Bose Ultra Open Earbuds Review: A Compelling Offering for Those Who Prioritise Environmental Awareness, but at a Price

With the release of the Ultra Open Earbuds featuring an unconventional open-ear design that attaches around the ears to let in environmental sounds, vital for situational awareness and spatial orientation for blind users like myself, Bose offers an intriguing alternative to other open-ear buds like Sony's LinkBuds, bone conduction headphones such as Shokz' OpenRun Pro, and in-ear buds with transparency modes like Apple's AirPods Pro. At £299 (US$299), they won't be for everyone and might be a hard sell against those established and relatively more affordable options. However, early reviews left me wondering if Bose had managed to hit a sweet spot of ambient awareness, audio quality, and features, making me curious if they could tempt me away from the Shokz and AirPods I use daily.

The Shokz OpenRun Pro are my companion on my daily 4+ mile walk around mostly quiet suburban streets. They leave my ears completely open to environmental sounds and are a secure and comfortable fit. The audio quality is good for my typical listening of either podcasts or audiobooks. Call quality is passable. They are a good choice for this use case, but feel rather basic and uninspiring when compared to the audio quality and features that you would expect from similarly priced earbuds.

The Apple AirPods Pro are my choice when at home. The audio quality is very good for my use case and to my ears. They offer features that I miss when using the Shokz, such as Listen for Siri and Announce Notifications. However, even when fitted with foam tips, they always feel like they are on the point of falling out (the left one in particular). I'm always nervous when doing tasks like preparing food or washing dishes. They also start to feel uncomfortable after a couple hours of use, although taking them out briefly typically helps.

I use both the Shokz and AirPods Pro daily, getting at least a couple hours from each. But both have limitations, so I wondered if the uniquely-designed Bose Ultra Open Earbuds could replace one or both given their ambient listening capabilities paired with the Bose signature audio quality.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Water resistance: IPX4 (resistant to water only at a splash level)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3
• Audio processing: Snapdragon Sound™ Technology Suite, enabling support for the latest Qualcomm® aptX Adaptive codec for audio streaming — including lossless and low latency capabilities (SBC, AAC, aptX Adaptive)
• Battery life: up to 7.5h (27h with case)
• Earbud weight: 6.4g each
• Earbud dimensions: 19 x 17 x 27mm
• Charging case weight: 44g
• Charging case dimensions: 42 x 65 x 26mm
• Case charging: USB-C
• Colour: Black or White Smoke

Design and Fit

Instead of silicone ear tips that seal off your canals, the Ultra Open Earbuds ‘cling’ to the part of your ear called the helix using a construction consisting of two sections connected by a short flexible curved strip that is responsible for generating the cling grip. One cylindrical-shaped section wraps behind your ear housing the battery and multifunction button, while the other extends forward holding a 12mm driver that sits just alongside of your ear canal, positioned at roughly 8 o'clock if you picture your right ear as a clock face. The lower ear positioning means you can wear glasses and hats without their getting in the way. They look and feel strikingly different than any other earbuds I've used, more like jewellery than headphones, and the fit felt a little odd at first. This quickly passed and putting them on has become as simple as inserting regular earbuds.

The gentle cling of the design applies minimal pressure and I've found them to be extremely comfortable even during multi-hour use. You feel them when you initially put them on, but you quickly forget that you're wearing them if nothing is playing. This is the opposite of my experience with most other earbuds, which tend to get increasingly uncomfortable over time. However, although the earbuds generally stay securely in place during normal activity, I've already learned from experience to still take care in certain situations to avoid dislodging them, such as when raising my rain jacket hood (thank you to the kind passer-by who immediately directed me to the dropped earbud!). Their comfortable fit could have you miss a earbud being dislodged if not listening to something at the time. I've also experienced that a high collar, like the one on that same jacket, can nudge them out of optimal listening position by bumping your earlobe when walking or turning your head.

Controls and Battery

The Ultra Open Earbuds' physical multifunction button is easy to locate, intuitive, and generally works well, letting you play/pause, skip songs, take calls, and control volume through a series of taps and long presses. The limitations of having only the single button requires that adjusting the volume is somewhat fiddlier than I would wish though — a double tap and hold on the left earbud button lowers volume and on the right earbud raises it. There’s an assignable shortcut for each earbud that's activated by a long press that lets you choose between commands like activating a voice assistant, switching Bluetooth sources, or switching between sound modes. This is the only button action that can be customised, although it can have different assignments for each earbud. Pressing the button doesn't jostle the earbuds loose in my experience, but one would generally brace them with a thumb anyway.

