Sonos has long been the only real player in the quality multi-room audio space. Google, Amazon and Apple have smart speakers that can play audio in multiple rooms. However, their focus is more on the smart assistant than multi-room audio. Bose has now decided it wants to get in on the multi-room action, launching a Lifestyle Ultra speaker system with a soundbar, subwoofer, and Dolby Atmos-capable speakers.
I’ve now spent a few months with these speakers, and while I think Sonos should be a little nervous, I don’t think the time has come for Sonos users to switch over just yet.
First impressions
What really stuck out to me was how quick and easy it was to set up this Bose system. Often when I set up Sonos speakers, it takes a few goes for the app to recognise them, and then a few more goes for the whole setup to complete.
With Bose, I plugged in the speaker, went into the app, answered the questions about Wi-Fi and passwords and whatnot, and then it was just done. There was a little faffing about when the time came to set up the whole home theatre system, and I needed to power cycle one of the rear speakers. But even then that detour only took a few minutes.
The speakers themselves look sleek; the Bose Lifestyle Ultra speaker is slim and unobtrusive, while the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer is an updated version of the woofer I used to love on my old Lifestyle 650 system.
Bose Lifestyle Ultra system specifications and price
| Audio channels (soundbar) | 5.1.2 speakers |
| Wireless connectivity | Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Wireless Connectivity, Network (WiFi Enabled) |
| Dimensions | Speaker: 18.47 cm x 12.11 cm x 16.75 cm (1.66 kg) Subwoofer: 32.68 cm x 29.47 cm x 29.47 cm (15.3 kg) Soundbar: 6.73 cm x 109.94 cm x 12.5 cm (6.5 kg) |
| Bluetooth version | 5.3 |
| Supported voice assistants | Amazon Alexa |
| Price | Speaker: $499.95 Subwoofer: $1,299.95 Soundbar: $1,799.95 |
| Warranty | 2 years in addition to Australian Consumer Law rights |
| Official website | Bose Australia |
Soundbar on its own
On its own, this is a pretty capable soundbar. It’s well-tuned for TV and movies, and the Spatial effect is impressive for a soundbar this small, in this price bracket.
It has nine drivers total onboard, including a tweeter, two PhaseGuide drivers (for virtual surround sound), two upward-firing drivers (for Spatial effects), and four 3.1 drivers to push out the rest of the audio frontwards.
It’s a beautiful piece of hardware that fits well in any room, and the on-device controls are handy for listening to music. It doesn’t have a remote, which might throw some older users, but as long as your TV has an eARC port, your TV remote should be able to control both.
One thing that I find annoying is that there are no extra HDMI inputs for audio passthrough. Some soundbars have extra ports so you don’t have to give up an HDMI port by plugging in the soundbar. This won’t affect many people, but those of us with a Blu-ray player, Apple TV, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X, PS5, soundbar and only four ports have to make choices when limitations like this come up.
As far as the standalone audio goes, it’s pretty decent for a standalone bar. I am firmly of the opinion that you should never use a soundbar (or any home theatre speakers) without a subwoofer, and Bose seems to agree with me, because this soundbar’s bass output is pathetic. High tones are good, and mid-tones are solid, but bass is a whisper, an idea, an echo of something that might be in another room.
The Dolby Atmos effects are pretty good. You’re not going to mistake yourself for being at the cinema, but it’s not nothing.
The problem is just when I compare it directly to the Sonos Arc Ultra, the more present bass, more emphasised Dolby Atmos effects, and more convenient app (more on that later) make it difficult to recommend the Bose over the alternative if just buying the bar.
Bose’s PhaseGuide does an excellent job of tricking you into thinking there could be rear speakers, if you forget what the actual effect of rear speakers sounds like. But that’s the only thing it’s got over the Arc Ultra.
Music
Using the Bose Lifestyle Ultra speakers on their own in separate rooms for multi-room audio is what makes this system so exciting. It’s good for Sonos to have competition. Unfortunately, the reason why people think Sonos needs more competition is because the Sonos app is bad (or at least was bad before the recent updates). The Bose app might be worse, and lacks a lot of the features that make Sonos special as a multi-room system.
In the Sonos app, you can add your streaming services to get the best-quality stream of your music playing in every room of the house. With Bose, you can use AirPlay 2 (in theory) to get a similar effect, though you can’t get proper lossless audio over AirPlay 2 and the downgrade is audible.
Unfortunately, half the time my MacBook Air, Mac Studio, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPad Pro just refuse to play music on the Bose system over AirPlay 2, saying it’s unavailable, so then I have to connect via Bluetooth, defeating the purpose. There are plenty of good Bluetooth speakers on the market; there are few multi-room audio systems.
Listening to the full home theatre system for music is quite good. It’s not in the same ballpark for music as my usual Sonos home theatre setup of a Sub 4, two Era 300s for rears and an Arc Ultra. But let’s go through a few songs.
Track-by-track analysis
“Simmer” by Hayley Williams
Williams’ vocals are rich, but the snare ghost notes are barely audible. I can follow the movement of the bass player, and I can feel the bass drum. But the cymbals are barely registering. The surround effect is pretty neat, though. I feel enveloped by the music.
