great sound that compares to large 15 inch loud speakers

have not found any yet

the bose 201 seris iv are great for home theatear use

Price and highs

bass response

I don't take the time to really sit & listen to music as much as I used to so I didn't want to invest a huge amount of money. I picked these speakers after comparisons at the store with other like priced and more expensive units. I really couldn't find anything else near the price that could touch them for the clarity of the midrange and highs. The bass is underwhelming but satisfactory in a speaker at this price for my use.

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Some very old high quality 3 way units

Design, durability

Lacks Rich Bass tones and midrange is muffled

I bought these speakers for $300 cdn. after taxes at Future Shop. I was looking for an entry level speaker to hook up to my computer system via a reciever. I found that my fathers old "Realistic" speakers of the same size put out better bass and treble sounds. The speaker is cheaply made with a paper cone and inexpensive tweeter. However they do offer good high tones and are fairly compact. They are not Magnetically shielded so I was very dissapointed to find that out when I tried to use them as mains for my new system. Overall....good bang for our Canadian money...go with JBL's or Infinity's instead.

They sound better than my lawn mower

They sound worse than my weed wacker

Ok... I honestly have a pair of the 201's in my house. Basically, i hate them. They sound very bad and annoying. At first i thought that they were half way decent speakers. But that was 6 years ago, and i didn't know any better.
There is absolutely no imaging at all. The 45 degree angled tweeter is a complete gimmick used to sell speakers to ignorant people. The highs sound like a cheap horn tweeter is being played from above ground, while you sit in you're sealed bomb shelter. The bass is moderately listenable. The slot port is the only thing that makes sense in the design of these abominations to mankind. And the mids sound like Gilbert Godfrey is screaming the script from Problem Child in you're ear.(they are loud and annoying)
I will again state that i hate these plastic pieces of trash. If you know of any other speaker companies off hand, buy from them because i'm sure they will sound a lot better than the Bose 201's will. Melt you're Bose speakers and make something useful like a cup or an ashtray.

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I don't even want to mention names for sake of other companies reputations

Resale, status, and marketting among the uninitiated. Soundstage width and customer support.

Bass extension, harsh mids (colored as well), treble extension (raspy), imaging, depth, accuracy, build quality, and price all which is compared to speakers just in it's category.

First of all the only good thing I can say about this product is if you buy it you can return it up to 30 days and not lose your money. If you don't have a conscience then you can reap about 80% of your wealth back by selling it to some poor fool at an audio auction site. Though these throw a wide soundstage it is of very poor quality.

Though these speakers can beat others in terms of bass extension the quality of this extension is very poor and should not be considered since I assume most of you will match this with a sub. I recommend setting the speakers for small to help lessen the coloring of the mids that this speaker is plagued with and to lower the amount of noise this speaker attempts to put out. Contrary to what some have posted this speaker images poorly (tweeter is offset to the side of the cabinet), produces no depth, isn't accurate in any of the three categories people usually relate to sound quality (bass, mids, and highs).

The build quality is very poor and is not replicated among any of the quality speaker builders of any other reputable companies currently. The first limiting factor of this speaker is the spring clip terminals as this limits your wire options to help push the best quality sound possible for the speaker to reproduce. The cabinet emits a cheap and hollow knock meaning it will resonate and color the sound at just moderate levels. A non-reinforced or treated paper woofer means this thing lacks structural rigidity to play sounds accurately in this frequency band without distortion and will only be worse at higher listening volumes. Paper is also not used as tweeters in other companies as this is the normal frequency resonance of paper and therefore will naturally color the sound. The use of untreated paper also means deterioration over time and as it deteriorates so will it's sound quality and the easiest comparison to this is factory stock car speakers that came with most cars of 80s and their predecessors.

I have came to these conclusions over the years as I have listened to a lot of speakers at a lot of venues. There are several things you should note about Bose speakers, none are used for movie theaters, recording studioes (movies or music), or mainstream professional musicians (though they make professional gear and a well recognized name this should be quite a shock for most of us). No Bose speaker has a THX certification or a positive review from a truely objective magazine review (Consumer Reports gave them a truly horrendous review a few years back and after being sued and the court records sealed then came up with more favorable reviews, quite strange). These speakers have never made either the recommended lists of Stereophile, TAS, or Stereophile to HomeTheater. For a company that markets "direct-reflective" sound they have all their speakers placed in sound treated demo rooms, on the best electronics that are in the store that they are at, away from other speakers on different switchers to prohibit an easier direct comparison, using bandwidth limited Q-sound demo disks, and positioned for standing demoes. This easily raises the question of how good are they really?

For all their flaws I personally believe these are Bose's most accurate speaker though I have not heard the 701s or 901s to base my judgement on (this is why I have not rated the other two yet). For those of you who would like to avoid the WAF that seems to sell these simply turn your back to her during the argument and explain that you would like to hear the 89% of her speech reflecting off the walls just like DR BOSE claims happens during a live event (after all if you face her then you only hear 11% and this is according to DR BOSE). For those of you who do end up with this I think the best way to position them is to get the woofer to ear level and placed vertically so the tweeter reflects off the ceiling so you will at least get the poor imaging without the dopplar effect (kills soundstaging width though). My advice is if you can buy the Paradigm Microes/Titans, the Infinity RS1s, or the Sony 215s for a lower price if you don't intend to get a sub. If you can spare $50 more buy the B&W 302s as you will get a much higher quality of sound.