The quoted battery life of 7.5 hours has proved realistic in my testing with volume set to moderate levels and Immersive Audio mode disabled. Enabling Immersive Audio dramatically reduces battery life, dropping playback down to around 4.5 hours. The earbuds also have an impressive 48-hour standby time, meaning you can wear them all day for listening to VoiceOver while using your device, occasional audio content playback, and calls without needing to recharge. The charging case takes three hours for a full charge and can fully recharge the earbuds in 60 minutes, while just 10 minutes of charging should give you two hours of playback.

Unlike the AirPods Pro which can be a little fiddly to remove from their case, it couldn't be simpler with the Ultra Open Earbuds. On opening the lid of the charging case the earbuds sit fully exposed — held in place only by magnets. You simply need to lift them away from the magnet. Putting them back is perhaps even easier — simply bring them within a few millimetres of their assigned charging spots and those magnets snap them back in place.

The charging case itself is slightly bulkier overall than that of the AirPods Pro, but is still a comfortable fit for the coin pocket of my jeans.

Like most modern earbuds, the status of tasks like pairing, resetting, and firmware updates are indicated by a light on the charging case. With no sight, the state of this light can only be guessed. So far there have been no issues relying on good luck.

Connectivity

Initial pairing and subsequent connection of the earbuds with my iPhone has been fast and reliable. the Bluetooth range of the Ultra Open Earbuds has also proved to be very good. I have routinely left my iPhone in a downstairs room and been able to move around both levels of my home with no drop or degradation in connection to the earbuds.

VoiceOver latency (‘lag’) has been typical from what I've come to expect from recent earbuds supporting the Bluetooth 5 standard, in that it's not an been an issue in normal use of my iPhone. However, this is something where your own mileage may vary depending upon how you use your device and your perception of latency.

Sound

Chris Welch writes in his Verge review, the Bose earbuds provide “clear, nicely detailed, and consistently pleasant” audio quality. However, he notes that “you're never going to be doing critical listening with buds like these” given the inherent bass limitations of an open design that beams sound externally. As he explains, “It’s extremely challenging to bring oomph to your tunes in a form factor like this, so bass is easily the leading weakness." While not completely absent, "you need to adjust your expectations and be okay forgoing the majority of the boom and rumble in your music.”

In my experience, I have found Welch's assessments accurate. The overall profile proves balanced and enjoyable for casual listening but lacks the visceral impact possible on sealed in-ear models. Still, Bose manages better bass presence than the bone conduction Shokz and the Sony open LinkBuds. But for those who prioritise rich low-end, the missing bass ‘thump’ could prove disappointing.

It’s worth noting here that positioning of the earbuds can have an effect on bass response. In my testing, the optimal position for bass response is a lower placement right above the earlobe. Be prepared to experiment.

While I have no personal experience with open-back headphones, Simon Cohen of Digital Trends draws an comparison to that wider soundstage in his Ultra Open Earbuds review. He attributes the impressive audio quality partly to Bose engineering from small drivers, writing that the positioning “inside the concha, where they’re closer to your ear canals" while using "the ear’s natural contours to shield them” enables better directional precision. Cohen finds the resulting sound “airy” and “natural”, nicely simulating speakers rather than blasting audio directly into ears. He sums up the spacious yet intimate experience as “the earbud equivalent of open-back headphones.”

The Ultra Open Earbuds support Immersive Audio, which is Bose’s take on spatial audio and is akin to listening to speakers in a room rather than headphones. It features two modes — Still and Motion. Still is best for listening in one place, with sounds stuck in virtual space around you as you move your head. Motion on the other hand is best for when you’re on the move, with the audio placed in front of you. I find that it makes some tracks certainly feel more immersive, although not perhaps enough to justify keeping it turned on and the dramatic hit it has on battery life, cutting playback duration from 7.5 hours down to just 4.5 hours. More significant for VoiceOver users, is that enabling Immersive Audio changes the sound of VoiceOver speech. In my case, Alex becomes both more muffled and echoey. I could tolerate this for occasional brief periods, but certainly not for extended use.

Overall, in my experience and for my use cases, I would agree with Samuel Gibbs comment in The Guardian, that the Ultra Open Earbuds are “more than good enough to do justice to most genres for a nice, rounded and easy-listening sound.” There is a slight reduction in bass response when compared to in-ear options like the AirPods Pro, but if you’re primarily a podcast and audiobook listener like me, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

The Bose Music app used to setup and configure the Ultra Open Earbuds offers adjustable EQ settings that offers four presets for the earbuds: Bass Boost, Bass Reducer, Treble Boost, and Treble Reducer. You can adjust the Bass, Mid, and Treble levels for each of these, or create a custom curve. This is all fully accessible with VoiceOver. For my typical listening, the default Bose profile works well, but many will appreciate the ability to customise things here.

