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Bose Unveils Smart Ultra Soundbar with Dolby Atmos Onboard

The new Bose soundbar promises even better dialogue reproduction than before.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
bose-smart-ultra-soundbar-07

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is available for $899

Bose

Bose has announced the Smart Ultra Soundbar, which comes with advanced dialogue processing and Dolby Atmos and replaces the Smart Soundbar 900.

The new soundbar includes the new AI Dialogue Mode, which uses "machine learning" to balance voice and surround sound for better intelligibility.

The Soundbar uses Bose's dipole transducers and spatial technologies and TrueSpace to widen the soundstage, whether you're listening to Dolby Atmos material or stereo programming.

Looking very similar to the Soundbar 900, the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is tongue-depressor shaped with a tempered glass top. It's 2.3 inches high, 4 inches deep and quite wide at 41 inches across. 

Connectivity includes HDMI eARC, Wi-Fi (Spotify Connect, AirPlay 2) and Bluetooth. The soundbar also features Amazon Alexa onboard -- with the Bose Voice4Video feature, which turns a TV to the channel or input asked for -- and also allows control with a separate Google Assistant.

The Smart Soundbar 900 was an excellent soundbar, so I am looking forward to hearing how the Smart Ultra compares, especially against its main rival, the Sonos Arc.

The Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar is available now in black and Arctic white for $899 at Bose.com.