Customer Ratings & Reviews

This center channel is unlike any other center channel I’ve had. I don’t know how many speakers are in it, but it produces sound that feels like it is coming from different directions. There is an option called ADAPTIQ to tune it to your room. The set-up process has you put a microphone that is mounted on a headband on your head. Then it has you move to your 5 favorite places in the room so it can tailor the sound to give you the best listening experience for those seats. When you hook it up, it works best with your ARC HDMI input. If you don’t have one available, then the next best is the Optical input. I have an older A/V Receiver and unfortunately it didn’t have an extra ARC output. I only have one HDMI output and that goes to my Projector. I have Optical inputs, but no outputs, so I was forced to use a splitter on my HDMI output. The splitter gave me an Optical output and it seems to be working in 2 channel mode only. I’ve tried different output settings from my A/V Receiver, but it seems with this splitter only the 2 channel option works. This speaker is a monster. It is nearly 12 lbs, about 41” long and 2.25” high. The piano black finish is very nice. The sound comes out the front as you would expect, but also has 2 large oval holes on top at each end. The quality seems top notch, I have never been disappointed with any of my Bose products and this one is very well made and the fit and finish is very good. I like to stream music from my phone and have a few different devices that I use in different parts of the house. This speaker allows me to stream music wirelessly to it. As long as I am in range of the speaker, I can select it from my iPhone and start playing my music. You can also use the Bose Music app with it. From the app you can control the center channel, height channel, base & treble. Change audio tracks, there is a AV Group Sync and Audio Delay setting. When setting it up, you can add Music Services, it has Chromecast built-in and has a voice assistant feature. You can add additional surround speakers or a base module. As you can see it is a very full featured sound bar. If you are looking for a sound bar and are into Bose products, then I don’t think you will be disappointed.

When I received the Bose smart ultra soundbar, I was a little disappointed that my sample did not have the wireless subwoofer as part of the package. The disappointment came to an end once I actually had a chance to install the soundbar and set it up for my particular listening location. Setup was fairly easy. The soundbar packaging included a small setup guide that basically contained four easy steps. You unpackage, connect to your television, connect to power and then download the app. The app walks you through the rest of the setup process. After I connected the Bose Ultra soundbar to the app, the first thing that happened was a firmware download which was automatic and for the most part seamless. I did have to unplug the soundbar and plug it back in to reset everything and finish the update. In the app you have pretty much full control in changing inputs on the soundbar as well as turning on and off various features. One feature that I have come to really enjoy is the voice enhancement setting that allows the speaker to emphasize voices in movies and shows. This makes dialogue so much clearer. The sound is great, even without a sub. You will get a taste of what it can do as soon as you power it up and you get the deep startup sound. Size is great, not a huge speaker, so you shouldn't have any problem finding room for it under your television and it also sounds good as a stand alone speaker for Bluetooth music. I still like bass, especially with action movies, but this speaker with its Dolby Atmos speakers and full range sound almost makes me forget that there isn't a sub in the room. Bose has done a fine job on this line of sounbars and I think this would make a fine addition to anyone with a medium to somewhat large room looking for better sound.

Purchased 2 weeks ago, still haven't received it, terrible customer service

Not as good at they say . Tv alone soun way betteer

Having trouble with connecting to my tv through my Apple TV. When it finally connects the sound is awesome.

After 10+ years of service from my previous sound bar, I suddenly found myself with a malfunctioning one and starting looking at options. Fortunately I had the opportunity to experience this latest product from Bose and fell in love! The product is easy to set up right out of the box and includes everything you need for connectivity. I took advantage of the HDMI connection most modern sound bars and TVs support and after just a few settings changes on the TV I was ready to go. One advantage to this setup is that the TV remote controls the sound bar volume, meaning you don’t have to use the included remote unless you really want to. Setup is accomplished using the Bose Music app which is pretty straightforward. One unique element is the ‘headset’ included that you plug into the sound bar for tuning purposes. Basically you sit in the positions you most frequently use when watching TV and the sound bar picks up that positioning to fine tune your audio quality. I’ve seen this done using your phone with competing products and my only concern is having to remember to dig out this extra accessory if I ever switch rooms or move. Sound quality is why you buy Bose products and I will tell you this one does not disappoint. Audio clarity is outstanding, with built in boosting for dialogue to help make it come out to the front instead of being muddied by background sound/music. I can say without a doubt this sounds night and day better than the product it replaced and I look forward to many years of use.

