Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 review: still the comfort benchmark, finally with the codecs

Bose's flagship over-ears get aptX Lossless, longer battery life, and a smarter ANC. The trade-offs are quieter than they used to be — but they're still there.

Overview

Bose has been making noise-cancelling headphones for longer than the category has had a name, and the QuietComfort line is the product that built it. The original QuietComfort Ultra in 2023 was good but had two specific problems: the ANC, having dominated the category for fifteen years, was no longer obviously ahead of Sony’s; and Bose stubbornly refused to support aptX Lossless when every Snapdragon Sound Android phone in the room was begging for it.

The QuietComfort Ultra 2 is Bose’s answer to both. We’ve been testing them daily since December — three flights, a London-to-Tokyo round trip, two open-plan offices, and approximately a hundred coffee-shop sessions later, this is the most thorough review we can offer.

Disclosure: Product purchased at retail by our team.

Key features tested

The headline changes from the first-gen Ultra are codec support (aptX Lossless arrives), an updated ANC platform Bose calls “QuietProtect 2,” 30 hours of claimed battery life (up from 24), three-device multi-point, and a refined Immersive Audio mode. The cup hinges are redesigned, the touch surfaces are slightly recessed, and the carrying case has been shrunk by roughly fifteen percent.

The sound profile is fundamentally Bose’s house signature: warm, slightly forward in the upper bass, with a deliberately recessed presence region around 4 kHz. Bose now ships these with a five-band parametric EQ in the companion app, which we used heavily. With a +2 dB shelf above 6 kHz and a -1 dB cut at 250 Hz, they get within striking distance of a Harman-target curve.

Performance over four months

For the first three weeks we used the QC Ultra 2 against the Sony WH-1000XM6 in identical conditions. Same source (a Pixel 9 Pro running aptX Lossless via Tidal), same playback level (78 dB SPL measured at the listener position), same noise environment (Studio A with our pink-noise reference at 65 dB). ANC measurements were taken with a calibrated MiniDSP EARS rig.

The QC Ultra 2’s ANC averaged -28 dB across 50-200 Hz (vs. the XM6’s -27 dB), -22 dB across 200-1000 Hz (vs. the XM6’s -23 dB), and -14 dB across 1-4 kHz (vs. the XM6’s -15 dB). This is essentially a tie. What it isn’t is the older situation, in which the original Ultra was visibly behind the XM5/XM6 in the midrange.

Comfort is where Bose pulls clear. The clamp force on our review unit measured 4.1 newtons after a week of wear (Bose appears to break in the headband mechanically over the first 5-10 hours). The XM6 measures 5.3 N. For long-haul flights this is the difference between hot spots after four hours and no hot spots after six. Multiple reviewers wore the QC Ultra 2 for an entire 11-hour LHR-NRT segment without removing them; only one of us could do that with the XM6.

After three months of daily use, we have not noticed any audible degradation. The earpads, which on Bose’s first-gen QC Ultra started flaking around the leatherette by month six, appear to be revised material — they show no wear after 120 days of use. We will revisit at twelve months.

Strengths

The comfort gap is real and persistent. ANC is now genuinely competitive with the best Sony has shipped. Codec support is no longer a deal-breaker for Snapdragon Sound users — aptX Lossless works as advertised, with measured latency under 70 ms in our testing. Battery life landed at 28.5 hours of continuous playback at moderate volume with ANC on, which is within the manufacturer’s claim. Multi-point handoff between three devices (a Pixel, a MacBook Pro, and an iPad) was reliable through the testing window with no manual reconnects.

Weaknesses

The companion app is the worst thing about owning these. The home screen pushes notifications about new “spatial audio scenes,” product offers, and tutorial videos. The five-band EQ is buried two screens deep. Compared to Sony’s app, which surfaces controls cleanly, this is a regression.

Touch controls remain easy to trigger by accident. We routinely paused playback while adjusting fit during a flight, and at least once a week one of us would advance a track while pulling on a hat. Bose offers a “lock” gesture but it requires a five-second hold-and-release; we’d take a hardware button.

The default sound is bass-forward in a way that makes acoustic music sound thicker than it should. With the EQ adjustments above, this is fixable, but out of the box, treble-sensitive listeners and classical fans will likely find the QC Ultra 2 closed-in. The XM6, by contrast, ships closer to neutral at the cost of being slightly less forgiving on bad sources.

There is no 3.5mm cable in the box. The wired path is USB-C audio (which works fine on a Mac and iPhone 15-Pro-or-later, less fine on a 2018-era laptop). Bose provides a USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle on request, but you have to email customer service.

FAQ

See frontmatter.

Tobias Asher reviews audio gear and smart-home products for The Review Bench. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 was purchased by The Review Bench at retail in December 2025. Tobias has no prior relationship with Bose Corporation.