The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is a compact wireless home speaker. It offers a comparable feature set to Sonos' home speaker offerings, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, along with extensive voice assistant support. While its lack of a battery means it needs to stay tethered to an outlet to work, it's designed to integrate with other Bose products from the Lifestyle Ultra range, so you can pair it with a couple of speakers with a Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar for a home theater setup.
Our Verdict
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is okay for music. It has a fairly balanced default sound profile that rolls off some of the high-end for a darker treble response. It can't output too much low-bass either, so room-filling kicks sound a little limp without the requisite bass-range oomph. The mid-range is well-balanced, though, making for detailed reproduction of vocals and lead instruments, and you can dial in the sound to your preference via the 3-band EQ in the app. It can get loud enough to fill a medium-sized room, too, making it a great fit for soundtracking dinner parties. Just don't expect it to sound consistent from different listening angles, as those to the side of and behind the speaker will miss out on some treble-range detail. Its inability to playback stereo content, instead downmixing to mono, also takes some of the width out from stereo-panned guitars.
Gets loud for its size.
3-band EQ in app.
No room correction feature.
Sub-par directivity.
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is mediocre for videos and movies. While it has a balanced mid-range that renders dialogue and speech accurately and can get quite loud, the lack of low bass thuds, high-octane action set pieces, and the veiled treble range takes some of the zing out of sparring sequences. It also has disappointing directivity, so you'll need to be conscious of how you position yourself around the speaker or risk losing some high-end detail. It's worth mentioning that stereo content gets downmixed to mono, so the localization of sound objects in movies tends to suffer.
Gets loud for its size.
3-band EQ in app.
No room correction feature.
Sub-par directivity.
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is alright for podcasts. While its lack of a battery means you can't take it from room to room, it can at least get loud enough to carry your favorite hosts' voices down a long corridor. The balanced mid-range helps keep voices and speech detailed, so you can follow along when the discussion gets heated.
Gets loud for its size.
3-band EQ in app.
No room correction feature.
Sub-par directivity.
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is amazing for voice assistant support. It features built-in Alexa support, plus Google Gemini and Siri if paired with a compatible device. The built-in mic does a fantastic job of picking up your voice and discerning commands, even if there's background noise and you're on the other side of the room from the speaker.
Built-in mic picks up voice commands easily.
Built-in Alexa support.
Sub-par directivity.
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker needs AC power to function, making it unsuitable for most outdoor applications. Even if you're willing to run a long extension cable for your next garden party, its lack of an IP rating makes it susceptible to damage from the elements.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
The Bose Ultra Lifestyle Speaker comes in three color variants: 'Black' (the color of our unit), 'White Smoke', and 'Driftwood Sand'. We took a picture of our unit's label.
Please let us know in the comments if you encounter another variant, and we'll update our review.
Popular Speaker Comparisons
The Bose Ultra Lifestyle Speaker is a high-end smart speaker designed for home use. It can serve as an all-in-one speaker solution, but one of its selling points is its ability to integrate into a broader product ecosystem that includes the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer as part of a home theater setup. If this formula sounds familiar to you, it's likely due to speakers like the Sonos Era 100 and Sonos Era 300, which also offer voice assistant support and Wi-Fi compatibility and integrate with Sonos' soundbars. The Era 100 offers much better directivity and a room correction tool, though it lacks the Bose's wired playback capabilities. If you're in need of a premium home speaker that won't tempt you to pick up an entire product line, the JBL Authentics 500 justifies its higher asking price with its impressive performance and feature set. It gets louder than the Bose, with a more balanced default sound and better directivity, while offering voice assistant and Wi-Fi capabilities.
Still deliberating? Check out our recommendations for the best home speakers, the best smart speakers, and the best Bose speakers.
The Sonos Era 100 and the Bose Ultra Lifestyle Speaker are both smart speakers intended for home use that integrate into a wider product ecosystem. While there are trade-offs between them in terms of performance and features, your buying decision can easily be influenced by whether you own any compatible Sonos or Bose products already, as they can both slot in as rear speakers with compatible soundbars. That said, if you're looking for a one-and-done home speaker, the Sonos offers better directivity and a room calibration tool that tunes the sound to your room. The Bose on the other hand can get louder and offers wired playback options via its aux port. That said, both speakers cover the bread-and-butter features of a home speaker well, offering Wi-Fi support and solid voice assistant implementation.
While the Apple HomePod (2nd generation) and the Bose Ultra Lifestyle Speaker have similar designs and are both intended for home use, they have different selling points. The Apple, unsurprisingly, features great integration with Apple products. When paired with an iOS device, you can take calls on the speaker via the controls, control it easily using Siri, or even pair two HomePods with an Apple TV for a movie-watching setup. It also has better directivity, reproducing audio more consistently across different listening angles. For Android users and the OS-agnostics, the Bose has a more complete feature set though. It can get louder, comes with Bluetooth and wired playback support, plus it comes with a 3-band EQ in case you want to adjust the default sound.
Though the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is designed to stay parked at home, the Sonos Move 2 covers similar ground while also allowing for some outdoor forays. While the Sonos is larger and heavier, it can operate off batter power for a little over 10 hours, and features an IP56 rating for protection against water and dust damage. The Sonos also has better directivity with stereo playback capabilities, with a louder top volume, and a room correction feature to tune the sound to your room. Both speakers come with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and voice assistant support, though the Bose does a slightly better job of picking up voice commands in noisy environments. If you just need a smart speaker that stays put at home, the Bose will do the job at a lower price point, but the Sonos offers you the versatility of portable use, with a better overall sound performance.
The WiiM Sound and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker are both AC-powered home speakers, though they have different strengths. The WiiM performs better in our sound tests overall, with a more balanced default tuning, better directivity, and stereo playback, along with a more granular parametric EQ in the app for sound tuning. That said, it lacks the Bose's comprehensive voice assistant support and more portable (easily carried) design.
Test Results
for pictures & test results
for pictures & test results
for pictures & test results
