By Mark Kawalya
Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones offer a refreshing take on the company’s active noise cancellation (ANC) technology. The headphones have a refined design, with metal instead of plastic used for the headband and hinge. The earpads and inside of the headband are soft and cushiony.
All settings are found within the Bose Music app. These include a battery life monitor, a volume slider, quick access to audio modes, Bluetooth connections, EQ, Immersive Audio, shortcut customization, and tips. Bose offers three audio modes by default: Quiet, Aware, and Immersion.
Bose also offers the ability to create your own modes with adjustable noise canceling, wind block, and Immersive Audio. Once you create a new mode, favoriting it will make it accessible via the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones’ on-board controls. The headphones offer more immersive sound and a refreshed design with a heftier price tag of shs1,650,000. They are an excellent choice for those looking for a reliable and comfortable headphone.
Bose has improved its stock tuning on the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, focusing on the use of Immersive Audio. The company claims to put users in the acoustic sweet spot, resulting in louder and clearer sound quality. Stellar noise canceling performance is not new on Bose headphones, and the company is consistently the best in terms of allowing users to block out the world. The headphones do a great job with TV sound and human voices. Bose promises “amazingly clear calls,” which is on par with nearly every headphone company these days.
Battery life is expected to last up to 24 hours with ANC turned on, but if both noise cancellation and Immersive Audio are used, that figure drops to 18 hours. However, tests show that using the latter option, both the Bose app and macOS showed 30% remaining after 20 hours. To conserve battery, the QC Ultra Headphones will automatically turn off when they aren’t being worn and no audio is playing for 10 minutes. There’s also a quick-charge feature that gives two and a half hours of use in 15 minutes with ANC on and Immersive Audio off. If you need spatial audio during this time, Bose says you can expect 30 minutes less battery life after the fast top off.
In summary, while Bose has made improvements in the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, they still fall short of the top of the industry headphone’s lineup despite being expensive. While Immersive Audio is great at times, the default tuning improves and puts the headphones closer to the level of Sony and Sennheiser.