Just bring your own discs, position the speakers at the demo (bring the tweeters to ear level, even if you have to make the sales clerk bring you a chair and don't forget to toe them in), and if you have a SPL meter bring it with you and set the test tone at equal level so you can tell how well the speaker resolves clarity. If you want take this to another high-end store and have them hook-up a comparative product for direct comparison with good gear so all you will be doing is comparing the quality of the speaker itself. If you do this you will know just how bad this Bose product truly is and will most likely end up with something else. I rate the value a 2 because IMHO this is the best that Bose offers and it definately beats the AM-series, 301s, 501s, 141s, and a pair of VCS-10s (this is truly a horrendous center, I advice using the center out on your AVR to the TV input and using the TV speakers for a center.

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Optimus: Pro-X77, X44, X55, X88, X7, Pro-LX5, and LX5-II; Paradigm: Atoms, Titans, and Microes; Nht: Nextwaves, and SuperZeroes (XU); Mirage AVS; B&W 302; Sony 215, JBL (forgot what model); Infinity RS1. There were also many others.

HUGE SOUND STAGING AND HIGH MIDS

NON I CAN THINK OF

FOR SMALL ROOM ITS IDEAL AND I BELEIVE IT HAS ENOUGH BASS AND ENOUGH MIDS. FOR LARGE ROOM YOU JUST ADD A ACTIVE SUBWOOFER TO YOUR SYSTEM,TO EASY!

JUST BY READING A COUPLE OF THE REVIEWS ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF BASS THE 201'S PRODUCE, SOME PEOPLE EXSPECT A LOT OUT OF A BOOK SHELF SPEAKER. IN MY OPINION THE 201'S PRODUCE MORE THEN ENOUGH BASS COMPARED WITH OTHER BOOK SHELF SPEAKERS ON THE MARKET.LIKE I SAID JUST ADD A SUB WOOFER.

THERE IS ONE THING I CANT UNDERSTAND IS IF YOU DONT LIKE IT,DONT BUY IT AND DONT BAG IT BECAUSE EVERY BODYS LISTENING TASTE ARE DIFFERENT.

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JUST A STANDARD SHELF SYSTEM

The Bose 201's are a fairly good set of speakers. I use them for a back up set and they have worked quite well. I have heard alot of bad reviews on this speaker and on Bose speakers in general, but I would have to say that this speaker is worth the money. $200.00/pair. If I were to buy a similiar speaker today, it would not be Bose, it would be Infinity, for approximately the same money.

Small size, Big sound as with all Bose products. The price is also rather low in comparison to the advantages of this speaker system.

No weaknesses with comparison to what they are priced at.

Powerful

These speakers are an excellent buy for $220. They are rated at 120 Watts Rms per channel and this would probably make them the most powerful bookshelf speakers in their price and class. I use them for my Rear Surround in my Dolby Digital setup and they perform well with my Yamaha Amplifier which feeds 80 Watts Rms per channel to the Rear.
Its hard to find a $220 speaker in the market which can handle up to 120 Watts Rms per channel.


Sound

They distribute sound over a wide area and not just one sweet spot. The sound seems to be coming from large speakers rather than bookshelf. The bass is very good and deep for a 6.5 inch woofer (I would estimate it to comfortably go down to 60 Hz), the midrange is quit smooth and detailed and the trebble pretty crisp though i would assume they these speakers produce upto 18 Khz and then the graph drops rapidly. But after all we must be aware that we pay only $220 for these babies and we cannot expect them to produce 20Hz - 20 Khz.


If you want expansive sound at the same time loud and clear and you have a room of upto 100 meters square then these are the right choice.

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Bose 301.

Hey Ajay,

You think the Bose 201 is a great value because they can take 120 wpc? You can get a pair of BIC DV52 bookshelf speakers for half the price of the Bose, and they are rated at 120 wpc as well. They also sound 10 times better. The BIC has a 1/2" polydome tweeter while the 201 probably has a 2" paper tweeter. You tell me which sounds better.

They sound all right... not the best but if you put them in the right place, they'll do the job.

Lows, odd sound if not placed exactly right

Well, I have the series II's which I think are a the last or second to last generation made with wood. They *do* sound better than the plastic 201's that are being made now.
Well, you have to have these things mounted on a wall about 1.5 - 2.5 feet from the adjacent wall in order to get any decent sound out of them. This is, of course, due to the peculiar tweeter placement.
The bass is actually okay when the speakers are mounted on a wall.
I've been usining these as surround speakers since about 94 when I bought some 301's (yes, I was a bose sucker through high school). I still have the 201's and 301's because I can't really justify spending more money on speakers... what with these camera and computer habits I'm also supporting. Anyway, I rearranged my living room the other day and then today decided to stack the 201's on the 301's and hook them up as A & B insteaad of front/rear. Guess what? The combination of the two speakers actually sounds good!
The 301's have a bit better bass but those 3" tweeters are an absurdity. The Tweeters on the 201's cover the highs much better and you end up with a pretty good sound! The whole set up sounds richer than either speaker on its own. If you have the chance, you shoudl try this (Series II and III, 201 and 301 respecitvely). I have the 301's on stands and the 201's are on top of them lying vertically with the woofer end down and the speakers are facing backwards so that the tweeter on them fires at a 45 degree upward angle.

Oh, Bose, what ever shall we do with you?

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Bose 301's