Bose has three new speakers to enhance your home listening experience. The company’s new “Lifestyle Collection”—designed with a soft fabric-covered grille and smooth curves—includes the Lifestyle Speaker, Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer and Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. Both can be connected to multiple units and third-party speakers via AirPlay and Google Cast for the perfect multi-room audio experience.
These audio products mark the company’s “re-entry” into the home speaker space, bringing back the Lifestyle design that began in 1990 – known for its simplicity and ease of use – which Bose discontinued in 2022.
Not surprisingly, Bose says the Ultra Soundbar is “the best soundbar we’ve ever made,” and that the Ultra Speaker may be one of the company’s best in its storied history. The wireless speaker starts at $299, with a $349 limited edition model in Driftwood Sand; the sound bar costs $1,099, and the subwoofer is $899. They are available for pre-order now and will go on sale on May 15th.
These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers support AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and, uniquely, are the first to connect with Alexa+ (US only), allows you to ask Amazon’s chatbot to play music through the speaker via voice commands. There’s also Bluetooth support, and even an auxiliary input for connecting the Top Speaker to a turntable.
You can pair two Lifestyle Ultra Speakers in stereo in the Bose app, or pair them all together for a home theater system. Sadly, if you were hoping to use it as a surround system with your existing Bose soundbar, the company says it’s only backwards compatible with 700 base module. And with the new Ultra Lifestyle Bar, it can only be used as a wired connection. For multi-room audio, the company has delegated those programming duties to the Google Home app for Google Cast technology, or Apple’s AirPlay for iOS users. Speaking of software, there’s a redesigned navigation process that’s claimed to make setting up all these speakers a breeze.
On the audio front, the Ultra Speaker features a high-firing Dolby Atmos-like surround sound driver, as well as two front-facing drivers. (It doesn’t seem to support it Dolby Atmos music (for now.) The company is also touting its CleanBass technology, which pairs Bose’s QuietPort sound opening with a woofer for a deep sound that does better than its size suggests, though we’ll have to hear it for ourselves to see if it lives up to Bose’s claims.
