Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar  Soundbar Review

Thanks to its tempered glass top, this soundbar has a sleek, premium look. Since the cables are designed to plug into the bar at an angle, it's a bit easier to set up since you can plug in HDMI and power without having to flip the bar over. It comes in 'Black' and 'Arctic White'.

This soundbar has an integrated subwoofer. However, if you're craving more bass, you can purchase a compatible Bose bass module separately. The manufacturer recommends the Bass Module 700, which has a similar design language to this bar.

This bar doesn't come with satellites, but you can pick up these up separately if you want an even more immersive audio experience.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is a bit long, so it won't fit between the legs of a 65-inch TV. Luckily, it's not very tall, so it won't obscure your TV screen unless the screen is flush to the table.

You can mount this soundbar to your wall. However, the manufacturer doesn't include brackets in the box. You'll need to purchase these separately from Bose.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar has an excellent build quality that's identical in design to the Bose Smart Soundbar 900. It's made of high-quality plastic with a sleek tempered glass top and metal grilles, so it feels sturdy overall. There are openings in the glass for the up-firing channels and big rubber feet to keep the bar in place. That said, the glass top can easily pick up fingerprints and ruin your clean aesthetic. It won't be so much of an issue if you're using the app or remote to control the bar.

• Manuals
• ADAPTIQ headset (cable length: 23 ft / 7m)
• Remote
• Batteries (2x AAA)
• Power cable (4.9 ft /1.5m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft /1.5m)
• Optical cable (4.9 ft /1.5m)

WIth ADAPTiQ used, which is a room correction feature, the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar has a satisfactory stereo frequency response. It's bright, which is useful if you want to listen to dialogue-heavy content like the news or podcasts, as voices will be very crisp and clear. However, it can be fatiguing to listen to over long periods, especially if you're listening to content with a lot of sibilants like cymbals or S and T sounds, as they can be piercing. The bar also lacks a thumpy low-bass, but that's normal for a standalone bar. It can achieve better bass extension than the Bose Smart Soundbar 900, though, and if you want more bass, you can always purchase a subwoofer separately. There are also bass and treble adjustments available via the remote and app.

There are speakers concentrated in the center of the bar, with height channels at the end of the bar. This center speaker arrangement is also where the bass comes from, and it seems like the bar is doing something to create a wider soundstage. Thanks to features like Phaseguide and Truespace, the bar can play stereo content to more than the usual channels for a more immersive sound. Truespace is designed to separate sound objects and place them in the room around you, while Phaseguide beams audio throughout your room for a wider soundstage. Subjectively, the bar can mix stereo content well, although it sounds like it's upmixing. It uses this built-in technology to make audio sound much wider, dimensional, and enjoyable, resulting in a more immersive audio experience. Our setup image is the closest approximation of what we hear during testing.

We recommend lowering the treble settings if you're looking for a more neutral (and less treble-heavy) sound with stereo content. The slider is set in increments of 10. Doing so will help tamper down the bright, piercingness of vocals, instruments, and sibilants.

This bar has a great stereo soundstage. This bar uses 'Phaseguide', a feature the manufacturer advertises as adding dimension to your audio and helping pinpoint sound to the left and right, even if there aren't speakers there. Since the bar doesn't have any side-firing channels, the bar can create an impressive width, and audio feels natural, balanced, and as if coming from the corners of the room. The focus is alright, too, and for the most part, sounds move across the bar smoothly. There are some sounds moving in clusters towards the furthest left side of the bar, though, and the timbre is slightly different at the ends of the bar than towards the middle.

The Bose Smart Ultra has great stereo dynamics. It gets loud enough to fill up a large room. However, there are compression and pumping artifacts at max volume, affecting the quality of the sound. If you don't need much volume on tap but want to ensure a clean sound at all times, it's worth looking at the Sonos Arc Ultra instead. It can't get as loud, but audio output remains pure as you crank the volume.

