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Speaking of battery, there’s a slight increase from 24 hours of native playback to 30 hours of playback with noise cancellation (24 with Immersive Sound). You can now listen while charging and access lossless audio tracks via USB-C from supported sources, something neither the original Ultra nor Sony’s XM6 offer.
Bose has also made it easier to control the noise cancellation and transparency modes, letting you turn off ambient sound entirely in the app or customize the amount of sound blocked or transmitted from the microphones within Noise Control. Previously, this required creating a custom sound mode.
Otherwise, you get the same solid feature set, with options like multipoint voice calling (still just two devices), Adaptive Sound that tailors performance to your ears, and settings like the ability to adjust your voice for calls. On-board controls include power keys, multi-function keys, and a touch volume slider, which is still a little less responsive than I’d like.
There are still some nice features on my wish list, like a multi-band EQ instead of the basic three-band setup, which makes customizing the booming default bass more of a scalpel. Auracast audio sharing It would have been nice, even if it was more forward-looking.
Crowd control
Photography: Ryan Wanyata
Testing the latest Ultra against the Gen 1 and Sony XM6 over several days mostly reminded me of how great each of them is at sound suppression. All three pairs sit at the top of the market, outperforming anything else we’ve tested, and most people are unlikely to notice any major differences in performance in most situations.