Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is one amazing sound system. I have this connected with both the new released bass module and satellite speakers. One small drawback is the soundbar does not come with a remote, so everything must be set up with the app. I took one star off for that. Otherwise the set up was fairly straightforward and easy to set up once everything synched up. The look is new with a round circular control on the far right end of the speaker. The top is a high gloss glass which is very easily smudged with fingerprints, so be sure to use a soft cloth to keep everything neat and clean. Speaker features AI Speech Clarity and clears out background noise or distortions. It comes with Dolby Atmos and 9 drivers which provides incredibly clear and crisp sound. You can alwo use your moblie device to assist with calibration for the best possible sound quality. Of course this soundbar works at peak performance with the bass and satellite speakers taking it to a full 7.1.4 system. The sound is tue best Bose has ever produced and is ahead of its rivals. It works with HDMI/ARC, Bluetooth, Apple Play and Google. Absolutely recommend this new Lifestyle System.

PROS + Detailed overall sound profile with excellent center channel performance + PhaseGuide speakers do a good job of projecting a wide sound profile beyond the edges of the bar with convincing presence + Can be expanded with surround speakers and subwoofer into an full 7.1.4 channel atmos system that sounds very full when built out + Strong neutral sound across both movies and music + CustomTune works well to elevate the sound quality with room correction + Included 3.5mm input for devices like turntables + Solid level of EQ available in the app + Natively supports full Alexa+ as a voice assistant + Bose app is responsive and connects without issue CONS - No DTS support of any kind - No HDMI inputs or device passthrough - No included remote (can be purchased separately) - No display on the bar or power indicator - Really needs the wireless subwoofer to get the full dynamic range (bass in bar alone is merely okay) OTHER THINGS OF NOTE * Only supports a single subwoofer, unlike the previous Bose Soundbar Ultra * Glass top is a style choice, but easily shows dust, fur, fingerprints, and reflects some light * Had some rare lip-sync and connectivity issues THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT If you are familiar with Bose’s previous flagship soundbar offerings, the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar follows in their footsteps, but takes a bit more of a stylistic approach, along with a simplified set-up process, that makes it much more competitive today. It still has a distinctively Bose design with a glass top, but rounds things out a bit more with a fabric wrapping that is over the speakers. Overall, it's an attractive and unique looking soundbar, with the only design issue being that the glass top is absolutely a grease, fingerprint, and dust/fur magnet. It stayed clean for all of 5 seconds before it started to collect dust in my space, so be prepared to keep some glass cleaner handy. In terms of I/O, the soundbar is minimalist to a fault. It keeps things simple with just a few inputs (power, 3.5mm mono, USB for service) and an HDMI eARC port for connecting to the TV. You don’t get any HDMI inputs, which means if your TV is like mine with only 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, then 1 of them is going to be taken by the soundbar, which can be a pain. I would have really liked even 1 additional HDMI input to replace the one it uses for the soundbar. Finally, you also get some touch controls on top of the soundbar in a small circle as part of the design, which work nicely if you don’t want to use the app, which you will be doing a lot since the soundbar doesn’t come with an included remote, you need to buy it separately. It wasn’t much of an issue for me, since I found the app more than serviceable, and very stable, for what I need to do, but it is still not ideal in cases where everyone in your house now needs the app, or your wifi goes down. In terms of sound quality, this is where Bose really gets it right. The soundbar delivers an impressively wide and detailed sound field, making movies and music sound fantastic right out of the box, with excellent surround presence. You do have EQ options in the app for things like Treble, Mids, Bass, as well as Center, Height, and Surround channels. These all work well, and really allow you to tune the sound to your taste, but I personally found that much tuning wasn’t needed for me, as the default sound after using CustomTune for room correction, sounded excellent. CustomTune takes about 10 minutes, and has you sit in three of your most used positions to measure room tone with your phone mic. I found it worked great, and definitely created a more grounded presence in the room with better surround effects, which was essential for me as my room is not balanced with walls on both sides. The proprietary PhaseGuide speakers do a great job of projecting sound far beyond the physical boundaries of the bar, giving a convincing surround presence from the bar alone, which is exactly what you want from a premium standalone unit. It provides a strong, neutral sound profile that handles both movies and music with confidence.The Bose app is also responsive and well-designed, making set-up a breeze, and I appreciate the included 3.5mm input for connecting devices like a turntable. If you want to dive deeper, you can expand this system into a full-fledged 7.1.4 channel Atmos setup, which is a huge plus for future-proofing your home theater. I personally used the full set-up for most of my testing, and it was excellent. The subwoofer added a much needed level of depth that the soundbar itself was lacking a bit, and the surround speakers really completed the sound bubble, adding better verticality and width which really helped with sound placements in the 3D space. On its own the soundbar is still incredible sounding, but the other items really help complete the package. For a premium bar, there are a couple of omissions that feel like bigger misses. The bass from the bar alone is clean, but doesn’t really hit that deep, and I would argue that you really need to budget for the wireless subwoofer to get the full dynamic range and proper thump you expect from a system at this level. Also, the absence of any DTS support limits its compatibility with some media, especially movies with DTS:X. It will output LPCM, but you don’t get that object based audio from DTS:X tracks. Finally, I did experience some occasional lip-sync issues which required me powering down and powering up the bar again. It was very minor, and only happened a couple of times, but something of note that I am sure will improve with firmware updates. While these are not deal-breakers, they are annoying given how close the bar is to overall excellence. Overall, this is a phenomenal soundbar when it comes to pure audio performance and its ability to deliver an immersive experience on its own. The sound is top-tier, and the ability to expand the system means it can grow with your needs. Despite the frustrating connectivity and remote limitations, the core product delivers where it counts, making it an excellent centerpiece for a modern home theater setup. Just make sure you are okay with the limitations it does have.

