The best ANC you can buy

Bose took us by surprise recently when, alongside the launch of the new QuietComfort Ultra flagship over-ears, it also announced the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds – replacing the fantastic QuietComfort Earbuds II after barely a year on the shelves.

That’s not very Bose-like behaviour – it usually leaves at least two years between launches, and in some cases even longer. So why the rush?

Well, aside from bringing the buds under Bose’s new Ultra flagship naming convention, they also add support for high-res, lossless audio – something Bose had promised for the QCEII via a firmware update but, as it turned out, it wasn’t able to offer without a hardware update too.

It also took the opportunity to weave in support for Bose’s new spatialised audio mode, bringing the feature set of the flagship buds and over-ears beautifully into line.

So do these buds warrant an upgrade, and are they still the buds to buy for the very best noise cancellation? They’ve been a mainstay in my ears for over a week to find out.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds

Recommended

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds offer outstanding noise cancellation that’s backed up by a fun, full-bodied sound. Spatial audio works well for those who like it, and the new support for high-res lossless codecs makes the buds sound even better. However, the lack of a few basic features now feels a bit of an oversight at this price.

Pros

• Full-bodied, authoritative sound
• Incredible noise cancellation
• High-res codec support
• Comfortable

Cons

• No Bluetooth multipoint
• No wireless charging
• Call quality is a mixed bag

Price, specs and availability

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds cost $299/£300 at launch, which – in the UK at least – prices them just a little higher than the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II were at launch ($299/£280).

It puts them very much at the top end of the earbuds market, up against the likes of the Sony WF-1000XM5 at $299/£259, the Technics EAH-AZ80 at $300/£259 and the AirPods Pro 2 at $249/£249.

Design

If you are familiar with the QuietComfort Earbuds II, there’s very little to mention when it comes to design. There’s been no radical rethinking of the way Bose’s flagship buds look, fit or feel, so much so that the old buds fit into the new case (and of course, vice versa).

The Bose logo in the black version I have in for testing has a silver finish in place of the glossy black of its predecessors, and the earbud stems are also topped with a metallic silver too – subtle nods to helping the Ultra Earbuds stand out, though I’d stop short of saying they have a more “luxe” look, as Bose wants you to think they do.

Just as before, this stem holds touch controls, all of which can be customised in the Bose Music app. Taps will control music and calls, while swipes control volume. You can also set a shortcut on each bud for a long hold, from a choice of swapping noise-cancelling modes and activating your phone’s voice assistant, and all works exactly as it should.

Another slight change in design – and it is slight – is the new notch in the top of the bud that helps you to more easily line up and secure the stability bands. These are the oval rubbery rings that go around the section of each bud that sits in your ear.

As their name would suggest, they help to keep the buds in place, as well as improve the seal – you get three sizes to choose from, as well as three eartips, too.

Comfort here is top notch. The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II have been some of my favourite earbuds over the past 12 months, and their comfort has a fair bit to do with that. The Bose Ultra Earbuds are – unsurprisingly – no different, so I have confidence in expecting these to hold out well in the long term too.

They’re more comfortable than the Sony WF-1000XM5, which seem to need very careful positioning, and some pretty decent pressure to get their seal just right. In this regard, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are foolproof.

Features and battery life

The big headline feature here is the introduction of Immersive Audio, which was also included on the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones. Its Bose’s take on spatial audio, but will work with both spatial audio mixes and regular stereo tracks to add a greater sense of space to the presentation. The idea is to move the sound from between your ears to somewhere out in front of you instead.

As I said in my review of the Bose over-ears, I’m not really a fan of spatial audio for music – I like as little added processing as possible, but in terms of the Immersive Audio mode setting out to do what it intends to, it is largely a success.

There’s the option for Still and Motion – Still will keep the audio secured in front of you, no matter which way you move your head, whereas Motion will mean the sweet spot follows wherever your head moves, and will aim to make you feel less disorientated when listening in this mode on the go.

Switch it on and immediately you will hear the music move up and away from the space between your ears. It’s really impressive, instantly adding more space between vocals and instruments, so much so that you can almost pick them out in a soundstage in front of you. The processing is also incredibly smooth, tracking and following my head movements accurately, even when I try to catch it out.

I do find, as I did with the Ultra over-ears, that there is a slightly processed sound to regular stereo tracks with Immersive Audio on, which doesn’t sound great to a critical ear.

This isn’t quite so distracting when listening to Atmos-mixed tracks in Tidal, but it’s not personally a way I enjoy listening to music.

By their very nature, Atmos music tracks just sound a little hollow and lacking in focus to me, but if it’s a sound experience you enjoy then Bose, without a doubt, makes the very most of it from the headphones I’ve heard.

Elsewhere, Bose claims to have improved the call quality on the Ultra Earbuds, by prioritising the mics at play according to which is least under pressure (there are four per bud), and also reducing the amount of noise that cuts through during a call.

I actually found the results a bit of a mixed bag – or at least my callers did. While I could hear them loud and clear with no issues, they commented that some of the background noise could cut in when I was talking (though was very quiet when I wasn’t), and that my voice dipped in and out in terms of volume. Overall it’s a bit of a fragile performance unless you are projecting your voice at a consistently loud volume.

Battery life is the same as it was in the predecessors, offering around six hours of playback and 24 hours in total, with the case. However, if Immersive Audio is your thing, you’re going to need to make sure you keep your case charged up, as you’ll only get four hours of playback with that, dropping to 16 hours with the case.

