Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Review

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra sound quality is extraordinary, especially in immersive mode. While not our top choice for active pursuits, it is hard to find better-sounding audio.

Sound Quality

The Ultra offer exceptional sound quality. The bass, mid, and high frequencies are outstanding and on par with the highest competitors. The frequency mix is clean and balanced, sounding natural, not overly engineered, helping them deliver a highly adaptable sound profile that beautifully showcases a diverse musical palette.

From country rock ("Do Me Wrong" by the Red Clay Strays) to Americana ("Dust" by Dylan LeBlanc) and classic pop, these earbuds consistently polish favorite songs to a shine. Atmospheric and emotive songs like “Wildfire” by Cautious Clay sound spectacular. As the guitar syncs with the tambourine at 0:09, the earbuds create a sonic environment that envelops you in the moment.

The bass frequencies are warm, resonant, and fully developed, present without overpowering the mix. They occasionally sound slightly overemphasized, but it rarely detracts.

In “Money” by Cardi B, the sparse piano is punchy and prominent without booming or blowing out. The simple beat and bass maintain a powerful presence without ever challenging Cardi's voice for center stage.

Mid-tones have a full and rich timbre but are slightly less emphasized than the bass and treble ranges. The treble tones sometimes dominate, but their rich and velvety characteristics elevate the music so beautifully you won't mind. Pieces like the celestial “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, sound revelatory as the piano transitions into the violin at the 1:05 mark.

These earbuds are among the most powerful, maintaining exceptional sound quality at low and high volumes. Even when you raise the levels, the high notes maintain a crystalline brilliance, and the sound quality holds across the board. Orchestral arrangements, hip-hop, and sparse singer-songwriter tracks sound incredible, regardless of volume.

The levels can be inconsistent between tracks, which can be harsh when transitioning between songs. Since this issue was not common, it may be more related to the production process.

Soundstage

An earbud's soundstage describes where the listener perceives the music emanating from. The in-ear design of earbuds makes it hard to create an expansive soundstage, resulting in an internalized experience.

If you're an avid gamer or love to sit and let favorite songs transport you, an expansive soundstage can make all the difference. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra offers the most expansive and immersive soundstage of any earbud we've reviewed — it is breathtaking.

The crisp sound quality and multidimensional listening experience allow you to place each instrument and vocal riff in time and space, making the music feel vast, rich, and real.

Bose's much-hyped spatial audio feature enhances the sensation. It's a sound bath and the closest you can get to having a live concert at your fingertips. The music sounds like it's emanating from beyond your earbuds, placing you in the studio with the band. It works better in these earbuds than in others.

Expert audio listener Dave Berkman noted, “The vertical and horizontal frequency planes are enhanced and expanded, and the sound has a third dimension, giving the listener a live-like experience.”

We used our Brüel & Kjaer Type 5128 head simulator to record the frequency response for the QuietComfort Ultra. Soundcheck then calculates the curve to compare with our GearLab House Curve.

The Bose mix closely mirrors our preferred curve, although with slightly more emphasis on bass and treble frequencies. They provide a similar profile that affirms our listening experience.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Bose Ultra Open

Comfort and Fit

Over a dozen people tried these earbuds to gauge comfort and fit, with mostly positive results. The Ultra comes with three silicone tips and stability band sizes to help you customize the fit. It's worth spending time determining which configuration works best for you.

The soft and flexible stability bands tuck into your external ear cartilage, providing stability without causing pain or pressure points.

While all testers found a good combination, these earbuds are large, and our ears got tired. Several testers only wore them for an hour at a time.

Stability

The Bose is secure enough for everyday activities. They rarely fall out and almost passed our headstand test, rolling free after full inversion. However, we're cautious about wearing them for active, sweaty pursuits that involve a lot of bobbing and weaving.

With an IPX4 rating, the QuietComfort Ultra can handle sweat and light rain, making them suitable for more active pursuits.

Noise Cancellation

To quote one tester, “Woooooaaaahhhhh! The noise blocking is crazy good!” The active noise cancellation (ANC) is stunning. It blocks out distractions so effectively that you can melt into the music. It also helps improve focus and productivity at work, even with noisy distractions.