Regarding noise leakage, in my testing, in a quiet room somebody 2 metres distant could only hear some slight noise coming from the earbuds when playing at a medium level. They weren't able to make out what type of audio was playing and said that the sound leakage was less than it is with my Shokz headphones.

Ambient Awareness

Because the Ultra Open design leaves your ear canals open, you aren't disconnected from your surroundings as can be the case with in-ear buds, even with transparency modes activated. However, I find that loud environments can overwhelm the audio output, even at high volume levels — the louder your environment, the harder it will be to enjoy your listening.

For comparison purposes, I've typically found that the volume needs to be set around 10-20% higher compared to my Shokz bone conduction headphones for a comparably comfortable listening experience in noisy environments. This may be owing to the different audio transmission methods — a driver placed alongside your ear canal versus through cheekbone vibration.

An Auto Volume feature enabled via the Bose Music app aims to counteract loud noises by dynamically adjusting volume based on your surroundings to keep your content at the same listening level. The performance has generally been good in my experience so far — in some noisy situations like a motorcycle was passing or construction work was nearby, the feature quickly adjusted volume automatically to a level that allowed me to continue listening to whatever was playing. However, on a few occasions it has done nothing despite increased noise levels around me and I've had to manually adjust the volume. It's definitely something that I will keep enabled though.

Note: the Auto Volume feature only became available in the earbud settings after installing a firmware update that was available when first using the earbuds.

Calling

Call quality has been generally solid for an open-ear design in my testing. Recipients reported minimal background interference and artefacts with my voice coming through clearly, although they did notice without my mentioning that I was using different earbuds than usual. I had no issues hearing callers on my end, except in very loud environments where ambient noise could overwhelm. For calls, this style of earbud simply can't match in-ear earbuds with active noise cancellation. Accepting the limitations inherent to their style, I find the Ultra Open Earbuds deliver passable call performance that should suffice for most use cases.

What's Missing

Considering their £299 price, the Ultra Open Earbuds lack some features that it would be reasonable to expect. Most glaringly, they lack multipoint pairing, which lets you connect two devices at once to your headphones. This is a common feature on far cheaper models, so its omission here is disappointing. Bose promises to add it in a future firmware update, but for now manual switching is required. One option for doing this is to add additional Bluetooth devices, such as your laptop, in the Bose Music app. With the shortcut assigned to one or both of your earbuds configured to switch devices, you can press and hold the multifunction button to cycle through devices and release when you hear the name of the device that you want to connect to.

Another feature I would have liked to see at this price point is auto-pause when you remove an earbud. However, the Ultra Open Earbuds are unable to detect when they are taken off your ear. So audio continues playing unless you manually press the button to stop it.

Similarly, conversation-awareness would also be a reasonable expectation, stopping playback automatically when the earbuds detect that you are in a conversation. With Bose already promising multipoint support in a future firmware update, hopefully this is something else that can be added to the existing release of these earbuds.

Lastly, I was disappointed to find the charging case does not include support for wireless charging. Bose says it will release a $49 wireless charging silicone cover for the case in the future.

Verdict

The Bose earbuds have replaced my Shokz for daily walks. I haven't noticed any meaningful difference in situational awareness compared to bone conduction. Instead, I gain improved audio and features without sacrificing comfort.

Things are less definitive for me when comparing the Ultra Open Earbuds versus AirPods Pro at home. Currently, I’m favouring the Bose earbuds, perhaps because they are new and offer a nice change as a single set of earbuds for both home and outside use. For my casual listening, any audio quality advantages of the AirPods Pro don’t outweigh the extremely comfortable fit and long battery life of the Bose. The one key feature of the AirPods Pro I do miss however is Siri automatically reading out selected notifications when they arrive. While noise blocking could be occasionally useful, I don't miss having something shoved in my ear and the constant sensation that it's about to fall out.

The £299 price tag of the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds is hard to ignore and is enough alone to mean that they won't be for everyone. They also won't be for people wanting the flexibility of noise cancellation features where you can shut out the outside world when it becomes just too noisy. With the Ultra Open Earbuds you have to accept that the outside world will be on full volume all of the time. However, for those who prioritise environmental awareness during everyday activities and are willing to compromise some on audio quality and features, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are a compelling offering.