Hands-on review: Bose Ultra Open Earbuds

Bose Ultra Open Earbuds: One-minute review

The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are Bose’s attempt at transferring its premium audio expertise and signature bassy sound into an open-ear form factor, and by any metric it succeeds. The best bone-conduction headphones and open-ear headphones generally place an emphasis on a secure fit over sound quality, as it was assumed serious audiophiles wouldn’t be looking for open-ear headphones. Instead, open-ear headphones have been positioned primarily as workout headphones, allowing you to hear traffic and pedestrians while you run or cycle, or listen to tunes during swims. 

However, more and more brands are realising that, despite the fact that they’re predominantly used for workouts, open-ear form factors have other lifestyle applications, both in the office (for example, being open to collaboration and replying to a colleague while you’re listening to music or having a virtual meeting), and in the street (it turns out that being more aware of your surroundings isn’t only useful while you’re exercising). 

So, we’ve now got an offering from Bose that aims dual drivers at your ears, using Bose Immersive Audio, to give you the best sound quality it can pack into  headphones that don’t sit in your ear canal. The sound is very good; the best I’ve tried from air-conduction or open-ear headphones, with their immersive sound-stage technology providing spatial audio that’s ideal for home media, as well as pumping tunes during a 10K. 

The experience of being in work meetings is also quite nice, and there’s no disconnect between listening to what the person on my laptop is saying while also being able to hear my office surroundings. 

The design is neat, with the headphones hooking onto the side of your ear’s helix rather than over the whole ear itself, with the battery cylinder tucking behind your ear. They do feel a little wobbly thanks to the uneven weight distribution, but have so far refused to actually fall off, even during my first five-kilometer run with the buds. Full judgement will be saved for a full review, but for now… they’re very impressive, albeit a little overpriced. 

Watch our video on the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds here:

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Bose Ultra Open Earbuds: Price and availability

(Image credit: Future)

• Available now
• Priced at $299 / £299 / AU$449.95
• More expensive than AirPods Pro 2

The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are available now, priced at $299 / £299 / AU$449.95. That’s quite the price tag: they cost the same as the Bose Quietcomfort Ultra earbuds and more than the AirPods Pro 2, and it’s clear that Bose considers the Ultra Open Earbuds a premium product just like the aforementioned buds. 

In terms of sound quality and build, Bose is probably right – but given the slightly unsteady feel of the fit, the price did nothing to soothe my nerves while I was out jogging with them.  

Bose Ultra Open Earbuds: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Interesting, intuitive design
• Fantastic audio credentials
• Secure fit, even if it feels precarious at times

The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds have an interesting design, similar to the Huawei FreeClip, hooking into your inner ear and directly around your ear’s helix, rather than around the point in which your ear meets the side off your head like the Shokz OpenFit. The ‘battery barrel’, as our Bose rep referred to it, sits behind your ear, and contains a tactile button which lets you switch between listening modes and adjust the volume. 

The hook part contains dual drivers that project sound directly towards your ear canal and up into your inner ear, creating a more complete listening experience than bone conduction headphones are capable of. Bose calls its design OpenAudio, and it allows you to crank up the volume while offering very little sound leakage, which many other cheaper buds and open-ear headsets are very guilty of. I’ll come back to this later; but it absolutely works, and the sound quality, especially on Immersive Audio settings, is wonderful. 

Snapdragon sound reportedly boosts lossless and low-latency capabilities, which sounds impressive for a headphones category which starts and ends with “how secure is the fit” for most entrants. In regards to the fit, each bud is easy and intuitive to put on after just a few tries, although, as mentioned, they do feel a little weird, with the positioning of the battery barrel at the rear, making them wobble slightly, which occasionally feels precarious. 

However, they haven’t fallen out of my ears at any point, even during fairly vigorous head-shaking and running. The only time they did come close to falling out was when I was twiddling the controls while running, when it felt like I could easily dislodge them. Otherwise, no complaints: my one gripe is that they’re so easy to take off in comparison to other headphones that it would be very simple for someone to swipe them off you on public transport or in the street, although the increased awareness that comes with the open-ear design of course means this is less likely to happen. Hopefully.  

Bose Ultra Open Earbuds: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• Immersive Audio offers best-in-class open-ear listening
• Still and Motion listening modes
• Easy volume and mode-switching

In order to control the earbuds, you use the tactile buttons on the rear of the barrel. You press once to switch between immersive and stereo listening modes, and press twice and hold to toggle the volume – left to turn the volume down, right to turn it up. Easy-peasy. 

The really impressive bit is Bose’s Immersive Audio soundstage, which you can access on the Bose app, and which offers Still and Motion modes. The Motion mode allows you to turn your head and move around within a soundstage, creating the impression that sound is coming from a particular direction. 

I’ve only tried this mode during a press briefing so far, with a Bose representative talking me through the functionality, but it’s a great feature, and worked well during my brief listen. 

It’s all made possible by Bose’s OpenAudio functionality, and bolstered by a load of high-tech audio smarts such as Snapdragon sound and what’s described as a ‘tightly-controlled acoustic structure’. It’s all combined to make the audio on the buds best-in-class for the open-ear form factor: the sound is incredible and satisfyingly bassy, and at times I forgot the buds were open at all – it was just that good. 

However, taking calls at work necessitated some quick volume adjustment, as voices channelled through low-quality laptop mics on Google Meets got a little shrill.

Bose Ultra Open Earbuds: Early Verdict

I’m still yet to fully drain the battery, and there are a few tests I’ve yet to try, but overall I’m extremely impressed with how the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds have performed. The sound quality, as I’d expected, is wonderful, and the cool clip-on design is far more functional than I was anticipating. 

The price is a sticking point, as for less money you can get the AirPods Pro 2, which offer transparency and ANC – I’ll probably knock half a star off for those omissions come my full review. However, these are the best-sounding open-ear headphones I’ve ever tried, and I’m looking forward to testing them further.