First off, I have to say that this new Bose Lifestyle Ultra soundbar is very impressive. Set up was very straight forward. You need to download the Bose app and connect the soundbar to your Wi-Fi network. Once connected you add the soundbar to the app to control the soundbar. The bar does not come with a physical remote. The app allows you to control the volume as well as adjust the bass, midrange, center, treble and height. The Bose app also allows you to adjust the AI processed Speech Clarity function. There are 3 levels of low, medium and high that significantly raises dialog presence. The app is also where you will add additional Lifestyle components to the system including the subwoofer and rear speakers. Bose has updated the calibration setup with their new CustomTune feature which uses your phone’s microphone to measure 3 seating positions in the room using test tone sweeps of the various speakers in the setup. I initially set up the soundbar as a stand-alone system to test just the soundbar. I immediately noticed how wide a soundstage this soundbar provided. I have this set up in a 14X16 foot room with a 9-foot ceiling. The soundstage fills the entire room side to side. The soundbar uses Phase Guide drivers on the front of the soundbar instead of side firing drivers like a lot of other soundbars. The effect is amazing. The soundbar sounds like it is 14 feet wide coming from a bar that is 43.5 inches wide. The bar also has up firing speakers for Dolby Atmos content. Bose uses what they call True Space processing which uses the up-firing speakers in non-Dolby Atmos content including 2 channel content for a more immersive effect. A couple of things about this processing. The app does not offer any sound modes such as music or movies and does not have a way to turn this processing off so if you want to listen to stereo music content you will still have the up-firing speakers in the mix. The app does allow you to turn off the subwoofer and rear speakers if you want. As a standalone soundbar it is very impressive. The bar provides solid bass on its own and vocal clarity is exceptional. Dolby Atmos content is handled surprisingly well. I do want to talk about the cosmetics of the bar. Bose made a significant change for the better in my opinion. The bar is now more rounded on the ends with knitted fabric covering the bar along with a glass top that covers the center section of the bar without covering the up-firing speakers. There is a capacitive control panel at one end of the bar for controlling the volume, setting up Bluetooth using Alexa and turning off the microphone. I received the black version, and I must say this is one of the best looking soundbars I have seen. I have a couple of other sound bars in this class to compare it to. I have the soundbar connected via eARC to my ultra short throw projector displaying a 120” image and the experience with this soundbar has taken it to a whole new level. The next step in the process was to add the subwoofer to the mix. Again, this was a simple process using the app. The subwoofer does not need to be connected to Wi-Fi in the app. It appears the soundbar finds the sub and connects. The soundbar has a 3.5mm sub output if you want to connect the subwoofer wired. Bose apparently has improved the radios in the subwoofer for better wireless connection. I have not had any issues with connectivity. I will be reviewing the subwoofer separately but let’s just say that this thing adds so much to the overall sound that I can’t imagine anyone not getting the subwoofer to go with the soundbar. I re-ran CustomTune and the sub blends seamlessly with the soundbar and adds a level of low-end support that is hard to imagine. This sub can go low and I mean really low without port chuffing or distortion. Bose uses what they call Quiet Port technology, and it sure seems to work. I want to suggest that if you make any changes in the app for volume of the sub or EQ or height of the soundbar that you reset all settings to zero before running CustomTune. You can make changes to these settings after calibration if you need to. The last phase of the process was to add the rear speakers to the mix. It is important to make sure you connect the speakers in the app to your Wi-Fi first using the same network as the soundbar before adding them to the soundbar in the app. I downloaded all the owner’s manuals from the Bose website and initially missed this step and was unable to pair the speakers with the soundbar. Once I corrected my error the speakers were added in the app and everything paired up as designed. Again, I will be reviewing the rear speakers separately. Bose has made a major improvement over their past iterations of rear speakers. The speakers, in addition to a front firing woofer and tweeter, now have up-firing speakers. They also use the Quiet Port technology to improve the bass. Bose also did away with the large outboard power bricks and now just use a power cable. I ordered the matching Bose speaker stands to raise the height of the speakers above my listening position and will be able to run the cables through the stands. These speakers