How much do you value quiet? I’m not trying to get profound here—this is a gadget review, not a self-help seminar—but it’s a question worth asking. Personally, I find quiet to be pretty important. Nothing says loving myself like putting on a pair of earbuds and telling the entirety of New York City to kindly, f**k off. And for that peace of mind, you have a lot of earbuds at your disposal. Any pair worth its weight in plastic will have the option for ANC nowadays. But just because they all have it doesn’t mean every pair of ANC buds is created equal. To the contrary, my friends, there are levels to this shit.
If you’re like Bose and you put “quiet” in the name of your earbuds, one should expect a high degree of noise cancellation—even more so for a gen-2 product. And folks, I’m here to tell you (not quietly) that’s exactly what the $299 Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd gen) bring to the table.
I tested these puppies in some of the worst conditions you can imagine (the chaotic NYC subway), and I can say, without a doubt, if I want to block the maximum amount of noise with earbuds, these will be the ones I reach for. Bose doesn’t provide exact dB numbers on how much cancellation its newest QuietComfort Ultra earbuds block out, but anecdotally it feels like a lot.
Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2
Bose’s second-gen QuietComfort Ultra 2 earbuds still have class-leading ANC.
Pros
- Amazing ANC
- Cool design
- Sensitive touch controls
Cons
- Sound is good but not mind-blowing
- Middling battery life
- Heavy Bose premium
The noise cancelation
On the subway, I felt extremely insulated from train noise and voices, which is incredible if you’re trying to zone out on your commute to work or avoid any unwanted conversations. I also tested them at a busy coffee shop with lots of chatter and music playing, and they blocked out all of that racket adeptly when I started playing music.
Even when I wasn’t playing music, just sitting with the earbuds in my ears, it silenced most of the ambient noise. These might be the only earbuds I want on my next flight. Bose says it went back to the lab and adjusted its ActiveSense technology, which enables adaptive ANC in the QuietComfort Ultra 2 to make transitions in noise-cancellation levels “smoother.”
While I haven’t had a chance to use the QuietComfort Ultra gen-1, I can say that I didn’t find the second-gen version to be choppy in their ANC adjustments when I had adaptive ANC activated.
Transparency mode
If you actually do want to hear something, the QuietComfort Ultra 2 also have excellent transparency. By tapping and holding the side of the right earbud, you can switch from “Quiet” to “Aware” mode, which turns off ANC and allows you to hear your surroundings.
I wouldn’t normally do this, for politeness’ sake, but I tested Bose’s second-gen QuietComfort Ultra buds’ transparency mode by having some conversations with them in, including an exchange at a pharmacy. Even with my ears plugged up, I didn’t miss a beat. I still hate having my ears blocked when I talk to people, since I can hear my voice reverberate in my own head (yuck), but if you need to have a conversation quickly and don’t want to pop the buds out, you can at least hear other people easily.
Another highlight you might notice while switching between modes is that the touch controls on the outside of the buds are very sensitive. That might be annoying in some cases, like if you accidentally brush your bud while fixing your hair or taking off a hat, but I actually think this is a perk.
I’ve used a lot of underwhelming touch controls in my day, and these are not among them. Personally, I’d rather have touch controls be oversensitive than under. I’d prefer to have a few accidental miscues than have to aggressively tap on the buds to get them to do what I want. The good news is, if you disagree, you can now turn off the touch controls completely in the Bose app to avoid the miscues altogether.
The sound
Sound-wise, the QuietComfort Ultra hold their own. It was hard switching between the QuietComfort Ultra 2 and the Technics EAH-AZ100 that I happened to be testing at the same time, since the latter are some of the best-sounding earbuds I’ve ever used, but I still think these earbuds will appease most sound-wise. I listened to the same record that I used for testing the aforementioned Technics buds (Geese’s “3D Country”), and while they didn’t have the same dynamic range or clarity as the Technics, they kept pace with other “Pro” earbuds I’ve used in the past, like Google’s Pixel Buds Pro.
Mids and highs were represented satisfactorily. I would say they even manage to push the envelope in the bass department, which was a lot bassier, for lack of a better word, than I was expecting. If you don’t like the out-of-the-box tuning, you can switch things up in the Bose app with custom and preset EQ.
The design
One thing that may be divisive among the general public is the look of the buds. They’re chunky, I’m not going to lie, but I like the design, especially in the white color that I got the buds in, which reminds me of a muted PlayStation 1.
Despite how big the buds are, I didn’t find the weight to be annoying, and Bose did a good job with balancing the size with making them look sleek, mixing the matte-ish plastic of the case with a shiny, smooth plastic on the buds. There’s a smooth metal strip along the stem with some Bose branding. Just like the SoundLink Plus, Bose’s newest Bluetooth speaker that I also recently tested, I find the QuietComfort Ultra 2 to be an appealing blend of minimalism and creativity.
The features
Feature-wise, these buds are stacked. If you want 3D audio, you can switch the buds to “Immersion” mode which which tracks audio to your head movements, there’s an ear tip fit test in the Bose app, custom EQ, and one cool feature in this generation is that you can now see the case’s battery levels in your app, so you know when you need to charge it up. I say once again, you need to stop sleeping on your earbuds’ companion app—there’s a lot there to love.
Speaking of battery, Bose says the QuietComfort Ultra 2 get up to 6 hours of battery with ANC on, but that figure drops (naturally) to 4 hours if you have Immersive audio activated. That case holds 24 hours of juice, so about three full charges. That’s not the best battery life in the world, but it’s average.
The fact is, Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra 2 do one thing really well, and that’s block out noise. In some cases, only having one great feature could be considered a flaw, especially for earbuds that cost $299, but ANC is one of the main reasons why people buy wireless earbuds in the first place, so Bose seems to have focused its energy in the right direction.
While these earbuds aren’t giving you the same level of hi-fi sounds as some other similarly priced earbuds on the market, they reward you in dividends when your neighbor is having a raucous party, once again.