Bose Ultra Open Earbuds - Bluetooth Open Ear Earbuds with OpenAudio for Awareness, Clip-On Design for Comfort, Water Resistant, Up to 48 Hrs of Playtime, Black

Usually I say they are good for what it’s worth. In this case, for what I paid for them, they are not worth it.Pro’s: the ear clip/cuff design is different and good, the fit is pretty secure and won’t fall off, comfortable, immersive sound is a plus, turning off the immersive sound and they last longer between charges. When running I hardly noticed I had them on my ears. The sound was good when I was running. I noticed as I was running that the music got louder. I think it was because they settled onto my ear lobes and also I turned the automatic volume control.Cons: too expensive, can’t adjust to being closer to ear canal, left me wanting and expecting more from the ear cuff buds. They seem limited when turning them up to 7 or 8 on the flat setting. Should be priced around the sound core and shokz open fit buds price, maybe even pricing them lower like $125-$150 on the high end. For $300 they should have wireless charging, multi point connectivity. Most of all a larger and louder volume level. I’m returning them. My aftershockz aeropex bone conduction headphones do a better job and lasts my whole 10 hour workday without needing to be charged.Maybe another software update with automatic multipoint switching, adjust the eq curve to have more low end and not cap the bass when playing at a higher volume, and drop the price and they would an awesome product.Update 3/12/2024So I returned my first pair of ultra earbuds, and got a set of Shokz open fit earbuds. I tried those on for some time and really like how they performed overall. But somehow I started to miss the bose earbuds, and wanted to compare how they went up against the Shokz offering. The price is still steep, but I had an amazon gift card balance of $157 so I went ahead and bought the Bose to do the comparison.The fit was excellent as before, the sound is excellent, I registered them to get the two year nose warranty as I can see these being replaced sometime in September the future. The Shokz are really good and probably rank them as one of the best hook buds in the market. For me and my ears, the Bose and the Shokz are an excellent buy. They both are light and fitment is excellent, the sound is superb, the call quality I give to Shokz, the update happened to both and somehow the call quality on the bose really improved. I still prefer the physical button over the touch sensitive approach that Shokz went with. I still like the Bose ear cuff design vs the earhook. So which do I prefer. Running and exercising-Bose without a doubt, mountain biking and any sport with a lot of wind noise-Shokz hands down.3/19/2024I started noticing the Bose ultra open buds starting to lose connection when putting them on. The right ear would get the connected prompts, but the left would not connect and when it does connect, it loses drops connection a couple of time more than connects and syncs up with the right ear. I’m going to request for a replacement pair. Overall, these are excellent buys if you have a gift card balance to buy down these buds. The Shokz were on sale so I returned my black pair and got the white pair. I had some Amazon credits and used those credits to buy the Shokz at much lower price.3/29/2024Bose pushed an update to the open ultras (version 1.10.4). The audio sounded clearer, the connection issue seems to have been resolved, I noticed while doing yard work that my Bose lasted approximately 5 hours on the immersion setting. No multipoint connectivity like the Shokz open fits have. Also, I saw that Bose released a wireless charging case on their website for $50. I decided to not get the wireless charging case because I was already used to the usb-c plug approach.

i've bought and tried so many of these types of open style earbuds. the anker c40s, shokz openfit 2, powerbeats pro 2 (not open but similar style), edifier lolliclip, soundpeats pealclip pro, and the list goes on. I watched reviews and demo'd many others. I've stayed away from the Bose because of reviews saying they were overpriced or because competitors were just as good (or close to as good). i wish i tried these for myself a year ago, because i can now say this position is completely wrong. none of the options sound anywhere close to as good as the Bose. if sound quality is your top priority then don't get convinced into buying an inferior product for a gimmicky feature.the bose have nailed the open sound - it's a wide and dynamic sound stage vs. others that sound either too shrill, hollow, or missing low end. I'm surprised at how well these manage bass response especially in quiet environments - they sound exactly how you'd expect Bose to sound. It seems like the biggest criticisms these get are the price, which is understandable, and phone call mic quality. i was able to get these on sale, and if you're anywhere in the ballpark on price vs. alternatives, i would pay the premium and get these. The best low cost alternative I tried are the Soundpeats pearl clips - great value for the money. For call quality, it wasn't a huge priority for me. The few calls I've made worked fine without complaints.Overall, here are my Pros:+ Best sound quality by far in this category - smooth, responsive, and WIDE sound stage+ Extremely comfortable - I can wear these all day and not notice+ Value - more expensive than the value segment, but also not exceedingly expensive esp. when on sale. Well worth the additional money.+ Styling - these have more of a sporty/tech look than the others. To me, they look less like earings and more like buds. I never loved the look of the earing style.+ App - clean app with all the features I actually needCons- Call quality? Not yet for me and also not a huge priority, but I'll trust what others have said- Is there a v2 in the works? it seems like every other brand has released 2-3 updated versions in the time Bose released these. I was holding out to see if Bose would release a v2, but that hasn't happened and they're so far ahead of competitors I'm not sure they even need to. Would be nice to maybe have better water and/or dust resistance...