are interesting as they can be used as stand-alone wireless speakers in separate rooms and can be paired in stereo mode. They along with the soundbar support Alexa, Casting, Air Play and Spotify Connect as well as Bluetooth. In the app you can increase the volume of the rear speakers but there is no separate height adjustment which I find kind of odd. Again, I re-ran a final CustomTune for the added speakers. Like the soundbar the speakers have capacitive controls on the top of the speakers and knitted fabric for the front of the speakers. The addition of the rear speakers with the up-firing speakers makes a huge difference in the overall sound of the system especially with Dolby Atmos content. In my opinion these are as much of a must have as the subwoofer. I have to say that this Bose system is the best system I have heard for music as well. A lot of sound bars put most of their focus on movies and not so much on music. Bose seems to have put as much effort into tuning this system for music as it did for movies. I listen to a lot of Dolby Atmos Blu Ray audio and applaud Bose for their effort. I still wish they had given us the option for stereo listening. The components of the Lifestyle collection are all sold separately so you can start with the soundbar and add components over time. This system is by no means inexpensive. At almost $2600 this system competes with the best of the sound bars on the market and from my experience it is well worth the cost and surpassed my expectations. I am giving the soundbar 4 stars only because of the lack of a remote, the lack of separate rear height adjustments and the inability to set a sound mode for stereo listening. As a total system though it is a solid 5-star product. I would highly recommend this system to anyone who considering a high end soundbar solution.

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar has honestly been one of the best soundbars I’ve used. The sound quality is incredibly immersive and makes movies, gaming, and even regular TV sound so much fuller and more cinematic. Dialogue is clear, bass is strong even without the subwoofer, and the surround effects are surprisingly impressive for a soundbar setup. Music also sounds amazing on it. The design is sleek and premium looking, which is exactly what I expect from Bose. Setup itself was pretty simple, although I did have some connectivity issues with the Bose app initially. The app took a few tries to recognize everything correctly and there were a couple moments where I had to reconnect devices, but once everything updated and synced properly it has been working great. Overall, this soundbar completely upgraded my living room experience. It’s powerful, clean sounding, and easily one of the best premium soundbars I’ve owned. You can’t deny the quality and it goe well with the subwoofer and speaker

With the Lifestyle naming Bose took a different approach with this sound bar. Its slightly bigger than the previous Bose ultra soundbar and has a new look. Its now wrapped in mesh with some glass on top which also matches their subwoofer design. I like that they kept the glass which I think gives that premium stylish look. Volume and touch controls are now on the right side. There is also a small led in the center under the Bose logo. Overall I think it looks great sitting in front of my TV. Setup was really easy. The soundbar seamlessly connected to the Bose app on my phone. It does connect to wifi using the old 2.4GHz which I thought was odd. The app said if you tried to use anything else it could cause issues so I went ahead did what it suggested. Again with this new Lifestyle model its only got 1 HDMI eARC port and no DTS support for older movies. They also dropped the remote so you will need to use the Bose app, touch control, or TV remote to adjust. I see this as a non-issue because I've never used the Bose remote anyway. It comes with Alexa+ voice assistant if you want to enable it but no others. I'm hopping that Bose and Google work together and bring Gemini to this thing as I would personally prefer that over Amazons Alexa. One really nice upgrade is that it comes with what Bose calls CustomTune which uses your phones mic to auto adjust the sound to your room instead of relying on a wired mic like they did with previous models. It makes a lot more sense sense and I found it easier to use than the traditional wired mic. It will ask you to sit in 3 different places in the the room while each speaker plays some tones. Takes about 5 min to complete depending on how many speakers you have connected to it. Once complete you can flip the tuning on or off (back to default) or run again. I highly suggest running this after setup. I've run it a few times now and during my testing I noticed it made a noticeable difference. Here is my take on the audio quality and I'm going to do some comparisons to the previous model. Out of the box the sound didn't immediately impress me, but running CustomTune after install fixed most of it. It has better bass and overall a deeper sound as you would expect with it being larger. Sounds sooo much better than my built in TV