Well-Designed Home Audio That Comes With Caveats

When someone mentions Bose, I don’t immediately think of speakers. For me, the company is synonymous with noise-canceling headphones since I’ve spent years testing various QuietComfort products. However, Bose actually has a number of speakers under its belt, a lineup that comprises portable, home and living room models alike. The company’s latest home audio option, the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker ($299), is part of a trio of new Wi-Fi-connected devices that can be used as a multiroom setup or as part of a robust home theater configuration. As is typically the case with these types of speakers, the real question is how well Bose is poised to compete with the likes of industry-leading Sonos.

The LS Ultra Speaker is rather compact. At 7.27 x 4.77 x 6.59 inches and weighing just 3.7 pounds, it’s smaller than one of the Audio-Technica bookshelf speakers that flank my turntable. Bose’s latest speaker is about the same size as the Sonos Era 100 though, except the LS Ultra is about an inch and a half deeper. The overall shape here is more of an elongated cylinder or pill. A fabric speaker grille wraps around the front and sides of the device like a cover. And if you splurge for the limited-edition Driftwood Sand color, there’s a wood base for an even more refined look.

Inside, Bose has packed three drivers, including one up-firing speaker, alongside QuietPort acoustics for the company’s Cleanbass system. Up top, touch controls give you the ability to play/pause, skip tracks, adjust volume, activate Bluetooth, mute the mic and summon Alexa (more on that last one in a bit). The volume control is a radial slider ring that allows you to quickly swipe to make changes or be more precise with your tweaks. If you’d rather just tap on the + or – as if they were normal touch-based buttons, you can do that too.

The LS Ultra Speaker has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, in addition to a 3.5mm aux port around back. With a Wi-Fi connection, AirPlay and Google Cast are in the mix, both of which allow you to use the speaker as part of a multiroom setup. There’s no need to create rooms in the Bose app, you simply send the audio to each device via the AirPlay or Cast menu in your app of choice. Depending on your preferences, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. Personally, I did miss the ability to send audio to all rooms with a single tap like I could in the HEOS app with Denon’s speakers.

Bose is the first to support Alexa+ on non-Echo devices. The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar and a few of the company’s other products are all compatible. Amazon’s next-gen assistant arrived last year and delivers a big improvement over its predecessors. This is the only voice assistant that’s directly supported by the LS Ultra Speaker, so if you prefer Gemini or Siri, you’ll want to disable Alexa+ and mute the speaker’s microphone. A tiny red light on the top of the speaker lets you know the mic is disabled.

Bose equipped the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker with what it calls TrueSpatial technology for more immersive sound. And of course, that up-firing driver certainly helps with the dimensional audio. However, despite the three-driver setup and Bose’s bass acoustics, the speaker’s low-end capabilities are restrained. Don’t get me wrong, there’s ample kick drum thump in Bilmuri’s “Twice,” but the bass isn’t satisfyingly deep or nuanced.

The LS Ultra Speaker excels at overall clarity and details in the treble and midrange though. Vocals always cut through cleanly, and instruments like guitars, synths and horns consistently stand out in the mix. While it performs well with all genres, I do think the speaker is better suited for chill tunes: instrumental synth tracks, bluegrass and Midwest emo, as a few examples. I kept going back to the new American Football album and Watchhouse’s Rituals for the clean guitars and acoustic instruments respectively.

In the Bose app, the company gives you the ability to dial in the sound profile with a three-band EQ. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to make any tweaks that I felt really improved the stock tuning; I felt that increasing the bass only degraded the overall fidelity by muddying things up. Additionally, you can increase or decrease the level of the up-firing driver in the same menu, giving you the ability to alter that setting to your liking.

Like a lot of wireless speakers on the market today, the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker can be used as a stereo pair. The Bose app makes this setup super easy, as it asks if you want to add more speakers as part of a duo or home theater configuration when you first connect to them. Of course, you also have the option of leaving each one as a separate unit, which is what you’d do to put them in different rooms.

