Picking an upmarket New York townhouse with cavernous ceilings to demo the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker made it clear Bose was confident in its new wireless speaker’s ability to fill a space with sound. Having heard it first hand, I think that faith was well placed.
The baby of the new Lifestyle collection (which also includes the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar) is small yet mighty, with a unique internal layout giving its mix of forward- and up-firing drivers impressive amounts of oomph. It’s also smart, with native support for Amazon’s Alexa+ voice assistant, and flexible: you can use one solo, put two in a stereo pair, add more in a multi-room system, or create a 7.1.4-channel home cinema setup with the soundbar.
It arrives at $299/£299, sandwiching it right between the Sonos Era 100 and Era 300; pricing also puts multi-room rivals such as the Denon Home 200 and Bluesound Pulse Flex in the firing line. Here’s why, after a first listen, I think it might just outshine them all.
The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker will arrive in black and white smoke colours, plus a special Driftwood version which has a natural oak base. It’s a real looker, with more earthy tones on the unit body and fabric grille, but does command a $50/£50 higher asking price. I’d probably go for the white version, which slotted right in with the neutral decor of Bose’s New York townhouse demo rooms.
All three models are satisfyingly compact, taking up very little shelf space, while the sculpted shape will help it blend in to a wider range of homes than Bose’s earlier, boxier efforts. The wraparound grilles made from textured-knit fabric definitely help here. Bose has official wall mounts and floor stands too: I thought the latter looked very slickly integrated, with a channel that almost entirely hides the mains cable.
Each speaker has just an analogue line in at the rear, for hooking up a turntable or other wired source. Bluetooth 5.3 is here for a direct wireless connection, but seemingly only with support for AAC and SBC codecs. Controls up top handle playback, volume, Bluetooth pairing and muting the onboard mics with the lightest of touch-sensitive taps to the soft-touch finish.
There’s also a button to prompt Alexa; the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is the first of its kind outside of Amazon’s own lineup to come with Alexa+ support, albeit only in the US at launch. Other territories will roll out as Amazon expands availability. It worked well during my demo, responding with more natural language and understanding multi-stage questions that would’ve stumped the old Alexa.
Bose has redesigned its companion app to streamline the setup process, but after that you can skip it altogether for the apps you’re more familiar with: there’s Google Cast, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect on board, and speakers can be grouped into multi-room using Google Home or AirPlay. That also means it plays nicely with non-Bose wireless speakers: I saw it streaming simultaneously to a Google Nest Audio.
It’s a proper thumb in the eye to Sonos, which had nothing but trouble with its disastrous app update.
While a side-by-side comparison will have to wait for a full review, I also think Bose has scooped Sonos on sound. The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker might be smaller than the Era 300, but it delivers a serious sense of height and width. That’s partly because each unit has an up-firing mid-high driver as well as a forward-firing main driver and tweeter, but also because Bose’s TrueSpatial audio processing is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work.
I sat off to one side of the initial demo, didn’t feel like I’d missed out by not sitting in the sweet spot; tracks by Olivia Dean felt like they were coming from above the speaker, rather than directly out of it. The F1 movie soundtrack filled the room, not just a narrow radius around the front of the speaker. It was easily loud enough to fill the space, without being close to maximum volume.
The percussion on Leon Bridges’ Peaceful Place almost felt like it was on a separate plane to the vocals, which were wonderfully clear. I thought there was excellent high-end clarity, but was most impressed with how much bass such a small speaker was able to put out. Bose’s proprietary angled quietport bass port helps the 3in main driver get properly low, but keeping good separation so sub-bass and basslines didn’t blur together.
Things only got more expansive in stereo pair mode, with two speakers displaying excellent separation and working together to keep the height element balanced throughout the space. I’m looking forward to giving it a more thorough listen and finding out how it copes with a wider range of music.
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is going on sale from May 15 and is available to pre-order directly from Bose right now. Prices start at $299/£299 for the Black or White Smoke models, rising to $349/£349 for the Driftwood special edition.
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