speakers. My one issue with this is that the speaker (I think the center speaker) that produces the audio for voice doesn't sound as good when watching TV shows/Movies. Everyone in my household made the same comment. I'm still tweaking eq but compared to the ultra/900, voice just sounds more hollow on this in comparison. There's a Speech Clarity feature designed to improve dialogue, but it addresses volume rather than tone, so it doesn't resolve the underlying quality issue. I'm still experimenting with EQ to see if I can dial it in. On the bright side Movies with Dolby Atmos sound phenomenal. The upward firing speakers earn their keep, and the app confirms it's genuinely rendering Atmos not just simulating it. We stream a lot of music through Spotify, and once the speaker is connected to Wi-Fi you are able send audio directly to it from the Spotify app. Music sounds clear and full-bodied, and it handles higher volumes well without any distortion. That said, I did need to tweak the center speaker again to get the balance right. Eventually I completed the setup by adding the rest of the Lifestyle speakers (the two rear speakers and the subwoofer) and the transformation was significant. The bass dropped noticeably deeper, and the surround sound went from implied to genuinely immersive. Overall I was extremely impressed. I don't think you will have any issues using this soundbar as a standalone unit for small to larger sized rooms. But I would suggest adding the optional speakers and subwoofer as well to take it to that next level. It a powerful, customizable system that requires a little tuning. Once fully set up, it delivers a truly immersive listening experience.

I've had multiple soundbars in the past and actually ended up switching to a receiver home theater setup a year or so ago so I could have a little more control over the sound delivery. I've got several Bose products (headphones and Bluetooth speakers) so I was anxious to get my hands on the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar from Bose. For review purposes I'm going to cover the 4 components as a system since the subwoofer and speakers are reliant on the soundbar for connectivity giving you a good 5.1 system. I received the following - - Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar - Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speakers (2) - Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer Out of the box it was really easy to use but I do have a complaint. Bose is pushing everything to phone apps and my wife doesn't really feel comfortable using apps. For the most part the setup went well, using the phone app on my phone I was able to get 2 of the 3 sound zones dialed in for listening levels about the room but for some reason the last one I could never get locked in. That really doesn't impact the performance of the soundbar, only the fine tuning for that zone. I also received the optional subwoofer and 2 surround speakers (all wireless except you do need a wall outlet for power). Linking everything in the app was painless, it recognized each speaker and the sub. You don't even need to worry which surround speaker is left or right because that swap is easily done via the app. Connecting is easy with a HDMI cable to the HDMI-ARC in/out on the TV to the HDMI-ARC in/out on the soundbar. You can also link via Bluetooth from a smart phone and it supports Airplay from Apple devices. I only wish it had an optical connection option. The app allows control of overall volume and an equalizer. We have DirecTV and using their remote I was able to add the soundbar to the remote via the DirecTV on TV settings. I have had issues with the soundbar not responding to the remote and sometimes even powering everything off and back on won't fix the issue so it's to the app to see if I can get the soundbar to respond to it. Unfortunately, my biggest gripe is that no remote is provided by Bose so if the TV provider remote isn't doesn't control and I'm not home at the time my wife will just have to do without and use the anemic TV speakers. I've scoured the internet to see if there is a better universal remote that I can use but haven't found one yet. Now on to the sound... paired with the Lifestyle speakers and subwoofer you get a really wonderful sound stage. I've had to knock down the subwoofer a bit due to it being a bit much for some shows, mainly action movies, rattle the windows but in a good way for my taste but not so much my wife's. The Lifestyle Ultra Speakers as surrounds provide very good response with very rich sound providing that really good engulfing sound. The only thing I can knock, besides no remote in the box, is the price. Individually purchased if you grab everything you are looking at around the $2500 mark. You could just get the soundbar now and then add the subwoofer if you really like the thump you get from them and you could get the surround speakers later unless you are good with just a 2.1 system (soundbar and subwoofer). Once I tackle the remote control issue I'll be 100% perfect but for the price a remote for convenience if nothing else should have been a no brainer.