I've always loved Bose sound bars. They always offer great sound and this new Bose Ultra Smart Sound bar is the best yet in my opinion Coming in at about 41" long with a height of a hair over 4" the Ultra packs a lot in what I consider to be quiet a small frame. It houses 9 speakers which consist of 6 full range transducers, two custom upwards firing dipole speakers and a center tweeter. All this gives you extremely immersive audio while watching your movies or playing your games. This has dolby Atmos support and it really does work well when in use, it amazing how this soundbar can make it seem like you have speakers around you and not just firing in front of you. It really does seem like you have a speaker above you at times. If you're watching something that isn't in dolby Atmos then truespace does a pretty good job of trying to give you that similar experience. While not quite what you get with Atmos it still does a good job of sound separation. High marks for Bose on how this works. One big problem I've found with sounbars is dialogue being drowned out by explosions or any other loud noise but with the Ultra this is greatly improved as it uses something called AI dialogue mode which makes so you can still hear spoken word during fire fights and races. I find nothing worse than watching a movie only to stop it to change my sound settings to hear what people are saying and then removing all the action noise. It totally kills the audio experience and Bose has done a great job of not needing to do that. You can use Bose simple sync with this which allows you to connect your other Bose headphones and speakers, while I didn't try this feature it's nice to have options like this. This soundbar is also voice activated with Bose voice 4voice. When I connected via HDMI ARC I could turn on my TV and soundbar with my voice, it also utilizes amazon Alexa. It works really well. It also have Bose app support which you use to setup the soundbar, it's very simple to use and makes the experience much better Apple airplay2 and Spotify also work here but I didn't test those as I don't use those services. Overall this is the best soundbar I've owned. The audio is crisp, clear and immersive. Voices come through really well even in the high octane moments. Setup is easy, the app is well laid out and the size is respectful.

