A New Rival System for Sonos? Bose Just Launched Its Most Stylish Home Audio Range — Here's Why It's Actually Worth Investing in
The new Lifestyle collection doesn't just look good, it's packed full of great-sounding features, too
For decades, the challenge of the high-end home cinema was a choice between settling for mediocre sound or surrendering your living room to a labyrinth of cables and bulky black boxes. Over the last few years, however, that’s changed. Audio brands like Sonos, Bang & Olufsen, and Bose, have all acknowledged that the design of a speaker system is just as important as the sound it produces.
As such, the recently announced Bose Lifestyle Collection, which includes the Ultra Speaker, Ultra Soundbar, and Ultra Subwoofer, takes a design-first philosophy that aligns perfectly with the shift toward warm, tactile minimalism in interior design. Crafted with premium materials and available in three timeless finishes, the Lifestyle Collection is designed to deliver a great listening experience without sacrificing your décor.
The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker costs £299.95, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar costs £999.95, and the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer costs £899.95. The Lifestyle Collection comes in Black or White Smoke, but the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is also available in limited-edition Driftwood Sand, which will set you back £349.
Design
This collection is made up of the sorts of pieces that blend into your home's decor.
The technical specifications of the speaker, soundbar, and subwoofer within the Lifestyle Collection are all impressive, but it’s the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker that will no doubt be the most interesting to the design-conscious among you. Its limited-edition Driftwood Sand finish eschews the cold plastics of traditional tech in favour of a soft beige palette and a solid white oak base, creating a piece of technology that looks like a piece of furniture. It is designed to age, ensuring this speaker feels as permanent and intentional as a designer armchair.
Meanwhile, the Ultra Soundbar and Ultra Subwoofer use textured knit fabrics, premium glass panes, and curved frames to further bridge the gap between high-performance audio and home styling. These are silhouettes that are destined to be on display rather than hidden behind the doors of your gorgeous new sideboard.
Much as the design is important in these speakers, however, so is the sound. "With the Lifestyle Collection, we wanted every detail to serve a singular purpose: making exceptional sound easy to enjoy," said Raza Haider, president of premium consumer audio, Bose Corporation. "The flexibility, refined aesthetic, and experience are all built to fit into life at home, delivering on the one central promise that has defined Bose for decades: that sound matters."
Performance
The collection includes speakers, a soundbar, and a sub-woofer.
Beneath the aesthetically pleasing design, Bose has completely overhauled its internal engineering, introducing a suite of proprietary technologies designed to deliver multi-dimensional soundscapes from compact footprints.
The Ultra Speaker uses Bose’s Direct/Reflecting speaker technology with a three-driver array utilizing two front-facing drivers for direct audio delivery and one precision-angled up-firing driver to handle vertical sound channels. This works in tandem with TrueSpatial processing, a proprietary algorithm that intelligently adds height and dimensional depth. To prevent the thin sound common in compact devices, Bose’s CleanBass technology pairs a high-excursion woofer with a QuietPort acoustic opening and advanced Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to deliver deep, controlled low frequencies.
The Ultra Soundbar, meanwhile, represents Bose’s first major soundbar redesign in over a decade, with a single enclosure engineered to native Dolby Atmos specifications. Hidden behind the textured knit grille is a nine-driver architecture, including six full-range drivers, a dedicated center tweeter for clear dialogue, and two proprietary PhaseGuide drivers. These PhaseGuide drivers are designed to beam sound to the far left and right of your room to create the illusion of side speakers where none actually exist.
For casual watching, there’s SpeechClarity AI that applies real-time, data-driven speech augmentation to isolate vocals from background noise, so even whispered dialogue should be crisp without you having to hit the volume button. Meanwhile, CustomTune calibration (previously called ADAPTiQ) is on board, using your smartphone's microphone to map your room’s unique dimensions, furniture placement, and surfaces, automatically tuning the audio output to suit your home.
Lastly, when paired with the soundbar and speakers, the Ultra Subwoofer will handle the lowest frequencies, allowing the rest of the system to focus on mid-range clarity and crisp high frequencies. It utilizes the same CleanBass technology and QuietPort opening to deliver what should be floor-shaking bass without distortion.
The Lifestyle Collection is modular, so you can start with a single Ultra Speaker in your kitchen, pair two for a traditional stereo setup, or scale up to a full 7.1.4 multichannel home theater system by linking the soundbar, subwoofer, and rear surrounds wirelessly.
Combining elements from this range can create a home theater style set-up.
There are several reasons the Bose Lifestyle Collection is exciting, not least because it pairs a gorgeous design with what should be excellent sound performance. But it plays nicely with other brands too, which is somewhat rare.
Bose has fully embraced Google Cast, Apple AirPlay, and Spotify Connect technologies for these speakers, allowing you to group the Lifestyle Collection speakers with hardware from other manufacturers that support them. It makes for a refreshing change and one that acknowledges how we actually live: in homes that are often a patchwork of different technologies.
Bose has also redesigned its app, claiming that the initial install is "easier than ever with consolidated permissions, third-party account sign-in, and secure Wi-Fi credential sharing across devices." Once everything is set up, you’ll be able to control the Lifestyle Collection speakers through the app, with precise control over volume, equalization, surround, and height levels so you can tailor the output to the room the speakers are in and your preferences.
Some controls and functions can also be accessed on the soft-touch buttons on the speakers themselves, through music streaming apps, voice control via Alexa+, or with a compatible TV remote, so there are plenty of ways to get what you want from them. Bluetooth is also on board.
The Lifestyle Collection comes in Black or White Smoke, but the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is also available in limited-edition Driftwood Sand, which will set you back £349.
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