“No Mercy” by Pvris
The separate subwoofer should be making this bass-heavy song absolutely thump home. And yet it’s missing all its sting. There’s no crispness to the snare, and Gunn’s voice lacks punch. This full system costs close to $4,000, and I should be in heaven right now, but I feel like I’m listening on a pair of $300 headphones.
“Everything At Your Feet” by Odesza
This song sounds so much better on these speakers than the other songs. The jingling sound sits above the rest of the track in a pretty literal sense due to how the spatial effect has placed it. The bass is thumping, her voice sounds ethereal, and the brass instrument sounds rich.
“A Concert Six Months From Now” by Finneas
What I love about listening to this song on Atmos speakers is the way the audience at the start just comes over you in a wave. That effect is perfectly recreated here, and his voice is just so rich and warm. The guitar fades into the background so much that I had to triple-check I didn’t have the SpeechClarity effect turned on (it was not).
“Hip-Hop Saved My Life” by Lupe Fiasco
The focus on vocals really works well for hip-hop. I can hear Fiasco’s vocal track so clearly on these speakers. But I want more of a blend with the music, and they just sound so separate. Like it’s trying to pick the dialogue out of a busy scene in a movie instead of presenting a song that an artist worked hard on.
A good home theatre system that’s part of a multi-room speaker system needs to be able to seamlessly move between movie tuning and music tuning. It has to be able to do both modes. This Lifestyle Ultra system just does not do that. It’s approaching all these songs like they’re movies, despite the app acknowledging that it’s no longer getting TV audio. For a system this expensive, billing itself as being part of a multi-room setup, it needs to be capable of doing more than one thing when there are other, better alternatives out there.
Switching gears to just using one of the rear speakers to listen to music, I am shocked that Bose is charging $549 for these speakers when they lack the punch of a Sonos Era 100 SL, which retails for $289.
Surround sound system for TV
Bringing the whole system together for the full Atmos surround sound movie experience is when the magic happens for the Lifestyle Ultra. While you can use the individual components by themselves, the system is more than the sum of its parts.
Adding the subwoofer (predictably) instantly solved the soundbar’s lack of bass, and the rear speakers bolstered the Atmos effect, making the surround sound more, well, surrounding.
My preferred test scenes for surround sound systems are:
That bit in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex is coming and you get that rumble that instantly sets that foreboding in your belly. The Bose Lifestyle Ultra system didn’t quite convey the rumble as much as I get on some other mid-to-high-level systems. Even at high volumes, it just didn’t feel or sound like a giant T-Rex was coming to eat me. While the Lifestyle Ultra subwoofer is good, it lacks some punch. The rear speakers did make it so that the roars enveloped me, though.
The opening scenes in Gravity, where Sandra Bullock and George Clooney hang out in space, going from calm to everything being bad. This scene is a good way to hear how the audio travels around you, and how clear the dialogue is. It sounds superb, so immersive. The audio travels so cleanly, and it builds the tension beautifully. Listening to the same audio using just the TV speakers loses the stress and takes the sting out of the film. While the Bose Lifestyle Ultra isn’t the same as the cinema experience, it’s close enough to it in this scene that the movie retains its power.
Any scene in Shadow and Bone on Netflix that has dialogue. Shadow and Bone was mixed extremely badly, to the point that many people gave up on it. This is where Bose’s dialogue boosting technology comes in. The subtitles still come in clutch, but it’s a lot easier to understand what’s being said than when just listening to the TV’s built-in speakers. That’s true of all decent soundbars, but the Bose Lifestyle Ultra dialogue-boosting software makes a noticeable difference.
Compared to a fully souped-up Sonos Atmos home theatre setup, the Bose Lifestyle Ultra home theatre system with a subwoofer, two rears (which are also Atmos-compatible) and the soundbar costs $3,769.80, which is a big chunk of change.
To get a fully Atmos Sonos system, you need to get the Era 300s as rears as well as the Arc Ultra and Sub 4, which clocks in at $4,366. However, the Era 300s are much larger, more powerful speakers than the Bose Lifestyle Ultra. The Bose speakers are more comparable to the Sonos Era 100; however, the Era 100 doesn’t have upward-firing drivers and so won’t do Atmos, but that system setup is $3,549.
I do think that the Era 300 system sounds $600 better than the Bose system, if not more. It’s a much richer, fuller, more vibrant sound profile, and I much prefer the tuning. But it’s also ridiculously expensive and overkill for most living rooms.
Choosing between the Era 100 Sonos system and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra System is a much more complicated choice. Again, I like the tuning of Sonos a lot more; it’s a richer sound. But the Bose has the full Atmos experience, whereas the Era 100 setup lacks that extra upward-firing effect in the rears. If I had to choose between the Era 100 setup and the Bose, I think the Sonos might narrowly win because of the higher-quality music playback and the tuning. But if Atmos was a key decision driver for someone, then the Bose would win that fight.
Who is the Bose Lifestyle Ultra system for?
It’s tricky to pin down who exactly Bose’s new system is made for. Bose might be going for the gap in the market left by Sonos’ recent software woes, providing a multi-room audio alternative.
It is a good option for people who want a good Dolby Atmos surround sound system for under $4,000. But the experience of using it as anything other than a home theatre system is a bit of a headache.
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