Lossless listening and killer battery life? I haven’t been this excited for new Bose headphones in years

By Becky Roberts Published September 8, 2025

Just days after opening pre-orders for its new flagship wireless earbuds, the fantastic QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), Bose has drawn the curtain on its latest reference wireless over-ears.

The new QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) will retail for $449, with pre-orders kicking off this Wednesday (10th September) and shipping beginning on 2nd October. They replace the first-gen model that launched in October 2023, and – rejoice! – bring several updates to the table that not only build on the original’s great many talents but also address the weaknesses highlighted in our QC Ultra Headphones review.

While I’ve witnessed a fair share of modest leaps between generations of Bose headphones, this latest one appears to fix nearly every flaw that prevented the originals from living up to their all-rounders potential.

It was somewhat disappointing that the original QC Ultra’s battery life was only 24 hours, considering much of the competition at the time of their release (such as the Sony WH-1000XM5) met or exceeded 30 hours, and it was also a shame that noise cancelation couldn’t be turned off.

For this new second-generation model, Bose has righted those two ‘wrongs’ – battery life is now a more respectable 30 hours (dropping only to 23 hours when spatial Immersive Audio is on), and ANC can now indeed be turned off, which incidentally increases the juicepack to 45 hours. 

Bose has seemingly gone to town to improve durability by also, a) allowing the headphones to enter a low-power standby mode that can supposedly run ‘for months’ when they are simply laid flat on a surface, and b) improving on-head detection so that the headphones can power on/off more reliably. The QC Ultra 2nd Gen can now be charged (via the USB-C port) during use, too, which wasn’t possible with the originals.

The most exciting USB-C port-related feature, however, is that the new Ultras can also be listened to wired using the supplied USB-C cable. This was another common feature overlooked by the first-gen model, whose USB-C port could only be used for charging. In this wired mode, the QC Ultra 2 can play audio up to 16-bit/48kHz losslessly – a quality that can’t be achieved when listening over Bluetooth due to the restrictions of the wireless technology, despite the new Ultras supporting one of the most advanced Bluetooth codecs around, aptX Adaptive.

So far, so good… but that’s not all. We also get improvements in what I would call Bose’s biggest strengths: ANC and spatial audio.

Now, active noise cancellation has historically been the biggest strength of Bose headphones and earbuds over the decades, and the original Ultras didn’t change that. “The QC Ultra Headphones are the current king of quiet… [they] provide impressive levels of hush in a variety of scenarios,” reads our QuietComfort Ultra Headphone review.

I’ve certainly yet to come across a pair that blocks noise quite as determinedly, despite many rivals having been released in the two years since their arrival. What Bose has supposedly upgraded this time around is the proprietary algorithm that impacts how smoothly the headphones automatically respond to sudden loud spikes of noise when in Aware Mode (the ANC setting that allows users to hear both their music and their surroundings without having to remove the headphones from their head).

If this upgrade proves as effective in the new Ultra over-ears as it is in the new Ultra earbuds I recently tested, the Ultra Headphones 2nd Gen can be confident in keeping their long-held ‘kings of ANC’ status.

Then there’s Immersive Audio, which is essentially Bose’s take on Apple’s Spatial Audio and aims to virtually take your music listening experience ‘out of your head’. While spatial technology is generally hit or miss, depending on its software and hardware implementation as well as the quality of the audio’s spatial mix in the first place, Bose’s Immersive Audio version gets two thumbs up. It is “one of the best implementations I’ve come across, second only to Apple’s,” I said recently in our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen review. 

For the sequels, Bose has introduced a new immersive audio mode called ‘Cinema’, designed to deliver the best balance between clear dialogue and a wide soundfield. I experienced this mode through the new earbuds it debuted on and found it okay compared to the other modes, but I reckon it will work even better in over-ears, where the soundfield naturally lends itself to sounding bigger, wider… yes, more cinematic.

As for sound quality, again the original Ultras set a high bar. That bar has, however, since been raised by the new Sony WH-1000XM6, which the second-gen pair will need to meet, if not raise higher. Bose has been slightly vague in detailing the second-gen Ultras’ sonic upgrades, promising simply that ‘the bass is deeper at louder volumes, highs sound more natural, and the audio stays clear as volume increases’.

It also claims to have reduced the background noise created by the ANC system in order to improve music playback. So we’re likely looking at fairly subtle, processing-related improvements here, as opposed to any major changes in, say, the drive units. Will that be enough? I look forward to finding out when a review sample lands on my doorstep soon.

Bose seems to have largely stuck with the same physical design and aesthetic in the move from the first to second generation, too, which isn’t a bad thing considering the Ultras are lightweight, comfortable, smart, and can fold up for easy storage. Bose mentions a ‘new updated look’ with ‘polished metal yokes’, but much looks to have stayed the same from looking at the images of the new pair. You still get the Black and White Smoke colors, although two more have been introduced – Driftwood Sand and Midnight Violet.

That probably means that the headband is still a little tricky to adjust and the volume touch control still isn’t the most accurate or the easiest to perform – two imperfections of the Ultra design our review called out. 

There’s also no mention of support for next-gen Bluetooth features like LE Audio or Auracast from what I can see, which is a potential blot on the landscape for headphones that won’t likely be replaced for another couple of years.

Otherwise, though, the QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) look, on paper at least, to be meaningful upgrades over their predecessors, and could well be the flagships to keep Bose at the top, rubbing shoulders with the best wireless headphones competition from Sony, Apple and Bowers & Wilkins.