Hands on: Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar review

Building a family of great-sounding home audio products that can be used in isolation or together as a system is a tricky task. Bose will be hoping its new Lifestyle Collection can succeed where many have tried and failed.

Consisting of a Dolby Atmos soundbar, wireless subwoofer and wireless speaker, the new range was demonstrated at a special press preview where we could see and hear what it has to offer.

During the event, we got some hands-on time with the flagship Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. We were able to hear it both in isolation and with the rest of the family in a full-blown Dolby Atmos surround sound system. Here are our initial thoughts.

Price

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is priced at £1000 / €1000 / $1099 / AU$1800, which places it firmly against the Sonos Arc Ultra (£999 / $999 / AU$1799).

The Sonos rival is not only a five-star product, but it’s also the current class-leader, having picked up a What Hi-Fi? Award in 2025 for its troubles. If you want the best Dolby Atmos soundbar we’ve tested at this level, the Sonos is the one to beat.

Another close rival is the Sony Theatre Bar 9, which started life a little more expensive than the Bose when it launched a couple of years ago, but has dropped from £1399 / $1400 / AU$1795 to around the £999 mark if you shop around online.

Design

It’s fair to say that soundbars don’t tend to be the most attractive pieces of tech. Credit to Bose, though – it has done a good job trying to elevate the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar’s appearance above the long plastic rectangles we tend to see dominating the category.

The ’bar is covered in a textured-knit fabric (available in either black or the white smoke finish, above), which feels relatively premium and is nice to the touch.

Stretching out across the ’bar is an attractive, sleek glass top, built into which is a circular touch-sensitive control panel. This allows you to control music playback and volume via a combination of tapping and sliding your finger around the inner edge clockwise (volume up) ot anti-clockwise (volume down).

That glass top stops short of the edges of the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar because it needs to leave room for its full-range up-firing drivers to do their work.

There’s one of these at either end of the bar, firing sound up at 90 degrees to add height and immersion to movie soundtracks. Note that this means the bar isn’t suited to being under a shelf with a TV above, as this will block the sound.

Across the front of the bar are four ‘racetrack’ drivers (the far left and right ones are full-range) and two of Bose’s PhaseGuide drivers, which use special processing to spread sound to areas where there aren’t actually any speakers.

On the rear, you’ll find two of Bose’s QuietPorts, which work with the company’s CleanBass technology and internal digital signal processing (DSP) to deliver low frequencies in a deep, controlled way with minimal distortion.

The soundbar’s dimensions are 6.7 x 111 x 12.5cm (hwd), and it tips the scales at just less than 7kg. For comparison, the Sonos Arc Ultra is a little bigger, measuring 7.5 x 118 x 11cm although it’s also a little lighter at 6kg.

For our demonstration, the Bose was used with a 75-inch flatscreen TV, but it would look equally at home with a 65-inch or 55-inch model. It can be wall-mounted, although the mount itself is optional and costs £34 / €39 / $49 / AU$69.

Features

Physical connections are limited to ethernet and a single, eARC-compatible HDMI socket. It’s a shame Bose hasn’t seen fit to include any additional HDMI 2.1 inputs – the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 includes one, although the Sonos Arc Ultra doesn’t.

Wi-fi is onboard, and streaming comes via Google Cast, Apple AirPlay or Spotify Connect. The soundbar also supports Bluetooth 5.3. Tidal Connect isn’t supported by the soundbar (or Lifestyle Ultra Speaker) at launch, but we have been assured that it’s in the pipeline.

To set the bar up, you’ll need to head into the Bose app, which has been given an overhaul to make things more intuitive, with fewer button presses required to get up and running.

As mentioned previously, Dolby Atmos is supported, but DTS isn’t. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise – the Sonos Arc Ultra is in the same boat – but it’s worth noting that Sony did find room to include it on its Bravia Theatre Bar 9, and Disney+ does now offer a DTS:X audio option for some of its content.

To calibrate the soundbar for your particular room layout, Bose’s CustomTune technology works with the microphone in your smartphone (iOS or Android) and analyses your room dimensions, surfaces and furniture placement.

In the app, you can also dive in and alter sound levels manually if you think they require a bit of extra tweaking. You are likely to find yourself in the app quite a bit, as you don’t get a physical remote control supplied with the soundbar.

Sound

As with any product listened to only briefly at a press event, it’s tricky to nail down exactly how the unit performs – especially in a room that is completely new to you.

Our demo took place in a space that should really play to the strengths of the Bose: a relatively simple square room, with bare walls and little in the way of soft furnishings to stop reflections and the spread of sound.

We start with a clip from the epic sci-fi movie Dune, and the Bose gets to work immersing us in the middle of a violent sandstorm. As the soundbar starts whipping up particles above and around our seating position, it seems to do a good job of spreading the effects across the soundfield.

We are listening at quite a high volume, and the soundbar seems to handle the pressure of the scene and the drama without showing too many signs of stress. As the on-screen action goes from all-out chaos to relative calm, the bar seems to communicate the switch in dynamics relatively well.

We switch to a scene from Ray to showcase the Bose’s Speech Clarity mode, which claims to be able to boost dialogue but not any other effects. Without the mode on, as Ray Charles crosses the road deep in conversation with his manager, it sounds more like a mumble.

Then, with Speech Clarity mode switched onto its highest setting, the dialogue does seem to be lifted out of the hustle and bustle of the effects around it, with the edges of words a little clearer and better defined. This could come in handy during late-night viewing, where you don’t want the surround effects boosting but need a bit of a dialogue boost.

To showcase the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer and its impact on music, Bose plays Mi Corazon by Jacob Collier in stereo. There’s a decent spread of percussion, and when the sub kicks in, there's an injection of extra weight, and those low-frequency bass kicks are reinforced with a greater sense of solidity. Adding the soundbar, they immediately hit harder with more heft and body behind them.

Bose then adds a pair of Lifestyle Ultra Speakers as surrounds, so we are listening to a 7.1.4 Atmos system, and plays a clip from 6 Underground by Michael Bay.

As Ryan Reynolds is chased through Florence by the mafia and Italian police, effects are flying in all directions, with screeching tyres, gunshots, and a deep, pulsing heartbeat, all vying for your attention. And the system seems to do a good job of immersing you in the action. Detail levels seem ok, but we need to spend more time testing the bar to hear the true extent of its abilities.

The last scene we are shown is Queen’s Live Aid performance from Bohemian Rhapsody, which sounds relatively punchy and powerful through the soundbar. It’s hard not to hear the impact of the roar from the crowd as they explode into life when the band appears and they eagerly lap up Freddie’s direction. There seems to be a good, expansive spread of sound as they sing along with the frontman while he shows off his impressive vocal range.

When Hammer To Fall kicks in, there seems to be a decent amount of energy and life to the guitars and drums – but again, we really need more time with the soundbar to hear just how musical it is and how well it sticks with the tempo and rhythm of a range of different tracks.

Initial verdict

In a market still dominated by Sonos, it's good to see the arrival of a potential new rival from Bose, and we are being promised a big overhaul in terms of design and technology in an attempt to position itself as a serious rival.

Bose’s previous flagship, the Smart Ultra Soundbar, struggled to impress our review team, so we hope this new model is much more competitive when it arrives in our test room for a thorough evaluation.

MORE:

Read our Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar review

Our pick of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars for all budgets

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9: which flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar is better?