Bose QuietComfort Ultra

The QuietComfort Ultra are expensive, and I’m not crazy about their spatial audio tricks. If your budget won’t support a $430 purchase, Sony’s XM5 are a great alternative that hold up well across the board. But the Ultra’s impressive sound, premium design, and spread of features match with their top-tier ANC for an impressive package. If you must have the very best noise canceling, the Ultra are the headphones to get. For now, anyway.

Bose comes out swinging with new headphones that deliver ultra musicality, active noise cancellation, and a whole lot more.

With the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, Bose remains near the top of the headphone heap. While Immersive Audio is great at times, the results are inconsistent and can be downright bad with some albums and songs. Still, the default tuning is improved and puts these headphones closer to the level of Sony and Sennheiser sonically, mostly due to added bass, increased clarity and enhanced warmth.

But if you're looking for the best noise-canceling headphones, the Bose QC Ultra Headphones are certainly at or near the top of the heap, even with their small downsides. Hopefully, over time they'll get even better with a few firmware upgrades.

Bose brings its best together to create headphones that will fit into your life so well you'd swear it's magic. Multipoint audio is handled more seamlessly than Sony, Google, or Samsung, Immersive Audio combines Bose's brilliant sound and strong ANC into headphones you'll never want to take off.

By nearly any criteria that matter to the company’s longtime customers, the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are a vast improvement over the Noise Cancelling Headphones 700. They’re exceedingly comfortable — more so than alternatives from Sony, Apple, and other rivals — and continue to provide powerful noise cancellation. Sound quality is status quo and what I’ve come to expect from Bose headphones, and Immersive Audio can be very hit or miss.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones pump out robust sound and offer the best noise cancellation of any over-ear models we've tested.

Most earbud and headphone makers are starting to skip the annual update cycle. Sure, many of them release a new model regularly, but in terms of overhauling a previous product, the timelines are typically more extended. Bose has made an exception,...