Bose – Smart Ultra Soundbar with Dolby Atmos and voice control – Black

The Bose ultra Smart soundbar is the new king of the hill compact soundbar from Bose. This soundbar replaces the Smart 900 soundbar as their top 5:1 Atmos soundbar. The soundbar is piano gloss black with a forward facing metal grill that hides the front firing speakers and metal grills that cover the two up firing atmos speakers. The bar includes Dolby Atmos decoding for sources recorded with Dolby Atmos, faithfully reproducing the spatial sound. For non Atmos content Bose Truespace technology is used to upscale and create spatial separation to make your listening pleasure that much greater. The sound produced by the sound bar while watching movies and listening to music is fantastic. Bose has really nailed the Truespace tuning. If I found great separation in viewing my movies encoded with Dolby Atmos as well as non atmos titles. The AI dialogue mode intelligently boosts speech during noisy segments, making it easier to hear what the actors are saying.
The sound bar was easy to set up. You first have to download the smartphone app from either the Apple app store or Google Play store. Bose provides a QR code that you can scan that will bring you to the proper page. After I figured out I had to put the sound bar in pairing mode which consisted of pressing the mute and the music buttons on the remote until the light on the soundbar glows amber began t
indicating it was in setup mode. I chose the Smart 600 soundbar from the list as the Ultra is not listed yet (Bose presumably will add it at release time) It detected the new sound bar properly, listing it as the Bose Ultra Smart soundbar. You can then set up the WiFi. The Soundbar will download any updates at this time. Like its predecessor the Bose 900 soundbar. The ultra sound bar includes a Bose ADAPTiQ device to optimize your listening environment. You plug the device into a proprietary port in the soundbar and move around either holding the device or optimally wearing it on your head during the setup. The sound bar emits different frequency sounds and pulses and optimizes the sound environment for your particular room. It asks you to choose five unique positions in the room. I have to say after tuning the sound seems much more expanded.
The sound bar has two separate areas for connectivity. First includes HDMI( ARC) input, optical input, and ethernet and a USB C service port. The second area includes the power port, output for a separate bass speaker , the ADAPTiQ input, data and IR. The soundbar supports Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, Apple AirPlay2, Chromecast built-in , works with Google Home with Assistant capabilities and Amazon Alexa built-in for voice control It is also Roku ready and supports Spotify as well.
If you want to achieve great sound with a painless setup This sound bar is a great choice. Bose has taken all that is good in the Smart 900 series and improved it!

Pros
Neutral sound profile
Dialog easier to hear in movies
Good amount of bass for the size
Placement of objects with Atmos more distinct
Doesn’t require a lot of setup
Can be expanded to surrounds and subwoofer
Cons
Limited equalizer adjustment
Requires manual tuning
No instructions on pairing soundbar to app at time of writing
Wall mount brackets not included
The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar could easily be mistaken for the previous Soundbar 900. Externally the appearance is identical with a metal speaker grate and glass top. While not a new design it keeps things simple making it easier to blend into your décor. Bose is known for making products that are simple and easy to use. The Smart Ultra Soundbar is no different. In the box you will find the soundbar, remote, power cord, AdaptiQ tuning headset, HDMI cable, and subwoofer cable. The subwoofer cable is only compatible with specific Bose subwoofers which they call bass modules. If you wish it can connect to the bass module wirelessly. Input connections are limited to a single HMDI Arc input and an optical digital input. This soundbar keeps its role to strictly that of a soundbar and does not serve as an HDMI switch.
Setup and Performance
The basic setup is straightforward. You simply plug included HDMI cable into the port on the soundbar and matching HDMI port on your TV. If you want to take advantage of music streaming and the sound tuning, you are doing to need to connect the soundbar to the Bose Music app. This is where things got a little bit confusing. At the time of writing this review there were no instructions in the box or in the app on how to connect the soundbar to the app or WiFi. The instruction manual makes it seem like you just press connect in the app and it finds the soundbar and connects. Hopefully this will be added but you need to use the remote to activate pairing mode on the soundbar. Through trial and error, it was discovered the procedure is the same as the 300 series soundbar. After getting connected setup was much easier and the firmware could be updated. The AdaptiQ tuning process is different than other sound equipment. While some using a small microphone you place in listening locations others have a continuous tuning process with microphones in the speakers. Bose chose to use the manual process, but the process uses a headband that you wear and sit where the 5 main locations someone would be sitting when using the soundbar. At first it seems odd, but it makes sense. Instead of trying to hold the microphone where you would sit, you just wear the microphone and sit in your normal place. There is no need to guess on placement. Of course, since this is a manual process, you are going to have to keep track of the headband and run calibration again if anything changes.
