Bose is taking a swing at Sonos with new home speakers

Last Thursday, in a tidy house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I sat on a slightly low, too-deep sofa in front of a smart little beige speaker sitting in the middle of a trio of mid-century arched storage cabinets. On either side of the smart speaker are two long white screens.

The speaker was the new $299 Lifestyle Ultra, Bose’s answer to the Sonos Era 100. Along with the $1,099 Ultra speakers and the $899 subwoofer, it’s one of three new home audio products the company announced today, all of which appear to be aimed directly at Sonos — hopefully minus the company’s recent missteps. I heard all three at a Bose event in New York, and I was particularly impressed by the speaker.

The $299 Ultra speaker is the most interesting and most premium of the bunch. It has a front-facing speaker and a tweeter, a bass driver — unlike the Era 100 — and a bass port on the back. (For music, Bose uses its own processing for upward-firing sound, rather than Dolby Atmos.) At the top of the speaker, behind the rising driver, are capacitive controls for power, Bluetooth pairing, microphone mute, volume control, and a play/pause button. The volume and play/pause are in a circular depression, which you can trace with your finger clockwise or counterclockwise to control the volume as well. The Ultra speaker and speaker support Alexa Plus.

The speaker sounds impressively large with great audio clarity, and without the harsh highs found in such soundbars Soundlink Plus. In fact, upon listening to the first sample — Olivia Deen’s “Man I Need” — I thought there must be additional speakers playing from behind the curved white screens.

I was partly right: the screens were hiding two additional Lifestyle Ultra speakers, but they weren’t turned on during this track. Instead, they were there for a later demo of the stereo pair. While playing Leon Bridges’ “Peaceful Place” and Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen,” they showed good stereo sound separation.

I found that the Ultra can sound overly aggressive when it comes to things like snare hits (I noticed this most during Chris Stapleton’s “Bad As I Used To Be”), at least at the volumes we listened to. This may be due to the lack of room correction, a surprising omission from the Ultra at launch. Especially when used in a stereo pair, I expected there to be some way to adjust the speakers to fit the room and compensate for any placement issues. I’m told that Bose is looking into the possibility of adding room correction later for both single speaker and stereo setups.

Instead of putting all of the streaming app’s playback controls in the Bose app like Sonos does with its own, Bose instead relies on grouping and playback functionality within apps people already use regularly, like Apple Music and Spotify. The Ultra speaker can stream music over Wi-Fi through Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Spotify Connect, and can be added to AirPlay and Google Cast speaker groups, including those with non-Bose speakers. When Wi-Fi isn’t available, you can stream to the Ultra via Bluetooth. The speaker is Auracast capable, but will not be Auracast enabled when it launches on May 15. Reza Haider, Bose’s head of premium consumer audio, told me that Auracast will be rolled out once that ecosystem becomes more mature.

I was expecting Bose to unveil a competitor to its Sonos app, but this more open option — allowing you to expand what you currently have whether it’s Bose or not — is interesting. It also bypasses the hassle of including all the individual streaming apps within the Bose app, and making it work properly. “We are intentionally trying to be more open and less app-based in our experience,” Haider said. In addition to Spotify Connect, I hope Bose will include services like Qobuz Connect and Tidal Connect in the future.

Upstairs from the Ultra was a demo of the $1,099 Ultra Soundbar, Bose’s first redesign of its flagship speakers in years. It has two drivers for the top, two wide-range drivers for the left and right channels, two Bose PhaseGuide drivers — special designs that direct sound to the sides — and two additional drivers that surround the center speaker. The capacitive controls are similar to those on the Ultra speaker.

We started the speaker demo with the scene of the Spice Harvester being evacuated from Sand dunesAnd it was a little frustrating. This is one of my go-to scenes to test the sound of a movie, so I’m pretty familiar with it. Although the soundscape was wide-ranging, and I could feel the vibration through the floor, there was a gap where the bass frequencies should meet the midrange, making the sound sound hollow. Audio clarity was crisp, and the soundbar did a good job with the Atmos channels, but I wasn’t able to get past the absent upper bass frequencies.

Fortunately, alongside the Ultra Speaker and Ultra Soundbar, Bose is launching the Ultra Subwoofer, which is just what the speaker needed to fill the frequency gap I heard. Instead of just feeling some vibration from the low end, the bass sounded full and supportive on Jacob Collier’s “Mi Corazón.” It was a big difference, but at $899, it also turns the speaker/sub combo into a $2,000 system (the same price as a Sonos Arc Ultra paired with a Sonos 4 sub).

For a full Atmos system, two Ultra speakers can be used as rear channels, creating a 7.1.4 configuration. Wembley Stadium, from the Live Aid portion of the film bohemian rhapsodyIt surrounded the room and filled it well. The Atmos’ height was good, although it was a bit blurry at times in its placement. This could be due to the layout of the room and my sitting position – although interestingly, unlike a smart speaker alone or in a pair, the full system has calibration for the room.

And based on my experience with the Ultra, there’s great potential for the new Bose Lifestyle Collection. “There is a lot more to come. This is the beginning of the new platform for the lifestyle series,” Haider said when I asked him about the possibility of a battery-powered version or a larger speaker. “The next one won’t be smaller.”

Photography by John Higgins/The Verge