Bose Brings Back Its ‘Lifestyle’ Branding With New Speakers for the Home

Bose has three New speakers to make listening fun in your home. The company’s new “Lifestyle Collection” – designed with a luxurious fabric-wrapped grille and gentle curves – includes the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer, and Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. All of these can be connected to multiple units and third-party speakers via AirPlay and Google Cast for a better multi-room audio experience.

These audio products mark a “re-entry” into the home speaker space for the company, bringing back the iconic Lifestyle lineup that originally debuted in 1990 – known for simplicity and ease of use – which Bose later discontinued in 2022.

It’s no surprise, Bose says the Ultra Soundbar is “the best soundbar we’ve ever made”, and the Ultra speaker may even be one of the company’s best soundbars in its history. The wireless speaker starts at $299, with a $349 limited-edition model in Driftwood Sand; The soundbar is priced at $1,099, and the subwoofer is priced at $899. They are available for preorder now and will go on sale from May 15th.

These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers support AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and, uniquely, are the first to integrate with Alexa+ (in the US only), letting you ask Amazon’s chatbot to play music through the speaker via voice commands. It also has Bluetooth support and even an auxiliary input for connecting the Ultra Speaker to a turntable.

You can group two Lifestyle Ultra speakers into one stereo system in the Bose app, or group them all together for a home theater system. Sadly, if you hope to use it as a surround system with your existing Bose soundbar, the company says it’s only backward compatible with the Bass Module 700. And with the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, it can only be used as a wired connection. For multi-room audio, the company has handed off grouping duties to the Google Home app for Google Cast technology, or Apple’s AirPlay for iOS users. Talking about the app, it has a redesigned onboarding process that reportedly makes it easier to set up all these speakers.

On the audio front, the Ultra speaker specifically features two front-facing drivers as well as an upward-firing driver for Dolby Atmos-like spatial audio. (It doesn’t support Dolby Atmos music at this time.) The company is also promoting its CleanBass technology, which combines Bose’s QuietPort acoustic openings for deeper sound with a woofer that performs better than its size, though we’ll have to hear it for ourselves to see if it lives up to Bose’s claims.