These audio products represent a “re-entry” into the home speaker space for the company, bringing back the popular Lifestyle range that debuted in 1990 – known for simplicity and ease of use – and which Bose later discontinued in 2022.
It’s no surprise that Bose says the Ultra Soundbar is “the best soundbar we’ve ever made,” and that the Ultra may be one of the company’s best speakers in its history. The wireless speaker starts at $299, with a limited edition price of $349 in Driftwood Sand; The soundbar costs $1,099 and the subwoofer costs $899. It’s available for pre-order now and will go on sale May 15.
These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers support AirPlay, Google Cast, and Spotify Connect, and uniquely are the first to integrate with Alexa+ (US only), allowing you to ask Amazon’s chatbot to play music through the speakers via voice command. There’s also Bluetooth support and even an auxiliary input for connecting the Ultra speaker to a turntable.
You can group two Lifestyle Ultra speakers into a stereo system in the Bose app, or group them all together for a home theater system. Unfortunately, if you’re hoping to use it as a surround system with your existing Bose speakers, the company says it’s only compatible with the Bass Module 700. And with the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, it can only be used as a wired connection. For multi-room audio, the company has passed those assembly duties to the Google Home app for Google Cast technology, or Apple’s AirPlay for iOS users. Speaking of the app, there’s a redesigned onboarding process that claims to make setting up all of these speakers a breeze.
On the audio side, the Ultra speaker notably features a Dolby Atmos-like step-up driver for spatial audio, along with two front-facing drivers. (It doesn’t appear to support Dolby Atmos music at the moment.) The company is also touting its CleanBass technology, which combines Bose’s QuietPort audio slot with a tweeter for deep bass that performs better than its size suggests, though we’ll have to hear it for ourselves to see if it lives up to Bose’s claims.
