I examined Bose’s Lifestyle Ultra soundbar, and it raised the ‘an excessive amount of bass’ debate in my house

Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar

professionals and cons

Pros

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

Cons

• Slightly overpriced
• Uncontrolled bass at loud quantity

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

Bose has been within the house theater recreation for a very long time, although its fashionable product catalog favors innovation and updates in its private audio and wearables classes. As a consequence, the corporate’s house theater lineup has been stale, with only some soundbars, rears, and subs to select from.

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

Still, the corporate makes an effort to remind its client base of its house theater roots, and the brand new Lifestyle Ultra lineup, consisting of a wise speaker, soundbar, and subwoofer, reveals it needs to proceed its tenure within the business. 

I spent every week with the $1,099 Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, swapping my beloved Sonos Arc with Bose’s newest providing. With the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar residing in the identical value vary as Sonos’s and Sony’s premium equivalents, Bose has massive footwear to fill. 

Visible (and invisible) upgrades that matter

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar debuts with a nine-driver array, with two upfiring audio system, 4 front-facing audio system, one devoted heart tweeter, and two horizontal audio system. On its personal, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar delivers a 5.0.2-channel association.

Under the hood, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar intently resembles its predecessor, the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar, as each function a nine-driver array. However, Bose fitted the brand new Lifestyle Ultra bar with an improved AI-powered speech enhancement algorithm, a microphone-enabled room-correction function, a proprietary spatial audio upmixing software program, and enhanced bass response expertise.

Bose gave its premium soundbar a much-welcomed facelift, introducing a glass panel alongside the topside and a touch-enabled dial of controls on the bar’s proper aspect. Bose additionally swapped squoval edges for rounded ones, leading to an elevated, fashionable look.

Overall, the soundbar is sweet; it does what it must do, particularly within the midrange. The soundbar’s heart channel handles dialogue very properly, and Bose’s AI-powered dialogue enhancement sounds extra pure than some opponents’. However, with out exterior rear channels, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar struggles to ship immersive sound by itself.

That’s an excessive amount of bass

Additionally, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar’s bass response is weak, so the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer add-on is critical for a significant bass response when watching films or TV reveals. The Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer wouldn’t solely add dimension to the soundbar’s decrease frequencies but in addition offload a few of the stress the soundbar would in any other case bear when dealing with deep bass by itself.

When watching intense scenes from “Dune: Part Two,” the rumble of the film’s soundtrack usually rattled the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, which in flip rattled my TV stand and produced an annoying sound. Some individuals might like this crashing sound impact, whereas others, like me, will not.

Also: Why the ‘Subwoofer Crawl’ is the one means I discovered the bass candy spot in my lounge

In comparability, my standalone first-gen Arc Ultra did not do the identical when enjoying the identical scene from the identical film. The Sonos soundbar delivered a extra managed bass response, although Bose’s midrange replica was louder and clearer. 

Still, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar carries the identical $1,100 value because the Sonos Arc Ultra, Marshall Heston 120, and Samsung HW-Q800H, all of which ship deeper, and most significantly, tighter bass response.

One main disadvantage

The smartest thing in regards to the Lifestyle Ultra assortment is that they function on an open ecosystem, providing multi-room audio by way of Google Cast and Apple AirPlay. Yet the Lifestyle Ultra assortment does not assist backward compatibility with Bose’s older fashionable house theater merchandise, which is a miss.

Though Bose does not supply many house theater merchandise in its present catalog, interoperability amongst all of them can be a plus; assist for a variety of units is what provides Sonos and Sony an edge over Bose on this context. According to Bose, you may wire the Bose Bass Module 700 to the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar — that is it.

ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation

The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is sweet; it is actually the perfect from Bose, delivering refined sound applied sciences, a clear design, and an open ecosystem for Wi-Fi streaming. However, the Sonos Arc Ultra shares the identical $1,099 price ticket. If larger, extra theatrical sound is what you need in your lounge, Sonos does it higher.

Also: Your TV can sound loads higher: 7 simple however surprising methods to enhance audio high quality

However, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar sounds nice when enjoying music, and has loads of sensible speaker options, together with Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Alexa in-built. Thus, it is a stable choice for these searching for a wise speaker that occurs to be a soundbar, slightly than these all for a soundbar tuned for immersive movie-watching.