Bose is back with a new premium home audio lineup called the Lifestyle Collection, and you know what? It looks like the company is trying to make complicated home theater setups feel less intimidating for regular people.
The new family of products includes the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, and Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer, all designed to work together in different combinations depending on how much audio gear you actually want cluttering your home.
I’ve loved Bose products for decades. The company has a long history of producing high quality audio gear that sounds good without making setup a miserable experience. Some hardcore audiophiles will always complain about Bose, but plenty of normal folks just want speakers that look nice, sound impressive, and don’t require a PhD in acoustics to configure. Bose has traditionally been pretty good at that.
The modular approach here is actually smart. Someone can start with a single Lifestyle Ultra Speaker for music in a bedroom or office, then eventually expand into stereo pairing, multi-room audio, or even a full 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos setup with the Soundbar and Subwoofer. That sort of flexibility makes a lot more sense than forcing people to buy an enormous system upfront.
The $299 Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is probably the most interesting product for average buyers. Bose says it uses a newer version of its Direct/Reflecting technology with two front-facing drivers and one up-firing driver to create a wider soundstage from a compact enclosure. The company is also pushing its TrueSpatial and CleanBass technologies pretty heavily, promising immersive sound and surprisingly deep bass from a relatively small speaker.
Meanwhile, the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is where Bose is aiming at serious home theater fans. At $1,099, it definitely is not cheap, but the hardware sounds pretty ambitious. The soundbar includes six full-range drivers, two up-firing drivers for Dolby Atmos, a center tweeter, and Bose’s proprietary PhaseGuide technology, which attempts to place sound where there are no actual speakers.
Bose also added AI-driven SpeechClarity processing to make dialogue easier to understand. Considering how many modern movies seem determined to bury conversations underneath explosions and background music, that feature could end up being more useful than any fancy Atmos trickery.
The Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer rounds out the lineup at $899. Bose says the wireless bass module delivers deep low frequencies while allowing the rest of the system to focus on cleaner mids and highs. In other words, more rumble without completely muddying everything else.
The entire Lifestyle Collection supports Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, and Alexa+, which is pretty much mandatory these days. Bose is also emphasizing that the speakers can be grouped with compatible products from other manufacturers for multi-room audio, which is refreshing to see. Nobody wants to feel trapped inside one company’s ecosystem forever.
Visually, the products look fairly classy too. Bose says the collection was designed to blend into real homes instead of screaming “look at my giant home theater system.” The Soundbar and Subwoofer use curved designs with glass accents, while the Speaker comes in black, White Smoke, and a limited Driftwood Sand finish with a white oak base.
Of course, pricing is going to scare some people away. Putting together a complete setup with multiple speakers, the soundbar, and the subwoofer could cost a small fortune. Then again, Bose has never really chased the budget crowd.
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