Odi Productions
In this article, I’m going to share my HONEST Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen review for those who are wondering whether they are WORTH IT. I’ll be scoring the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen clip on earbuds on comfort, fit stability, features, battery life, microphone quality, sound quality, and value.
I’m going to do my best to share whether these earbuds are worth it, and ideally who these earbuds are for. I bought these earbuds with my own money, and was NOT sponsored, paid, or received a free copy for review. All thoughts are my own.
I’ll be sharing my critical opinion with 10 years of experience as a professional music producer, audio engineer, and tech journalist. I also run the RecordingNow YouTube channel with over 30,000+ subscribers and over 8 million views.
Let’s dive right in!
Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen Review in Short
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen has best-in-class comfort and nearly best-in-class sound quality. It’s just not the best value compared to flagships like the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 or Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2 that cost $100+ less and have superior mic quality, water resistance, and battery life.
Pros and Cons
- Best-in-class comfort
- Near best-in-class sound quality
- Spatial Audio with Head-Tracking
- Not a great value at $300
- IPX4 water resistance is below average
- Mic quality is average
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Disclosure: These affiliate links may provide a discount and in return, give us a commission in order to keep this website 100% independent to ensure honest unfiltered reviews 🙂
Comfort + Fit Stability
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen is an open ear, clip on earbud that has very good comfort, especially compared to traditional in-ear earbuds.
Unlike traditional earbuds, these have a “C ring” design that wraps around the ear and sits right outside the ear canal.
Weighing in at just 5.9 grams per earbud, the Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen is very lightweight and comfortable.
These have the best clip-on earbud design that I’ve tested to date, which has this elastic “cuff” that stretches to fit your ears specifically.
The end result is the most comfortable clip-on earbud, and perhaps most comfortable wireless earbuds, period.
These genuinely fit in a way that you truly forget you’re wearing them.
Compared to other flagships like the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 and Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2, those are stiffer and you feel the pinching after 1 hour of wear.
Not only are these comfortable, but the elastic cuff design also makes these quite stable and stay in place pretty well.
In general, the clip-on design is more stable than an open-ear design like the Soundcore AeroFit 2, which isn’t as secure during more vigorous movements or head-tilting like laying on a bench.
Comfort + Fit Stability Score: 10 out of 10
Features, IP Rating, Battery Life, and Mic Quality
Features
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen was originally released in October 2026, so it has many modern wireless earbud features:
- IPX4 dust and water resistance rating (not dust-resistant, sweat and light splashes of water)
- Built-in microphones for taking calls
- Bluetooth 5.4
- Spatial Audio with Head-Tracking
- Multi-point connection
- Physical button controls
- Custom EQ
- Qi wireless charging case
- Native apps for both iOS and Android
Buttons and Controls
Each earbud has a physical button built into the rear portion that goes behind your ear.
I find that accessing and using the physical buttons is quite intuitive and tactile-feeling.
I much prefer physical controls over touch controls for products like this that are meant to be used on-the-go and during workout activity.
The physical button can do most of the basic functions like play/pause, skip forward and backward, and volume control.
They can also be programmed to do custom functions via the Bose app like change the Spatial Audio mode on and off.
Overall, the controls on the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen are solid.
IP Rating (Dust and Water Resistance)
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen is IPX4-rated for dust and water resistance, which is below average for the open ear category.
This translates to no dust resistance, and relatively weaker water resistance that is limited to just sweat and light splashes of water.
Now, this should be good enough for basic everyday use and workouts, but it pales in comparison to its competitors that are IP57-rated like both the Soundcore AeroClip 2 and SHOKZ OpenDots 2.
IP57 is dust protected and water resistant up to sweat, rain, and immersion in 1 meter of water up to 30 minutes.
For its premium price, I’m a bit disappointed by the relatively low dust and water resistance of the Bose.
Battery Life
- On a single charge: 9 hours
- With charging case: 28 hours total
- Fast Charge: 10 minutes = 2 hours of playback
This battery life is average across the class that tends to be around 7 hours on a single charge and typically 30 hours with the charging case.
If we’re only looking at its battery life on a single charge, the Bose Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen is actually slightly above average.
But with its total battery life with the charging case being only 28 hours, that pales in comparison to the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 at 40 hours total.
Microphone Quality
Despite its price, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen has a relatively simple 2-microphone array for its hardware.
Compare that to both the Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2 and SHOKZ OpenDots 2 that have a 4 MEMS microphone-array combined with 2 bone conduction sensors.
In comparison, the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen has average microphone quality.
The simple 2-microphone array with one per earbud simply cannot compete with double the microphones combined with bone conduction sensors per earbud.
