Bose is back in your living room, and Sonos should be worried

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Home audio is where Bose built its reputation. The original Lifestyle systems and the Wave radio set the standard for what a compact home speaker could be: great sound without a rack of equipment. So it stung a little when Bose quietly exited that space a few years ago, discontinuing its SoundTouch and Home Speaker lines and ceding the ground to Sonos and other home audio brands. That changes today.

I was invited to New York for Bose’s global launch event, where I got to listen to Bose’s new home audio lineup, and based on what I heard, Sonos has real competition again.

The Lifestyle Collection consists of a wireless smart speaker, a new soundbar, and a subwoofer, all designed to work together in configurations ranging from a single-room setup to a full 7.1.4 home theater system. The three speakers can connect over Wi-Fi and support Google Cast, Apple AirPlay, and Spotify Connect, so they play nicely with whatever music streaming service you’re already using — and can sync with any other third-party speakers across your home.

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker ($299) is the entry point of the lineup. It’s compact and lightweight but packs a three-driver array: two front-facing and one up-firing, plus a 3-inch woofer. The speaker has a smooth, cylindrical design with a matt finish, a knit fabric grille on the front, and touch controls on top. It comes in Black, White Smoke, and a limited-edition Driftwood Sand ($349) with a solid white oak base. I think all three colors have a warm look and would fit well in a home environment without screaming “I’m a tech product”.

Two of them can be paired for stereo through the Bose app; you can also use a pair as rear surround speakers in a full home theater setup with the soundbar and subwoofer. For multiroom audio, they’ll sync with any Google Cast or AirPlay-compatible speaker on your network — but the true stereo pairing is exclusive to two Ultra Speakers.

In stereo mode, I listened to some Steely Dan, and the imaging held up. Percussion floated between and above the speakers, vocals sat cleanly in the middle, and the bass had real presence and depth without getting muddy. What impressed me most was the verticality. The up-firing driver and TrueSpatial processing created a convincing sense of height that I really didn’t expect from a speaker this size.

A lot of that clean low-end comes down to QuietPort — Bose’s proprietary acoustic port design, shared across the lineup. A standard speaker port is essentially a tube, and tubes color the sound: bass notes pick up a boxy, resonant quality as air moves through them. QuietPort uses a shaped duct with slits along the sides and acoustic filters that break up that resonance before it exits the enclosure. Listening to the speaker, bass impacts were well-defined and accurate rather than bloomy.

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar ($1,099) is Bose’s first major soundbar redesign in over a decade, and the most technically ambitious product in the collection. Nine drivers total: six full-range (two up-firing, four front-facing), one center tweeter, and two proprietary PhaseGuide drivers that steer audio horizontally to areas of the room without physical speakers, so it can handle Dolby Atmos natively. The soundbar has the same knit-fabric grille and identical touch-control layout as the Ultra Speaker, with a glass top panel and a wide, low-profile form factor. It connects via HDMI ARC/eARC, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.3, and comes in Black or White Smoke.

CustomTune, Bose’s room calibration system, uses your phone’s microphone to analyze your living space and automatically tune the output to compensate for any furniture, glass, or other reflections. I watched a scene from Dune on the soundbar, and the bass alone blew me away. Even before the subwoofer was on, the floor was rumbling so much that I’m sure it would annoy the neighbors in my apartment building. In the quieter moments, I could hear sand swirling around the room, and whispered voices moved through the space. Sounds convincingly appeared to come from the sides and ceiling of the room.

SpeechClarity, the soundbar’s dialogue enhancement mode, also works differently from other implementations I’ve seen. Instead of simply boosting the center channel — which tends to just make everything in that range louder — it uses an AI algorithm adapted from Bose’s hearing aid technology to selectively identify and enhance speech. I watched a scene from the movie Ray, where the mode turned on and off periodically, and the dialogue was more natural and intelligible with it on. There are also three levels of intensity to choose from, which is helpful if you want to watch something quietly at night without waking anyone else in the house.

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer ($899) rounds out the lineup. It’s a big cube with a glass top panel to match the soundbar. It’s wireless with a 30-foot range, so placement isn’t tied to your cable routing, and it uses the same CleanBass and QuietPort architecture as the rest of the collection. When they added the sub to the Dune demo, the low-end extension jumped considerably — but honestly, the performance for the soundbar alone was more than satisfying to me. The sub supports 5.1.2 and 7.1.4 configurations and includes a 3.5mm wired connection as a fallback.

Bose has also revamped the mobile app for the Lifestyle Collection, with a redesigned setup flow that consolidates permissions, handles Wi-Fi credential sharing across devices, and integrates third-party account sign-in. I only saw a slideshow of the process rather than a working version, so I can’t speak to how it performs in practice — but given the bar Sonos set with its disastrous app overhaul a couple of years ago, it shouldn’t be hard to clear.

Both the speaker and soundbar have Alexa and Alexa+ built in (U.S. only), Amazon’s newer AI-powered assistant that handles more conversational requests beyond basic playback control. You’ll need the Bose app for initial setup, but after that, you can control playback directly from your go-to streaming app.

Pre-orders are open now, with availability starting May 15. Sonos has spent years as the unchallenged default for premium home audio, but after an afternoon with the Lifestyle Collection in New York, I think they should be worried. Stay tuned for SoundGuys’ full review.