Summary: The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar delivers a clear cinematic experience with a lot of extras that challenges the competition to step their game up. Pros: - Sounds great out of the box, even better with Adaptiq tuning on set up. The Bose quality everyone expects. - Can modify sound to your tastes with App control of center channel, height, base and treble. Especially useful to fit in different size rooms. - Insane volume range (loud) - New AI dialogue mode makes hearing movie dialog easier to hear than ever. - Decent App makes it easy(ish) to set up, easy to use, and you put the provided remote in a drawer. - Decent build, easy to place. - Decent Dolby Atmos support with up firing side speakers. - Decent support for Apple Airplay,Roku, Alexa, Google Home, Android and Chromcast. - Built in wifi, Bluetooth, and ethernet. HDMI and optical inputs. Cons: - Does not support Apple Siri. Okay, not that big of a con. - Limits you to Bose accessories. Admittedly most companies try to limit you to their ecosystem. A Matter of Taste: - Black minimalistic design with glass top, should look great in most homes but your tastes may vary. - Typical minimalistic instructions, scan the code, forces you to download the Bose App, and then into set up which can be time consuming with the Adaptiq tuning which has you sit in five different places in the room wearing a provided headset with microphone. And they mean 5. It can tell if you sit in the same place twice. But the results are worth it. So buck up. - Only one HDMI e-arc port. Some like two to form a chain. The Full Word: I'm not going to repeat the pros and cons, but expand on a few themes. It is easy to recommend the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar to Bose enthusiasts. It incorporates all the positives of the preceding top of the line, Dolby Atmos support, pristine audio, Adaptiq tuning, wide variety of inputs, and classy look, and adds in a well designed App (if you have suffered with poor Apps you know how impressive this is) and a new AI dialogue mode that clarifies movie dialog easier making it easy to hear. If you are new to Bose, well, let's dig a bit deeper and return to the AI dialogue mode and the dirty little secret of ALL soundbars, and that is they work to deliver a simulated surround sound experience, but in the end, it is hard to beat physically discrete speakers around you. That is why Bose and others also sell discrete side speakers and bass modules to upgrade your experience. What does this have to do with dialog? Well, a film's sound mixer technician(s) will utilize separate sound channels to spread out the sound, and the dialog comes through a separate center channel (speaker) making it clean and crips. That works well with a 3D aural experience (multiple discrete speakers), but soundbars by design cram the 3D simulation together and dialog often comes out muddied and hard to hear in comparison to the booming effects of some movies. Hence Bose introduces AI dialogue mode, which balances the dialog and surround sounds to the Ultra's unique sound pattern and the result is dialog is clear again. Pro tip. Turn OFF the AI mode for music which typically does not have booming surround sound effects. And while we are on the subject of just how well does the Bose Ultra Soundbar succeed in a full cinematic experience? For many it will be all they need or want, it's plenty loud and gives you the feeling that sound is spread out. You won't be fooled into thinking speakers are behind you, but more requires more money and more space and some just won't want to do this. The Ultra is definitely heads and tails above simpler speaker systems. And for those that have the budget and space for more, Bose gives you some great options. And check out all those built in input options, HDMI, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, Apple Airplay, Chromecast, Spotify, optical audio, if you can't find a way to connect to your soundbar, it is time to upgrade your source device. I know I could hook up all my devices (mostly Apple) wirelessly (besides the TV) and it just worked flawlessly. And it probably goes without saying, besides Dialog AI, and the tuned surround sound experience, the 'smart' part of the smart Ultra Soundbar, is full integration with Alexa and Google Home. Sorry Apple, you are excluded from this table. In my mind, all that is good to great, but what about sound quality you ask? That's the hardest thing to comment because audio is such a subjective matter, but I found the sound to be clean and crips at moderate volumes, but got muddy at high volumes. And by high, I mean your neighbors would be pounding the walls if you are in an apartment, or calling the cops after 10 if you are in a home. If you have doubts, I would recommend you listen for yourself, but I would say that about any speaker system. Where the Bose performs well is allowing you to customize the sound to your preferences in the App. Which by the way, I will repeat, the App works well for me.

I'm gratefully surprised with the awesome experience now when I watch TV. The sound is super good, loud and cristal clear. The videos on YouTube finally I enjoyed a lot, specially the orchestra music. And the movies with low volume speaking now I can hear it without rising too much the volume to disturb neighbors. Higley recommended. The super easy setup is fantastic, now I can control my TV, volume and cable box (tivo) with one control and with my voice, alexa turn on TV, easy like that.

Now, complete transparency up front… I am using this Bose soundbar on a bedroom tv. It’s not my main source of entertainment. With that said, I’m very impressed overall with this soundbar and the ease of setting up. Using an included microphone-laden tiara and the app, the setup took literally less than 10 minutes. Once set up, I played a few of my go-to demo movies for Atmos. Even though it’s a soundbar and requires the sound waves to bounce the sound, this soundbar does a convincing approximation of Atmos. You can ALMOST hear separation in the channels. Soundbar technology has come a long way! That said, I ordered the optional surround speakers and a bass module to get the full effect. When those pieces get delivered, I expect my enjoyment of the Bose Ultra to improve considerably. The soundbar has some of the best low frequency audio I’ve ever heard in the category, but still has a noticeable drop off point. For instance, watching Jurassic Park’s t-rex rain scene one expects to feel the footfalls of the rex, and the vibration of its roar. Without a subwoofer, the rex sounds like it’s floating. You don’t get the immersion of an impact. The roar doesn’t ring in your chest. So I highly recommend picking up a base module. The surround effects are pretty good. It does a satisfying job of wrapping you in an audio bubble, but I like a lot of shooting and action. Movies like John Wick and Starwars. With major effects like car driving or space ship battles, the Atmos sound is perfectly fine. However, with more spatially pointed sounds such as bullets or laser fire, the virtual surround sounds “boomerangy”. I’m hoping having physical surrounds will help mend that slight discomfort. Dialog is CRYSTAL CLEAR! Disturbingly so! Bose really has dialed in its technology for clarifying conversations. I was able to turn off closed captioning and follow conversations in typical Hollywood fare. So in summary, I really am impressed with the Bose Ultra. It’s a huge step forward in audio processing by the wizards at Bose. I truly look forward to adding a few accessories to complete the experience.

