Enhanced Bluetooth Connectivity and Immersive Sound Enhancements for Your Favorite Earbuds, Promising Comfort and Quality.
Bose’s highly-regarded QuietComfort earbuds, a popular choice for commuters, have received an upgrade that establishes them as the benchmark for top-tier noise cancellation and introduces new immersive audio features.
Priced at £300 (€350/$300/A$450), the QC Ultra earbuds come at a slightly higher cost, approximately £20 more than the excellent QC Earbuds II they effectively succeed. This puts them in direct competition with some of the best offerings from industry leaders like Sennheiser, Sony, and Apple.
In terms of design, while the overhauled QC Ultra headphones have received notable changes, the earbuds have seen a more subtle makeover. They feature a few metallic accents but maintain a resemblance to the Earbuds II, with a relatively larger size compared to competitors and flat stalks that extend towards your mouth.
The inclusion of silicone earbud tips and wings ensures a secure and comfortable fit in your ears. The package includes various sizes of these components, allowing you to customize and select the perfect fit for your ears. Additionally, the Bose Music app offers a fit test to assist you in achieving an optimal fit.
For controls, touch-sensitive features handle volume adjustments, playback, noise cancellation, and sound modes, all of which operate seamlessly. The battery life remains consistent with previous models, offering up to six hours of noise-cancelling use, with the case providing three full charges for a total of 24 hours of playback. This competitive battery life aligns them with some of the industry’s top rivals.
Specifications
- Water resistance: Designed to withstand sweat (IPX4)
- Connectivity: Utilizes Bluetooth 5.3 (Supports SBC, AAC, and aptX Adaptive)
- Battery life: Provides up to 6 hours of usage, extendable to 24 hours with the charging case
- Earbud dimensions: Each earbud measures 17.2 x 30.5 x 22.4mm
- Earbud weight: Lightweight at 6.24g per earbud
- Charging case dimensions: The charging case dimensions are 59.4 x 66.3 x 26.7mm
- Charging case weight: The charging case weighs 59.8g
- Charging method: Charging is facilitated via USB-C
Superior noise-cancelling performance paired with enhanced immersive audio.
These earbuds offer some of the most exceptional noise-cancelling capabilities available, not just among earbuds but in the broader headphone market. They are on par with the QC Earbuds II in effectively reducing unwanted low-frequency noise and higher-pitched sounds such as keyboard clicks and ambient conversations.
The “awareness” mode is another standout feature, delivering a fairly natural listening experience. It comes equipped with an automatic loud-noise reduction system, preventing you from being overwhelmed by piercing sounds like train wheel screeches. Similar to the Ultra headphones, these earbuds offer customizable modes, allowing you to create different combinations of noise-cancelling and sound profiles that can be quickly toggled.
Furthermore, these earbuds excel in call quality, adept at isolating your voice from background noise while maintaining a natural and clear voice on both ends of the call.
The earbuds offer impressive audio quality, upholding Bose’s tradition of delivering clear and well-controlled audio processing. This ensures that the music’s balance adjusts dynamically based on the volume, delivering a rich audio experience even when listening at lower volumes. These earbuds tend to emphasize the bass, but users have the option to fine-tune the audio using the equalizer feature available in the Bose Music app.
With the introduction of the new immersive or spatial audio mode, the audio seems to emanate from virtual speakers positioned around you, providing a more three-dimensional and spatial listening experience, rather than directing sound directly into your ears. The “still” mode tracks the movement of your head, creating a sensation that the audio is consistently originating from a fixed point ahead of you, contributing to a heightened sense of realism. This feature greatly enhances the immersion factor, particularly when enjoying movies and TV shows. What’s notable is that it is compatible with a wide range of devices, including phones, computers, and tablets from various brands, unlike most similar systems.
Additionally, these earbuds mark one of Bose’s first products to support Google’s instant Bluetooth pairing and Qualcomm’s high-quality aptX Adaptive audio format, in addition to the standard SBC and AAC formats. These enhancements are particularly beneficial for Android or Windows users. As standard Bluetooth 5.3 earbuds, they are user-friendly and can be easily paired using a button on the case. While either earbud can be used independently, a single device can be connected to them at any given time. This flexibility proves handy, especially during calls.
Sustainability
Regarding sustainability, Bose anticipates that the earbuds’ batteries will endure over 500 full charge cycles. However, it’s worth noting that these batteries are not replaceable, and the earbuds are not currently designed for repair, essentially rendering them disposable products.
While certain replacement parts like ear tips (£15) and charging cases (£90) are offered, it’s important to highlight that the earbuds themselves do not incorporate recycled materials. Bose does have a program in place that provides discounts for returning broken products. However, it does not release individual product environmental impact reports but does issue annual sustainability reports.
Price
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are priced at £299.95 (€349.95/$299/A$449.95).
In comparison, the QC Earbuds II are available for £279.95, the Sony WF-1000XM5 are priced at £259, the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3 can be purchased for £189, the Jabra Elite 10 are priced at £230, Google Pixel Buds Pro are available for £199, and the Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be obtained for £229.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Outstanding noise cancellation, setting the benchmark in its category.
- Impressive sound quality with immersive/spatial audio.
- Reliable battery life and charging case.
- Comfortable and customizable fit.
- Sweat resistance adds to durability.
- Efficient touch-sensitive controls.
- Excellent call quality.
- Support for aptX Adaptive, benefiting Android and Windows users.
Cons:
- Considerably high price point.
- Lack of multipoint connectivity.
- Larger and less discreet compared to top competitors.
- Unrepairable by Bose, potentially affecting long-term use.