Bose is rebooting its smart speakers for the Sonos haters

Bose is rethinking its approach to smart speakers.

While the company has released plenty of Wi-Fi-connected speakers over the years, its new Lifestyle Ultra line is a strategic reset, with a new platform that Bose spent the last few years building. (The name is also a nod to Bose’s original Lifestyle systems from the 1990s.)

The new Bose offerings include a $299 standalone speaker, a $1,099 soundbar, and an $899 subwoofer, which can also be combined into a surround system. Raza Haider, Bose’s president of premium consumer audio, says these are the first of many speakers that it will launch on the new technology stack.

“It’s a completely brand new platform, where we ripped the guts out of the old technology infrastructure,” Haider says. “It’s given us a hardware and software stack on which we can build for the future.”

Minimally smart

The main thing to know about Bose’s Lifestyle Ultra speakers is that they delegate most of the smart features to other companies.

Unlike previous Bose speakers, for instance, the Lifestyle line won’t support music controls through Bose’s mobile app. If you want to launch music from a phone, you’ll have to use Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, or Spotify Connect.

Those third-party systems will also handle multi-room audio, as Bose is stripping away the SimpleSync system that it previously used to connect Bose speakers around the home. Bose’s own app will merely handle setup for stereo pairs or surround sound in a single room.

That’s a markedly different approach from rival Sonos, which supports AirPlay and Spotify Connect but still emphasizes its own remote control app and multi-room features. And while Sonos has built its own music-focused voice assistant, Bose is leaning on Alexa+ instead, with plans to support other voice agents over time.

Although Sonos’ approach allows for tighter integration—for instance, you can use voice commands to move music between speakers—it can also backfire. When the company rushed out an app overhaul in 2024 filled with bugs and feature regressions, the resulting backlash decimated revenues and prompted its CEO to step down.

In leaning more on third parties and de-emphasizing Bose’s own app, Haider says the company is just trying to meet customers where they are.

“We basically heard from our customers that they want the music where they listen to their music,” Haider says. “They don’t want to go from Spotify Connect or AirPlay or Google Home into another app.”

Not getting stranded

As someone who’s accumulated and been vexed by a variety of smart speakers from Sonos, Amazon, Google, and Apple, I can see the appeal in Bose’s platform-agnostic approach.

My Google Nest speakers only connect with other Google Cast speakers. My Alexa speakers only connect with other Alexa speakers. My Sonos Beam soundbar and Sonos Move speaker sync with each other via AirPlay or the much-maligned Sonos app, but they don’t work with Google’s or Amazon’s multi-room systems. So maybe a speaker like the Lifestyle Ultra is the answer.

If there’s a reason for concern, it’s that Bose has walked away from one of its smart speaker platforms before. This month, Bose is discontinuing the SoundTouch platform it launched in 2013, cutting off internet-based features and security updates. Users who invested hundreds or thousands of dollars in SoundTouch speakers felt burned by the decision. (The company initially planned to discontinue AirPlay and Spotify Connect support as well, but later backtracked.)

Haider argues that SoundTouch had a good run by internet-connected consumer tech standards, but he hopes the new system will last even longer. Despite the seemingly minimalist strategy, he says a lot of work went into building a modular tech stack with room to grow and adapt to future changes. If Amazon were to rewrite some aspects of Alexa, for instance, it’s now easier to integrate those changes without overhauling the entire system.

In other words, by stripping away what wasn’t working, Bose may be able to avoid some of the missteps that have made smart speakers such a mess in the first place.

“It’s a reset in terms of a new platform that is future-ready, interoperable with partners, and the most external-friendly platform out there,” Haider says.