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3.0 out of 5 starsUnnecessary Difficulties For Headphone Users
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2023
I purchased the Bose sound bar 600 within a month of buying a new 55 inch smart television for the family living room. After setting up the entire television, cable management, gaming systems, and sound bar I slowly noticed that every time I connected bluetooth headphones to my television that within 15-20 minutes the television would disconnect the headphones and a black screen would appear. This television was brand new! How was this happening!? I checked the bluetooth settings on my television, unpaired and re-paired my headphones, and even reconnected my Wi-fi. I continued to try everything to fix the issue thinking that some sort of television update had caused it initially. So I unplugged the television and reset it. Then I deleted and re-installed all my streaming apps. Nothing worked. So I thought there was a hardware problem and bought things such as a long headphone aux wire, audio splitter, bluetooth audio dongle transmitter, and was so distraught that I even considered buying new bluetooth headphones! After months of frustration and trial and error I finally thought that my new television was broken for this feature and slowly stopped using headphones more and more with the television altogether. This terrible headache went on for 4-5 months. One weekend I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a reddit page that was over 4 years old that spoke of a similar issue with all Bose sound bars. Apparently their is a pre-configured setting within Bose sound bars that automatically turns the sound bar off after a pre-set amount of time if no sound comes out and this can also lead to a black screen overriding the televisions Energy Saver mode settings. Since using headphones (bluetooth or plugged in directly to the television) triggers no sound to come out of the sound bar this was causing all my frustrations. I was flabbergasted and had no idea the sound bar was causing all my problems! I quickly double-checked the instructional manual that came with the product to see where it said this and how I had missed this during my initial set-up. I kid you not this sound bar only has three instructions consisting of plugging the sound bar in, downloading the Bose app, and following any instructions on the Bose app for setup! You are just supposed to magically figure everything else out right down to common troubleshooting issues. I recognize that I am among the 5% or less of users that occasionally use headphones with my smart television so many people will never need this information. However, for those of you that have struggled with this issue please go into your Bose Music app and complete your initial set-up along with creating a new account. Afterwards, make sure your sound bar is connected to the same wi-fi address as you smart television. Click the soundbar Bose 600 picture and then the gear icon to access sound bar settings. Under the power category select standby timer. Uncheck it from the pre-selected choice which depends on the make and model of your sound bar (Ex. Mine was 20 minutes) and choose never. This will fix the issue immediately! I spent unnecessary money dealing with this issue and almost bought both a new television and headphones trying to fix this problem. As a first time Bose customer I was very frustrated with the lack of clarity given in their written instruction manual for this sound bar and will consider purchasing another brand of sound bar in the future as the sound quality is decent but not amazing. Overall this was a HUGE unnecessary headache for a bluetooth headphone user such as myself. I eventually figured it out but had I known what I was in for I would have never purchased this item. I decide to take the time to write this review to help other people. The same way that random 4 year old reddit post floating around on the internet helped me.