Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 Headphones Review – 6 Months Later

By Josh Teder

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 is the follow-up to the extremely popular QuietComfort Ultras. But 6 months later, after a somewhat controversial over-the-air update that removed some functionality and changed some other things with these, should you buy them? And what has really stood out with them?

Noise Cancellation: Still the Best in the Business

Let me answer that last question first. The first thing that stands out is the thing that’s always stood out with Bose: the noise cancellation. It is still without question the best noise cancellation that I have heard on any pair of headphones I’ve tested.

What’s impressive about the Gen 2 specifically is its ability to really crank it up and dynamically respond to ambient noise. When I tested them against simulated airplane cabin noise, at first they were roughly on par with the new AirPods Max 2, but then I noticed that the Bose just slowly kept increasing their noise cancellation further and further and ended up blocking out way more of that sound.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 has the best noise cancellation I’ve heard on any headphones I’ve tested. Full stop.

There is one quirk worth noting, though, and it’s something I haven’t noticed on the AirPods Max 2. When I’m at my computer with noise cancellation enabled, if I start talking through scripts out loud, there’s a slight hissing sound that comes in when the noise of my voice appears. It’s a minor thing, but I do notice it with these and find it kind of annoying. It’s not something I’ve experienced with other headphones.

Hardware, Design, and Battery Life

Another highlight with these is the setup. The Bose app walks you through everything really quickly and efficiently. There weren’t 10 different things I had to swipe through before I could actually just start using them, which I appreciate.

Now let’s talk about the hardware itself. I really like how these look and how they feel. Bose went with polished metal on the Gen 2, which looks a bit more elegant. They also weigh 264.4g, which is excellent for over-the-ear headphones and right in line with the popular Sony WH-1000XM6s. You can generally wear these for hours without discomfort.

Thanks to their battery life, you can literally wear them for hours. They’re rated for 30 hours, and while I haven’t pushed them quite that far in a single sitting, my overall impression over the past 6 months is that I just find myself charging these way less often than some of the other headphones I own, especially the AirPods Max line, which are only rated for about 20 hours.

Here’s a design detail that often gets overlooked: these fold in, which makes the case significantly more compact than a lot of the competition. That’s a real win if you travel with headphones regularly.

Another design detail worth calling out is the ear cups. They’re noticeably deeper than what you get with Sony’s headphones, and for my ears at least, that makes a real difference. Sony’s cup shape just feels like it rests on part of my ear, and after 30 or 45 minutes it starts to feel uncomfortable. With the Bose and my ear shape, I don’t have that issue.

What the February Software Update Changed

One of the more welcome changes that came in a recent software update is getting rid of all those voice prompts that used to litter the Bose headphone experience. As someone who reviews a lot of headphones and earbuds, good riddance. They were everywhere and kind of exhausting, honestly.

There are still voice prompts when transitioning between Aware and Quiet mode (“Quiet.” “Aware.”), and I feel like Bose could just make a chime or add a setting to let you choose between chimes or voice prompts. The new startup sound is also shorter, which lets you get to your music a bit faster.

Transparency Mode and Mic Quality

Transparency mode (or what Bose calls Aware mode) is above average on these headphones. You can hear your voice and surroundings clearly, and it does its job well. It’s just not the best I’ve ever heard. I can definitely still tell I have headphones on. It sounds like something is muffling my ears a little. I don’t get that on other headphones like the AirPods Max.

Mic quality is also above average. It’s fine for calls and meetings, just not best in class. Here’s an audio sample recorded in a quiet studio environment via QuickTime on a Mac, which represents about the best these mics will ever sound.

Features I Haven’t Really Used

The first is USB-C lossless audio. It’s a feature I’m glad is there, but most of the time I find myself just using these with a wireless connection. And honestly, I haven’t been able to tell a difference between lossless and wireless on these headphones. When these launched, their lossless audio was limited to 16-bit, but the February software update did add support for 24/48, which brings it more in line with what other headphones can do.