Unlike its predecessor, the Bose QuietComfort II, these earbuds support Bose's CustomTune technology, which automatically adjusts the ANC based on your ear shape. It works well, and they easily block chatter and reduce AC hum.

The Bose are quite effective at blocking out low-pitched, consistent sounds, like the hum of an airplane or the rumble of a bus engine. What sets them apart is how well they cancel out higher frequencies.

We could barely detect the clattering of cups in the cafe during ANC testing. The Bose also do an excellent job of softening lower-pitched background conversations, creating a barrier between you and the most annoying coffee shop.

SoundCheck charted the results, displaying how many decibels the earbuds cancel in each frequency range. It also charted how many decibels they physically block, a feature known as noise isolation.

Earbuds typically block high-frequency waves physically (passive cancelation) and rely on active noise cancellation to deal with the lower registers. These earbuds perform well across the spectrum, blocking over 20 decibels in nearly every frequency range, with peaks up to 40 decibels.

Ease of Use

The QuietComfort Ultra earbuds are a pleasure to use, offering a helpful app

App Features

The Bose app lets you customize your experience by providing manual EQ adjustments and a variety of listening modes, including active noise cancellation, immersive audio, and an “aware” mode that allows environmental sounds to break through. The app is compatible with both Android and iOS devices, though some users find it trickier to pair with iPhones.

A CustomTune feature auto-adjusts the sound profile and noise cancellation particulars based on your ear shape, and an ear fit test ensures the earbuds are properly sealed for optimal performance. Touch controls let you skip tracks, cycle through settings, adjust volume, or pause and play your music.

Connectivity

The QuietComfort Ultras did not have the best performance in terms of connectivity. We experienced some problems pairing the earbuds with our devices, particularly iPhones, but less so with Android devices. We analyzed Amazon user reviews to investigate connectivity issues further. The Ultras had one of the highest complaint rates in the group, at 3.79% of 1-star reviews.

A standout feature of the QuietComfort Ultra earbuds is the adaptive Bluetooth connectivity that aims for “lossless” transfer rates. Achieving them preserves the original sound quality of your music across the air gap, resulting in high-fidelity audio.

If your phone is capable of transferring lossless data and has a good Bluetooth connection, the Ultra can achieve that goal. If not, they'll use the AptX Adaptive codec to give you the best experience available. Bose markets this system as Snapdragon Sound and it works with compatible Android devices.

Battery Life

The one area where these earbuds fall slightly short is battery life. Playing music at 75% volume, these earbuds died after six hours, which is lower than average. However, the case offers five full recharges before you need a wall outlet. A five minute recharge grants you another hour of listening.

While the six hours and ten minutes test result we got is below the average, it exceeds the manufacturer's claims of six hours flat. Keep in mind that we test battery life with the ANC feature turned off since it drains more power. Using ANC reduces playtime.

Call Quality

Calls with the QuietComfort Ultra are clear, whether you're navigating busy streets or chatting at your desk. IN addition to real-world calls, we conducted a series of tests with our audio simulator. We played recordings of different voices through the speaker of the Bruel and Kjaer 5128-B head simulator and recorded the output with the earbuds.

These earbuds performed well, but they aren't the top performer in our challenging subway test.

By mimicking a Subway, complete with loudspeaker announcements and screeching trains in the background, the Ultra struggled a bit with some sounds bleeding through. Still, the noise was heavily dulled in comparison to other earbuds. The voice recording is clear, with the man's voice very easy to understand; more concentration is required to hear the woman.

With office sounds, you can still hear a little bit of the chatter, hum, and clacking keyboards, but you can clearly hear the voices.

In a quiet room, the call is clear and easy to understand. There is a slight amplification in the woman's voice we didn't experience with other high-quality buds, but it didn't obscure communication.

Should You Buy the Bose QuietComfort Ultra?

If you're looking for great earbuds that can quiet the world and offer an incredibly immersive experience, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra are a contender. While they don't boast the longest battery life or the best call quality, the high-quality audio and ease of use make them a standout. There are less expensive and more comfortable choices, but if you want the most captivating earbuds on the market, these buds are for you.

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