The Smart Ultra is Dolby Atmos compatible, it allows music streaming and voice control. The sound is excellent, whether listening to music or watching a movie. For us, this is the best soundbar under €1,000.
Design and features of the Bose Smart Ultra
The Bose Smart Ultra rides the artificial intelligence trend with a new Dialogue Mode, which uses machine learning to put voices front and center. The soundbar also integrates the Alexa voice assistant with the Bose Voice4Video function which allows you to control the change of channel or input by voice. Unfortunately, Google Assistant is no longer available.
The design of the Smart Ultra is particularly neat and elegant, with its glass upper part and a minimalist style typical of Bose. Quite imposing (104.5 x 10.7 x x5.8 cm), it only has two physical buttons for the microphone and the assistant.
The soundbar is compatible with the many variants of Dolby, including Dolby Atmos, but strangely not with DTS or DTS:X. It uses dipole drivers that radiate sound upwards and Bose spatial technologies to expand the soundstage.
Connections include HDMI eARC and optical inputs, Wi-Fi (Spotify Connect, AirPlay 2, built-in Chromecast) and Bluetooth. The system is designed for use with the Bose Music app, which integrates a number of native streaming apps and allows for multi-room control. The app is also used to enable ADAPTiQ calibration. The Smart Ultra comes with a remote control.
Audio performance
Bose has released a number of capable soundbars in recent years, but the Ultra is undoubtedly the best. It's capable of creating sharp effects during movies, but it's also versatile enough to play music effectively. We compared the Bose Smart Ultra to the Sonos Arc . The Bose was better overall.
As always, our test begins with the opening scene of Mad Max: Fury Road to evaluate the performance of Dolby Atmos spatialization .
The Bose Smart Ultra is the best at this exercise, allowing us to follow voices, notably that of the man who flies across the stage from right to left. The Sonos Arc also delivers very good sound, with lots of intelligibility, but its panoramic capabilities are not as effective.
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