There is at least a fast charging option, with two hours of playback from 20 minutes on charge, while for waterproofing, you can expect IPX4 protection, meaning they can accompany you to the gym without worry.

There are some clear misses here, which you wouldn’t expect from headphones this pricey. There is no Bluetooth multipoint, which buds half their prices are offerering, and no wireless charging either. As before, you’ll need to spend an extra $49/£50 to get the wireless charging cover, if this is important to you.

Noise cancellation

It’ll probably come as no surprise that the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds remain as superb in their noise cancellation as their predecessors were, deadening the noise of the busiest trains, noisiest roads and thumping gym playlists to next to nothing.

As usual, high-pitched noises will be the most difficult to cancel out entirely, so the beeps of a train door may cut through, but when you’re playing back your music at the same time, they don’t register as an interruption at all. Simply put, it’s the best noise cancellation you’ll get from in-ears, bar none.

As with their predecessors, every time you put them into your ears, you’ll hear Bose’s CustomTune chime play into your ears (followed by a very helpful update on the device you’re connected to and battery percentage).

This short tone is actually doing more work than you might think, checking the fit of the earbuds at every wear and tweaking its sound and noise cancellation based on what it discovers, for the best performance every time.

The standard presets for noise cancellation are Quiet, for the maximum noise cancellation, and Aware – Bose’s transparency mode, which lets noise from your surroundings in with startling accuracy.

This option is accompanied, as usual, by ActiveSense, which will jump in to protect your listening experience should you walk past building work, for example, or something else suddenly very noisy, and block it out.

You can also add in your own modes, tweaking the level of noise cancellation you want to have and naming the mode appropriately. However, as is usually the case with Bose’s noise-cancelling buds, there is no option to turn ANC off completely.

Sound

There’s been no upgrade to the hardware in charge of the sound of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds. They feature the same 9.3mm driver in each bud leading the charge on their audio performance, meaning that there’s plenty here that sounds very familiar indeed.

That means there’s a solid bass response from the get go – slightly more generous than is neutral, but not one that steals the show or runs amok across any other part of the frequency range. It creates a bold, full-bodied performance, but one that doesn’t gloss over detail in the process. There’s stacks of it.

Listen to Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, and you’ll get plenty of low-end warmth from the bassy synths, but also punch from the fast rhythmic bassline that accompanies it, driving the track forward with energy, enthusiasm and attention to detail.

Vocals are woven through the midrange rather than sitting on top of the instruments supporting them, which gives a very cohesive and focused performance. However, in busier tracks, a little more forward presence wouldn’t go amiss, and a tweak in the EQ setting of Bose’s Music app might be required if you feel the same.

There’s arguably more weight through the midrange than you might hear in the Sony WF-1000XM5 too, which choose a crisper, more insightful handling than all-out presence. That’s not to say the Bose are lacking in detail, but Sony’s buds do dig a little bit deeper here.

Still, the Bose play to their strengths and deliver a supremely confident and authoritative performance, injecting all the bounce Beyonce’s Cuff It requires, while still maintaining the poise to dial it down for Adele’s Someone Like You when needed.

There’s a good sense of space and organisation to the presentation too, and dynamically they’re plenty talented to navigate their way through quiet and loud with explicit handling. To my ears, it’s an almost identical performance to the one I loved in the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II, and I’m certainly not mad about that.

However, what makes things a little more interesting here is the new addition of Snapdragon’s Sound Technology Suite, which enables support Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive lossless streaming – something the QuietComfort Earbuds II do not offer.

If you have an Android device or music player that’s capable of this, and decent source material too, it does make all the difference to feed these buds the better sound quality. They cling to the extra detail, and you don’t need to be an audiophile to hear the difference it delivers.

Streaming from the aptX HD-capable FiiO M11S instead of my iPhone 13 Pro, there’s undeniably more refinement to a playthrough of Limp Bizkit’s Take a Look Around – from the bass, all the way through to the treble.

When the guitar solo lets loose at the chorus, accompanied by cymbal crashes and Fred Durst’s shrieking vocals, it can all sound a bit too raw via the iPhone’s AAC codec, the busy mix starting to harden up with the (considerable) volume I tend to listen at.

However, streamed using the higher-res codec, this raucous mix makes all the more sense. Instruments have more space to breathe, and there’s a more subtlety at play thanks to an increase in fine detail. It creates a much more comfortable and carefully crafted listen across the board – from dynamics through to musicality – and is such a clear improvement that I’m not keen to go back to listening from my iPhone.

If Sony’s buds had the edge on detail and insight before, this enhanced performance – when available – brings the two significantly closer.

Verdict

Considering the strong blueprint left for them by last year’s Earbuds II, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are every bit as excellent as I thought they’d be.

They bring everything that was great about last year’s buds but add in spatial audio, for those who like it, plus high-res audio support that has a superb impact on sound quality. With Sony snapping at its heels here, it’s not a moment too soon either.

They still lack a couple of things that you might expect at this price – namely Bluetooth multipoint and wireless charging – and call quality could be tad better too.

While there might not be enough improvements here to tempt upgraders from the QCEII, any newcomers looking for a confident, detailed sound alongside the best noise-cancelling performance that true wireless headphones can offer, then the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds will not disappoint.