This is a 5.1.2. setup, so it has a discrete center channel to help improve vocal reproduction. The frequency response of this channel is treble-tilted. Even though dialogue reproduces in the mid-range, which is fairly flat, there's a lot of extra treble. This means that dialogue sounds clear, so you won't have any trouble following conversations on screen, but they're also bright and piercing, which can be fatiguing over time.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar lacks discrete surround speakers and relies on its front-firing and up-firing speakers (including the Atmos speakers) to bounce sound around your room. As a result, even though it's attempting to simulate surround objects around you, audio tends to be focused in front of you rather than all around you. This frontal soundstage feels wide and natural, even if the sound doesn't fully envelop you. You can also purchase satellites separately if you want an improved surround sound. If you're looking for a more immersive sound, you can check out how similar bars, like the Bose Smart Soundbar 900 with Speakers + Bass Module, perform with satellites.

This bar supports Dolby Atmos content. It uses up-firing speakers built into the bar to bounce sound off your ceiling and towards you, creating the illusion of height. It's not as immersive as discrete localization created by home theater setups. It's worth noting that the bar was using its front-firing speakers during our testing. However, with real-life Atmos content, it uses its up-firing speakers, which gives it a bit more height.

Subjectively, the height performance of this bar is okay and reaches about eye level or about a foot above the bar. In scenes like a race in Ready Player One, you can track the sound of the motorcycle moving across the screen. Some effects, like a toppling tower with a lot of creaking metal, are ear-piercing and not very enjoyable to listen to. Overhead scenes like a drone passing lack the height to give you an immersive experience. Luckily, you can always add satellites to this bar's setup down the line.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar has few sound enhancement features. Like the Bose Smart Soundbar 900, it has a room correction feature called ADAPTiQ, which adjusts the bar's audio based on your space's unique dimension and design. The AI dialogue mode also helps this bar stand out from others in its lineup. This feature uses AI to adjust the tonal balance and clarity of dialogue without significantly impacting other sound objects. Subjectively, it works best with busy scenes or tracks as the voice can be brought forward and made more clear. However, this feature doesn't make much of an impact in already vocal-heavy content. Unfortunately, there aren't any EQ presets or a night mode to help automatically adjust the volume of your content.

This bar has an Optical and HDMI port as well as a port for connecting compatible subwoofers. However, it lacks a Full HDMI In port, so you can't use the bar as a hub between different devices. That said, there are a couple of other ports that don't support audio. There's an ADAPTiQ port so that you can use the included headset for room correction, as well as a USB-C port for support purposes and a data port for servicing the bar.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar supports a variety of audio formats, like Dolby Digital (which is common on streaming platforms) via eARC. It also supports object-based and lossless formats like Dolby Atmos. That said, DTS, DTS:X, or DTS-HD-MA content, which is common on Blu-ray discs, isn't supported. Some devices (like Blu-ray) can convert unsupported formats to PCM for the bar to play them.

This bar supports Dolby Digital via Optical, which is a surround sound format found on many streaming services. However, it can't play DTS content, but some source devices may be able to convert it to 2.0 PCM.

This bar has an outstanding latency performance via ARC. Your visuals stay in sync with your audio. While some apps and TVs compensate for latency, you can also use the app to adjust for delay manually.

It has a very good latency performance via Optical. While latency is a little higher when watching Dolby Digital content, you can use the app to adjust for sync and delay manually. Some apps and TVs also compensate for latency.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar supports a wide array of wireless connections, which lets you easily play music from your mobile device.

There's a strip of light that has different patterns and colors to indicate the bar's status. You can consult the user guide here for more information on each of the statuses. A red light under the mute button also turns on when the microphone has been turned off.

The bar has simple controls in the form of two touch-sensitive buttons on its top side. You can turn the microphone on and off, and you can use the 'Action' button to activate Alexa voice assistant. You can also use this button to turn off alarms and timers. The 'Action' button won't activate the voice assistant if the microphone is also off.

The included remote is pretty simple. You can change the volume and inputs. However, if you're looking for additional controls like connecting the bar to other compatible speakers in your setup, you'll need to get the Bose Music app.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar has Amazon Alexa built-in. It supports the feature Voice4Video that expands the voice assistant's capabilities so that you can turn the bar on and off, switch your video source, or (if you're connected to satellite or cable) even skip TV channels. If you don't like Alexa, you can use Google Assistant via the Bose Music app with a Google Assistant-enabled device. However, you must enable this feature, which doesn't offer as much robust control as Alexa.