Despite everything looking correct in the app, I initially only heard music out of the first LS Ultra Speaker I set up. Then, weirdly, sound started coming out of the second one, but very delayed, and I couldn’t pause or control the playback at all — eventually it stopped on its own. Bose advised me that this was likely due to a connectivity issue and told me to make sure both speakers had up-to-date firmware and were connected to the 5GHz band on my Wi-Fi network. The company also recommended cycling audio sources and renaming the pairing in the app. None of that worked, but Bose’s last step was to turn the speakers off for 15 seconds, which finally did the trick.

Once I contended with all of that, I had the stereo pair my heart desired, but there was still one constant hiccup. When you pause the music, both speakers stop in unison, but when you resume the tunes, one starts before the other. Thankfully, when they both kick in, the audio is perfectly synced, but I still found this slightly annoying. Despite all of this, using two LS Ultra Speakers enhances the overall output, just as you’d expect. And if you’re planning to use one as a bookshelf speaker in your office or living room, I’d recommend investing a second for more balanced coverage. Being able to listen to separate audio channels is just a better experience.

While you can connect a turntable to the 3.5mm aux jack on these speakers, I don’t have the requisite RCA adapter to do so, so I haven’t been able to test the LS Ultra Speakers as part of a vinyl setup. Numerous Wi-Fi speakers support turntables and wired input, so that’s not unique to this Bose speaker.

If you’re hoping to use two LS Ultra Speakers to enhance your TV audio, I’ve got some bad news. This speaker isn’t designed to be the main sound source for TVs, even though it does have a wired input. Bose says using the 3.5mm aux port or Bluetooth will cause latency and lip sync issues. Of course, if you have an Apple TV, for example, you can go the AirPlay route, but that’s not ideal since you have to hop in the settings menu to send audio to the speakers each time you use that streaming box.

It’s not all bad news though. Bose built the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker to be used as rear surround speakers in a home theater setup. This means you can employ them alongside the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar and Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer for a complete audio system. Just note that even though Bose has other soundbars in its lineup, these speakers are only compatible with the LS Ultra Soundbar.

When it comes to Wi-Fi-enabled speakers that are capable of multiroom audio, Sonos is always the first name that comes to mind. Of course, so does the company’s massive app debacle that it’s still recovering from. If you’re willing to contend with some software frustrations, the Era 100 offers a lot of the same features as the LS Ultra Speaker for $80 less. Bluetooth connectivity is there alongside Wi-Fi, although the Sonos model doesn’t have an aux jack. Two Era 100s can be used as a stereo pair and they work as rear speakers with any of Sonos’ soundbars. You also get the benefit of Sonos’ Trueplay tuning for room calibration.

I’d be remiss not to mention the Denon Home 200 in this discussion. This speaker offers better sound quality than either the LS Ultra Speaker or the Era 100 thanks to its superior bass performance. The HEOS app you’ll use for settings and optional controls is also quick and reliable. The downside here is that the Home 200 is the most expensive of the lot at $399.

However, like the LS Ultra Speaker and Era 100, the Home 200 can be used as rear speakers, so long as you’re good with Denon’s Home 550 soundbar.

Bose’s Lifestyle Ultra Speaker certainly looks great on my shelf. I also enjoy the overall clarity and subtle detail this model produces, though I would love a bit more nuance in the low-end tone. Since there are better-sounding options for standalone speakers, I’d argue the LS Ultra Speaker is better suited as part of a home theater setup with the rest of the company’s latest gear.

Sure, you’ll likely be pleased with its standalone performance, although you may encounter some connectivity kinks with stereo pairing at first. And if you purchase multiple Lifestyle Ultra products, you’ll need to be okay with AirPlay and Google Cast for multiroom use. At the end of the day, you could probably do better if sound quality is your primary concern, but you could also do a lot worse, especially in terms of design.