This might seem a bit old fashioned to the new style dynamic tuning, but it seems to work quite well. Since it knows exactly where your head is normally it can tune it to suite you. While it is uncertain how well it works for guest of different heights it works quite well for the family. Positional audio seemed more distinct than usual. For example, in Aquaman there is a fight scene with the queen is fighting. While the weapon sounds were too fast to get exact direction. The height of the blasts was not very distinct. Placement of voices was very distinct and would come where you would expect. When the camera panned left to follow the action, you could hear speaking to your back right. When the camera panned back to the right the person that was heard was exactly where they were expected. In the movie Blade Runner 2049 where he is flying to the orphanage and gets fired at you can hear the bullets pass from left to right and front to back. Also, as the canopy rattles you can hear metal rattling above you to the front left and right. Finally, when the harpoon hits his flying car can hear the specific place it hits. The latest iteration of Dune is where Atmos is the most noticeable. In the scene where Paul encounters his first sand worm you can hear the sand grains floating around the room but also voices. There are points where you can hear things all around, including above and specifically to the right side.
The TrueSpace processing confused the processing of trying out the Smart Ultra Soundbar at first. The TrueSpace processing takes non Atmos sources and attempts to replicate a more immersive experience. While it isn’t as specific to locations like a movie created using Atmos where sounds are placed deliberately, TrueSpace did give a sense of depth to movies. In movies that didn’t have Atmos or it wasn’t turned on it was adjusting the sounds to spread them out more. Essentially, if a movie did not have Atmos it would make it sound like sounds were coming from something much larger than just a soundbar. Dialog was less concentrated and sounded larger and more natural. Sound effects sounded like they were coming in front of you when needed without sounding like they came from only directly in front. While still not as immersive as true Atmos content it still noticeably improved the experience without seeming overdone.
Probably the only effect that could be considered overdone is the Ai Dialog mode. This is the first time our family has been able to understand dialog in some of our favorite movies. The effect isn’t just boosting the treble. It is hard to describe but whatever Bose did with the effect it did make even the hardest dialog intelligible. Going back to the overdone aspect, that is more of a necessary side effect. Because it is adjusting voices slightly you might notice that some actor sound different but in a way you can’t quite place. Their voices can sound just slightly different but not in a strange way. While you might initially notice it, it doesn’t take long to forget about and enjoy understanding what they are saying. If for any reason it just doesn’t suite your taste it can be disabled.
Where the Smart Ultra Soundbar might fall a bit short is the same area of any subwoofer and that is impactful bass. While the soundbar can produce a surprising amount of bass, it won’t hit hard such as during an explosion. For those who don’t care to have tons of bass and are planning to use this in a small to medium sized room, the Smart Ultra Soundbar might be enough all on its own. If you like to have a wider frequency range, like more modern music with more dynamic bass, or want to use the soundbar in a larger room then one of the two bass modules can help fill the space better. When you add the bass module to the mix the soundbar offloads some of the frequencies to the bass module allowing the soundbar to focus more on the frequencies it handles best. It doesn’t just add bass, it makes the sound richer.
While adding the bass module makes movies even more immersive, the unexpected benefit is how it improves acoustical music and some vocals. The addition of the bass module makes the sound of a bass guitar richer or even some singers. A surprise was listening to Hello by Adele. While the soundbar did a respectable job reproducing the song with an overall neutral tone, the addition of the bass module brought more richness to her voice. Trying it out on The Gambler by Kenny Rogers it made the crackling of his voice richer. Even listening to Metallica S&M it sounded reasonable full without the bass module, but adding to the mix gave the orchestra more depth. If music as Daft Punk, DeadMau5, or Marshmallow are more your speed then the bass module becomes more of a necessity. Regardless of if you decide to add the bass module one thing the Smart Ultra Soundbar does a nice job of is expanding the soundstage. Like movies, when playing music, it sounds like the music is coming from a much larger arear than just the small soundbar. It gives more a sense of size.
Final Thoughts
The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is a well rounded soundbar that does a good job of keeping things simple while trying to address common complaints of soundbars over the years. If you are looking for a compact soundbar and prefer a more neutral sound or want better positional audio in movies, then then this soundbar could be a good fit for you. Just keep in mind if you have a larger room or overall like more dynamic and impactful bass you are going to want to add one of their bass modules as well to complete the package.