In quiet environments, the Bose is serviceable. But take it outside, especially in windy conditions, and the background noise creeps in much more than either the Soundcore or SHOKZ earbuds.
If you need excellent mic quality, the best-in-class Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2 quite literally has “Guinness World Record Call Quality”, and the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 is up there as well.
Features, IP Rating, Battery Life, and Mic Quality Score: 8.5 out of 10
Sound Quality
For its nearly $300 retail price tag, surely the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen must have some of the best sound quality in the open-ear segment right?
Yes, but…
Starting with the driver architecture, Bose uses a 12mm dipole transducer that serves two functions, playing audio but also out-of-phase sound to counteract and minimize sound leakage.
If you plan to use these in quieter environments, like an office for example, then this design is quite beneficial to prevent disturbing your neighbors.
From a physical perspective, open-ear clip-on earbuds are at a disadvantage compared to traditional in-ear earbuds that have the benefit of the physical seal.
The stock sound profile is fairly balanced, with a nice emphasis on the mids and being rather vocal-forward.
This sound profile is excellent in quiet environments, but is not optimal for a noisy commercial gym, where a V-shaped profile (like the SHOKZ OpenDots 2) cuts through the ambient noise much easier.
Due to the lack of seal, bass tends to be weaker on these open-ear clip-on earbuds in general.
I’d say that the bass is a bit underwhelming on the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen, compared to something like the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 that has a custom dual-driver setup to specifically enhance the bass and makeup for the physical limitations.
When it comes to pure sound quality, I have the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen as one of the best in the open-ear category in general, but behind the SHOKZ OpenDots 2 which also happens to be a clip-on earbud.
For the premium price, there’s nothing that special or different about these Bose earbuds compared to cheaper flagships like the Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2 or SHOKZ OpenDots 2.
Sound Quality Score: 8.0 out of 10
Value
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen retails for $299 USD, and is fairly new so there hasn’t been any discounts yet.
While these are a solid product in isolation thanks to its best-in-class comfort and near best-in-class sound quality, the price is one of the main friction points for these.
There are very competitive flagships from SHOKZ and Anker Soundcore that cost between $170 to $200, over $100 cheaper than the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen.
These competitors have better mic quality, higher IP57 dust and water resistance, and longer total battery life.
Because of that, the Bose scores relatively low for value, despite being a well-designed product in its own right.
Value Score: 7.0 out of 10
Overall Scoring Breakdown
Comfort + Fit Stability (30% of score): 10 / 10
Features + IP Rating + Battery Life + Mic Quality (30% of score): 8.5 / 10
Sound Quality (30% of score): 8.0 / 10
Value (10% of score): 7.0 / 10
Total: 8.65 out of 10
Is the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen Worth it?
The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds 2nd Gen is a great product, just a bit overpriced.
For starters, there’s nothing more comfortable to wear than its unique “elastic cuff” design. These have that “forget you’re wearing them” feeling, even against other flagship clip-on earbuds.
Next, the sound quality is one of the best in the open-ear category as a whole.
It’s just that the competition (SHOKZ OpenDots 2 and Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2) is over $100 cheaper and has superior mic quality, IP57 dust and water resistance, and battery life.
For my money, I’m probably looking at the SHOKZ OpenDots 2, which I even prefer slightly for sound quality due to much better bass response.
That said, if you like the idea of supreme comfort and fit, then there’s nothing better currently.
Some very strong alternatives in this class of wireless earbuds are:
- SHOKZ OpenDots 2
- Soundcore AeroClip 2
- Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)
- Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro
- Soundcore AeroClip
- Soundcore C50i
- Soundcore AeroFit 2
- Nothing Ear (Open)
- AirPods 5
- AirPods Pro 3
- CMF Buds Pro 2
- Soundcore Liberty 5
- Beats Studio Buds Plus
- Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro
Order HERE for the LOWEST PRICE AVAILABLE (Do NOT pay retail):
Disclosure: These affiliate links may provide a discount and in return, give us a commission in order to keep this website 100% independent to ensure honest unfiltered reviews 🙂
How We Tested and Our Methodology
RecordingNOW.com is a 100% independent publisher with over 10 years of experience testing and reviewing consumer electronics and headphones.
We currently purchase the products we test with our own money, and are not paid by any company or manufacturer to influence our opinions or decisions.
After purchasing the product, we conduct up to hundreds of hours of detailed hands-on testing in a controlled, acoustically-treated environment.
ODi Productions is our resident expert and author of this article, with 10 years of experience as a professional music producer, tech journalist, and audiophile.
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