The other feature I haven’t really used is Immersion Mode, which spatializes the audio being piped into the headphones. Unless a spatial audio feature is specifically paired with Dolby Atmos (as Apple does with AirPods, which I think is actually a pretty decent implementation depending on the Atmos mix), I’ve found Bose’s version to be a bit of a gimmick.

Downsides: Sound Quality

The biggest downside for me with these headphones is the sound quality, especially the default tuning out of the box. These headphones lean way too hard on bass right from the start.

Some of this is obviously going to be personal preference. There are people out there who really like an overemphasized bass, especially for certain genres. But for me, the bass bleeds way too much into the mids, and it ends up masking a lot of the finer details in the music. There is an EQ, but it’s pretty basic. I really wish these had an advanced tuning option like what you get with the Nothing X app and the Nothing Headphone (1).

Even after multiple EQ adjustments, I just haven’t fallen in love with the sound on these the way I have with other headphones. Something in their mid-range has never quite clicked for me.

I noticed this most with orchestral music. Listening to the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, specifically the strings towards the beginning of that movement, it just feels like the soul of that string sound is kind of lacking. Put the AirPods Max on for the same passage and it’s immediately clear what was missing.

There’s also what I’d describe as almost too much separation. With a track like Willing and Able from Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide, or American Cars from the same album, guitar strums sound really nice and clear, but at the same time it sounds like they’re coming from the back of your ear in a way that feels disconnected from the rest of the mix. That extreme separation is going to sound really impressive when you demo these at a store like Best Buy, but during long listening sessions, I find that effect a little fatiguing.

Downsides: Controls

Controls are another downside. Getting these into Bluetooth pairing mode is way more complicated than it needs to be. To enter pairing mode, you have to hold down the power button until the headphones make the power-off sound, which instinctively makes you want to release the button, thinking you did something wrong. You didn’t. It’s just bad design. You have to keep holding past that point until they enter pairing mode. Why can’t there just be a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button? Apparently, Nothing is the only company to have figured this out.

The volume control is fine. It doesn’t give you the precise volume steps you get with the AirPods Max Digital Crown or Nothing’s volume roller. Both of those implementations feel more precise than what Bose has done here.

The Firmware Update Controversy

Now let’s talk about the firmware update that ruffled a lot of feathers in the Bose community forums and subreddit. Fewer voice prompts, which we covered. Bose also removed the option for a voice to read out the battery level on startup. I never used that feature, and I’m not sure why it was removed. The bigger issue is that Bose is removing a feature from a product that shipped with it at launch. That’s going to upset people, and it should.

The change that caused the most uproar is the removal of the ability to manually cycle through previously connected devices. These do have multi-point Bluetooth, so you can connect to two devices at once and audio will play from whichever one you trigger, and that’s worked fine for me. But these shipped with that manual cycling functionality and it got stripped away via a software update, which isn’t cool and does feel regressive. I personally didn’t rely on that feature, so I don’t miss it, but I completely understand why someone used to that workflow would be frustrated.

One other occasional bug: the EQ will sometimes just not update when you adjust it. And for iPhone users specifically, these aren’t the AirPods Max, so you won’t get spatial audio with Dolby Atmos or the seamless automatic pairing that hands off between iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other Apple devices. That ecosystem integration is something Apple does really well and doesn’t allow competitors to replicate. It’s worth factoring in when choosing a pair of headphones.

Final Verdict

After 6 months, I do recommend the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2. I haven’t run into any significant long-term issues with these. Even accounting for the software update and the feature removals, which genuinely does suck for the people who relied on those features, this is still a pretty good product overall.

They have the best noise cancellation of any headphones I’ve tested, great battery life, solid build quality, decent mic quality, above-average transparency mode, and all of that in a compact, travel-friendly form factor with a slim case that fully protects them.

The more important question is whether you should get these over the competition from Sony, Apple, or others, especially at a retail price of $449 (though you can often find them closer to $400). You can check their current price and find links to other products mentioned in this post in the Featured Products section below.

I’ve already put these up against all the major competing headphones in our best wireless headphones guide, so head there if you want to see how they stack up across categories. And if you want to see more headphone reviews, check out my thoughts on the Sony WH-1000XM6 and the Nothing Headphone (1).