I tested Bose's Lifestyle Ultra soundbar, and it raised the 'too much bass' debate in my home

Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar

pros and cons

Pros

• Excellent design
• Great app support
• Google Cast built-in

Cons

• Slightly overpriced
• Uncontrolled bass astatine large volume

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Bose has been successful the location theatre crippled for a agelong time, though its modern merchandise catalog favors innovation and updates successful its idiosyncratic audio and wearables categories. As a result, the company's location theatre lineup has been stale, with lone a fewer soundbars, rears, and subs to take from.

Also: Forget the soundbar: How I upgraded my TV audio with spare Bluetooth speakers

Still, the institution makes an effort to punctual its user basal of its location theatre roots, and the new Lifestyle Ultra lineup, consisting of a astute speaker, soundbar, and subwoofer, shows it wants to proceed its tenure successful the industry. 

I spent a week with the $1,099 Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, swapping my beloved Sonos Arc with Bose's latest offering. With the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar residing successful the aforesaid terms scope arsenic Sonos's and Sony's premium equivalents, Bose has large shoes to fill. 

Visible (and invisible) upgrades that matter

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar debuts with a nine-driver array, with 2 upfiring speakers, 4 front-facing speakers, 1 dedicated halfway tweeter, and 2 horizontal speakers. On its own, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar delivers a 5.0.2-channel arrangement.

Under the hood, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar intimately resembles its predecessor, the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar, arsenic some diagnostic a nine-driver array. However, Bose fitted the caller Lifestyle Ultra barroom with an improved AI-powered code enhancement algorithm, a microphone-enabled room-correction feature, a proprietary spatial audio upmixing software, and enhanced bass effect technology.

Jada Jones/ZDNET

Bose gave its premium soundbar a much-welcomed facelift, introducing a solid sheet on the topside and a touch-enabled dial of controls connected the bar's close side. Bose besides swapped squoval edges for rounded ones, resulting successful an elevated, modern look.

Overall, the soundbar is good; it does what it needs to do, particularly successful the midrange. The soundbar's halfway transmission handles dialog precise well, and Bose's AI-powered dialog enhancement sounds much earthy than immoderate competitors'. However, without outer rear channels, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar struggles to present immersive dependable connected its own.

That's excessively overmuch bass

Additionally, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar's bass response is weak, truthful the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer add-on is indispensable for a meaningful bass effect erstwhile watching movies oregon TV shows. The Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer would not lone adhd magnitude to the soundbar's little frequencies but besides offload immoderate of the accent the soundbar would different carnivore erstwhile handling heavy bass connected its own.

When watching aggravated scenes from "Dune: Part Two," the rumble of the movie's soundtrack often rattled the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, which successful crook rattled my TV basal and produced an annoying sound. Some radical whitethorn similar this crashing dependable effect, portion others, similar me, won't.

Also: Why the 'Subwoofer Crawl' is the lone mode I recovered the bass saccharine spot successful my surviving room

In comparison, my standalone first-gen Arc Ultra didn't bash the aforesaid erstwhile playing the aforesaid country from the aforesaid movie. The Sonos soundbar delivered a much controlled bass response, though Bose's midrange reproduction was louder and clearer. 

Still, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar carries the aforesaid $1,100 terms arsenic the Sonos Arc Ultra, Marshall Heston 120, and Samsung HW-Q800H, each of which present deeper, and astir importantly, tighter bass response.

One large drawback

The champion happening astir the Lifestyle Ultra postulation is that they run connected an unfastened ecosystem, offering multi-room audio via Google Cast and Apple AirPlay. Yet the Lifestyle Ultra postulation doesn't enactment backward compatibility with Bose's older modern location theatre products, which is simply a miss.

Though Bose doesn't connection galore location theatre products successful its existent catalog, interoperability among each of them would beryllium a plus; enactment for a wide scope of devices is what gives Sonos and Sony an borderline implicit Bose successful this context. According to Bose, you tin ligament the Bose Bass Module 700 to the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar -- that's it.

ZDNET's buying advice

The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is good; it's surely the champion from Bose, delivering refined dependable technologies, a cleanable design, and an unfastened ecosystem for Wi-Fi streaming. However, the Sonos Arc Ultra shares the aforesaid $1,099 terms tag. If bigger, much theatrical dependable is what you privation successful your surviving room, Sonos does it better.

Also: Your TV tin dependable a batch better: 7 casual but unexpected ways to amended audio quality

However, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar sounds large erstwhile playing music, and has plentifulness of astute talker features, including Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Alexa built in. Thus, it's a coagulated enactment for those looking for a astute talker that happens to beryllium a soundbar, alternatively than those funny successful a soundbar tuned for immersive movie-watching.