This is a really great soundbar and it was really easy to setup out of the box. The sound is crisp, and just sounds really great - you don’t even miss not having a wireless subwoofer or other speaker. The voice control works pretty well too but I mainly use the remote. As the title mentions, it didn’t appear to come with mounting brackets but it looks compatible with them as rubber resting pieces on the bottom remove to expose screw holes. Outside of that though, I have 0 complaints. The Bose TrueSpace technology continues to impress but upmixing the audio. The AI dialogue mode also does a really great job of making noises sound more distinct so it’s easy to follow what you’re watching with all the background music. Music itself also sounds really great. The soundbar itself is a design innovation as it just looks sleek and modern, and it looks like a premium piece of technology as well. Overall, Bose continues to lead the pack in terms of audio technology and I highly recommend this soundbar.

Great sound very easy to install and set up was a breeze

I just bought and hooked this up today. So far, it is great sound from a single soundbar. I like Bose products in general. I do not have the base or rear surround sound speakers, but I have read that those only add to the sound quality. I bought it on sale for Black Friday.

Great sound. Easy to install. The wireless sub and surround speakers make it easy to place them in optimal postions.

Outstanding sound. My only comment would be that in some instances the voice clarity could use improvement, maybe a feature that would increase the center channel even more.

If you look for Surround system for watching movies only, i have hard time to say which one is better Sonos or the BOSE, i love BOSE overall and has been always fan, BUT if you look to buy system which you can listen MUSIC as well, its a BAD CHOICE, and btw SONOS is the worst. Because is Dolby atmos system, and has no option for ALL STEREO channels, most of the streaming music sounds AWFUL, YOU TUBE MUSIC also! BOSE performed better in the music than SONOS, and little worse than JBL, but if you are ready to compromise on SURROUND SOUND in the movies so you can listen music as well, go with NAKAMICHI SHOKWAFE 9.1, thats UNIVERSAL ALL IN SOUND BAR FOR BOTH movies AND music and VERY POWERFUL ONE AS WELL !!!

Amazing voice clarity even at low volume. Nice Dolby Atmos effects. Easy setup. Replaced an old soundbar and stand alone subwoofer that would cut out during pauses in streamed content such as YouTube.

I always buy Bose some products are great others are finicky this is that finicky one I upgraded from the 700 for the ai sound voice feature seems like it works but the constant disconnects from your device the constant not turning on when you turn tv or cable box on has me calling tech support 5 times since Christmas Day. Extremely annoying and frustrating I just can’t get it to work consistently

Two stars for the sound you get when it actually works. I’ve owned several other brands and they’ve ALL worked seamlessly with my tv. DO NOT BUY THIS unless you love endless glitches. Half the time I get no sound, half the time it shuts my tv off without prompting, turns it back on without prompting, etc… I’ve updated, changed the settings, unplugged, replugged, everything to get this garbage to work. I gave it too many chances and now I’m stuck with it and can’t return it. Please save yourself the headache and buy a different brand. I wanted it to work so bad but it’s simply not in the cards for me I guess. Waste of time and money unfortunately.

Upgraded the soundbar 500 to this one and have no regrets.