The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar ($1,099) replaces the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar ($899) in the company's lineup and joins the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker ($299) and Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer ($899) as part of a new product family for your living room. It looks sleek under your TV, sounds rich and clear, and handles demanding multichannel content well. I wish it had more physical connections and pushed out deeper bass without the help of a subwoofer. For Bose aficionados, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar makes a lot of sense as part of a home theater or multi-room system. Ultimately, the highly capable Sonos Arc Ultra ($1,099) is a stronger standalone soundbar thanks to its superior bass and more immersive audio, which is why it remains our Editors' Choice for soundbars.

Design: Good Looks for Under-TV Nooks

The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is a pretty handsome piece of hardware. Bose has wrapped the chassis in a textured knit fabric grille that feels closer to a piece of furniture than a typical slab of black plastic, and when coupled with the glass top, it looks utterly distinctive. I like the look of it. It's still unmistakably a soundbar, but also like high-end gear that's been well thought out. The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar comes in Black or White Smoke; I received the latter for review. 

The soundbar measures 43.3 inches wide, 2.6 inches tall, and 4.9 inches deep, and it weighs 14.3 pounds. It's not quite as wide or as tall as the Sonos Arc Ultra (46.4 by 4.4 by 2.9 inches, 13 pounds), but it's a little deeper. It should easily fit in front of any TV without blocking the bottom of the screen, though it's likely too wide to fit between your TV's feet (if it has them). Make sure you have enough depth for the soundbar to go in front of the feet, if your TV isn't mounted. You can't place it on a shelf, which would block its upfiring speakers.

(Credit: Christian de Looper)

The controls are on top, and they're reasonably intuitive, for the most part. They're located in and near a circular cutout in the glass. You play and pause audio by tapping the play/pause button, which also lets you skip forward a track with a double-tap or back with a triple-tap. You can adjust the volume up and down by tapping the dedicated buttons or by swiping your finger around the inside of the glass cutout. There are additional buttons for pairing via Bluetooth and muting the microphone.

Notably, there's no physical remote. The soundbar relies on HDMI CEC, so your TV remote handles volume and power. This worked fine in testing.

Connectivity is solid, though not incredible. You get one HDMI eARC port, Ethernet, a subwoofer output, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.3. There's no second HDMI input for video pass-through, and unfortunately, no 3.5mm aux input. Streaming is handled via Apple AirPlay 2, Google Cast, and Spotify Connect. Tidal Connect isn't supported at launch, though Bose says it's coming.

The soundbar offers nine drivers in total, including a 1-inch center tweeter, two 8-inch PhaseGuide drivers, two upfiring 2.5-inch drivers, and four 3.1-inch racetrack transducers. That adds up to a 5.0.2 configuration with Dolby Atmos support. What you don't get is DTS, in any form. The Arc Ultra doesn't have DTS, either, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating if you want to enjoy DTS:X-encoded spatial audio.

Also like the Arc Ultra, the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar supports expandability, which is always nice. You can connect it to the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer and Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speakers. It's not cheap, but it is slightly less expensive to buy the full kit for $2,696 than to buy the full Sonos Arc Ultra set, which adds the Sonos Sub 4 and two Era 300 speakers, for a total of $2,956. 

(Credit: Christian de Looper)

One major missing feature: The ability to connect the soundbar to Bose's headphones. This is a surprising omission. The Bose Smart Soundbar ($549) connects to the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds ($299) for immersive, surround-sound-like audio. I expected Bose to expand this feature to its popular noise-cancelling headphones—to match Sonos' similar feature—not to drop it altogether. Alas, Bose's new soundbar does not support private listening.

In addition to the soundbar itself, Bose provides an HDMI cable and a power cable. Anything else you need, like mounting hardware or an aux cable, will need to be purchased separately.

App Experience: Setup Simplified

Bose refreshed its mobile app (available for Android and iOS) ahead of the soundbar's arrival, and it does help a little. Setting up the entire system took hardly any time at all. All I had to do was position and connect the soundbar itself, turn it on, and follow the on-screen instructions. After which, it gave me the choice to connect the Lifestyle Subwoofer and Lifestyle Speakers that I also tested, all in the same flow. Including unboxing, I was up and running in around 10 minutes. (It helped that I already had power cables in the proper locations.)

(Credit: Bose/PCMag)

Once up and running, the app prompts you to configure it with CustomTune, which is Bose's take on room calibration. The process takes about 10 minutes, and you’ll need to sit in three different spots around your living room, holding your phone, while it runs the tests.

The app offers a decent selection of features, and they're organized intuitively. You can switch the audio source between TV, Bluetooth, and AirPlay, connect additional speakers to the system, and tweak the audio.

The audio tab includes a three-band EQ for bass, mids, and treble, along with tools to raise or lower the volume of the center channel, height channels, or surround channels. You can also adjust the subwoofer level if you have one connected. Finally, you can use the app to set up Alexa+. The app has everything most people will need.

Sound: Bose Doesn't Quite Nail the Bass

I was able to test the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar both on its own and with the subwoofer and two surround speakers connected as a system. Here, I mostly discuss how the soundbar performs on its own.

Generally speaking, with CustomTune enabled, the soundbar performs well. It produces crisp, detailed audio with good bass—but I highly recommend buying the subwoofer to use alongside it. With the subwoofer, you can expect similar depth and fullness as the Arc Ultra with Sonos' equivalent subwoofer. Without one, the Arc Ultra delivers a better bass response than the Bose.

(Credit: Christian de Looper)

On The Knife's "Silent Shout," the soundbar delivers reasonably thumpy audio, though it lacks some of the sub-bass the track relies on. The track doesn't sound thin, and the bass works well with a robust midrange and clear highs.

The missing sub-bass is a bit more apparent on Kendrick Lamar's "Loyalty." The sub-bass line at the 0:34-second mark is often hard to miss, but the soundbar struggles to produce those super-low notes, permitting only the uppermost ones to burble through. Few soundbars can get this low, but with the subwoofer, the track gets the full treatment it deserves.

The soundbar is more than capable of handling Bill Callahan's "Drover." Callahan's deep vocal and the driving kick drum sound robust. More importantly, the percussion, like the cymbals, has good sizzle, while the acoustic guitar sounds natural, though somewhat muted.

(Credit: Christian de Looper)

Soundbars differ from other speakers in that they're designed to amplify sound from movies and TV shows, and the Bose performs quite well in that respect, too.

In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the soundbar delivers an immersive surround experience, even without the surround speakers connected. It conjures convincing height and side channels, but connecting the surround speakers improves height and provides the missing rear channels. The Arc Ultra is a little better at creating those virtual channels, likely because it has more drivers.

The Lifestyle Ultra sounds better with surround speakers than on its own, but even then, the Arc Ultra with Sonos' Era 300 speakers is even more so. (The Era 300 is a much larger, pricier speaker, so this isn't a proper direct comparison.)

Overall, the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar sounds very good. It's well-tuned and versatile. If it didn't have to compete with the Arc Ultra, it might well be the best-sounding option in its price range.