a low tone before gradually gaining in volume so to encourage a nice, gentle rising in the morning. The clock itself also dims and brightens depending on how illuminated the room is. The darker the area, the less light is projected which is great for helping you to go to sleep at night without fears of being abducted as your room is bathed in an fluorescent alien-green light.

All of its features stands the Wave music system apart from similar offerings by Bose, namely the Bose Wave radio priced at £299 which has no CD capabilities but is still reputed to provide the same sound quality. Then there's the other range of the family, the Bose Acoustic Wave music system II at £885. Whereas the waveguides in the other two units are 66cm long, in the top of the range they've managed to squish 2 metres worth of "folded chamber" into a compressed size, though granted its not as compact as the other units. Oddly enough, the Bose Acoustic Wave music system II doesn't have a clock face and therefore doesn't provide alarm capabilities, which seems like an odd omission for a unit that's over double the price of its predecessor. All in all, the mid-range Wave music system is the pick of the range thanks to the features you receive for its (relatively) moderate price.

The unit itself has no buttons on it at all, which helps with the minimalist elegance of the Wave music system. Everything is controlled by a remote control which itself is thin and sleek and resembles a bus pass more than a remote. We were particularly pleased to find that it even worked through walls, and spent many a gleeful moment changing tracks from every part of the apartment. The only issue is, if this remote control follows all of your others to be forever lost in that mysterious black hole somewhere in the vicinity of your couch, there's no way to operate the system.

Another feature worth mentioning is the thoughtfulness of the Wave music system. Not only is it easy to operate, but the slot CD loader means that less moving parts makes for less chance of someone breaking your precious player when trying to change CDs every time they're in the mood for Alanis Morissette. Also, if you live in an area prone to the odd power outage, you can rest assured that your clock and radio preset settings will be maintained even though the system doesn't use batteries. Now that's clever!

As mentioned at the start, the Bose Wave music system can't be found at your local Dixons but is only available online from Bose themselves. Priced at £399, it is a bit steep for something that may mainly be used as a clock radio. For the sound quality though, it's not particularly expensive and actually has come down in price since it was first released. You can also chose to pay in interest-free instalments, which was a welcome option for us. When you consider that you could easily spend twice as much for a larger and more cumbersome sound system that produced comparable sound quality, the Bose Wave should be a definite contender for when you share your latest playlist with the neighbours.

Available from Bose.