The app also includes access to two scheduled operational modes for those who would like to leave the robot in the pool, including a calendar-based mode with three frequency levels—90 minutes x 2, 60 minutes x 3, or 45 minutes x 4. The other mode is a bit of a letdown: The so-called AI Navium mode sounds like it uses the AI camera to periodically survey the pool over the course of a week and perform a routine cleaning only when required—but in reality, this mode merely performs a quick analysis of your previous runs and then uses AI to create a schedule for the next few days, based on how you’ve used the robot in the past.
Hungry for Gunk
Video: Chris Null
The Scuba V3 made fairly quick work of debris in my pool during test runs, rarely needing more than a couple of hours to scoop up all visible detritus on the pool floor while also scrubbing the walls and waterline. The AI camera system does seem to work as advertised, even locating small pebbles I tossed into the pool and dutifully routing itself to collect them. With organic debris, the pool looked fully clean after each run (ending between 170 and 190 minutes each time), and with synthetic debris, the Scuba V3 achieved a 96 percent cleanliness rating, with just a few test leaves remaining in some difficult corners. That’s especially good performance given that three hours is not a lot of operating time. And note there’s no way to adjust the running time outside of the scheduled modes; on-demand modes always run the battery until it’s nearly dead. Fortunately, Aiper does seem to make the most of this time, formally specifying a maximum coverage area of a significant 1,600 square feet.
I unfortunately didn’t have much success with the AI schedule mode. After running the analyzer, the app suggested a baffling five-day schedule comprising two floor runs, two floor-plus-waterline runs, and a final floor run. It then ignored the schedule and promptly ran a three-hour floor run, which drained the battery completely. I tried again the next day, and the robot missed its schedule, then ran randomly late in the night. I wasn’t a big fan of leave-it-in-the-pool scheduling before testing the Scuba V3, and this showing didn’t improve that opinion.
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Video: Chris Null
When finished with a run, the Scuba climbs to the waterline and sends a push notification to the app, alerting you that it’s ready to be collected and cleaned. Note that you only have 10 minutes to reach it: The Scuba can’t float, so it has to use the last of its juice to run a motor to tread water and hold itself in place. After that 10 minutes is up, the spent Scuba sinks to the floor of the pool and must be retrieved with a pool and hook. My best advice is to set a 175-minute timer each time you launch a run to remind you to watch for the completion notification.
Cleanup can be somewhat involved. The filter basket design features a large lid that makes it easy to access the inner filter, and hosing down both of these filters clean is straightforward. The removable mesh on the interior basket is another story, though. While it’s very effective at capturing dirt and other very fine debris, it’s quite difficult to clean, and if you don’t remove it from the basket, lots of debris gets caught between the mesh and the basket itself. Removing and replacing the mesh is difficult, especially when it’s wet, so I usually just left it in place and cleaned it the best I could after each run, accepting that it would never be perfect. I expect most users will do the same.
Once you peel back the hype and mysticism, large language models (LLMs) are a fascinating application of statistical models, effectively what you get when you dial a basic auto-complete model up to eleven. In order to analyze a mind-boggling amount of text and produce meaningful auto-completion results quite a bit of math is involved, with a recent three-part article series by [Giles] going through the basics of inference, being the prediction step using a trained model.
The text is encoded in the LLM’s vector space as token IDs, each token being a text fragment that has some probability of following another ID, such as when cats may be found on desks, as in the above photo by [Giles]. With inference multiple of such IDs are retrieved in a vector from which in successive steps a sentence can be pieced together. These so-called logits are detailed in the first article in the series, with the second article focusing on vocabulary space and embedding, as well as the matrix operations used for inference.
Finally, the third article puts all of this together and looks at transformers, which is a crucial part of GPT (generative pretrained transformer) LLM architecture. Of note is the attention mechanism, which takes GPTs beyond merely being glorified auto-complete systems by adding pattern matching. Here we can see how the statistical model of the LLM is used to generate a rather plausible output, which is where the human has to ask themselves in how far they feel that it is correct.
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Of course, there goes a lot more into making LLMs and GPTs performant, such as key-value caches that massively speed up inference.
Last year, Coinbase Europe was fined nearly €21.5m for failing to monitor transactions.
Coinbase is making 14pc of its workforce redundant to cut cost and adopt AI. According to recent company filings, the layoffs will affect around 700 employees.
The company employs around 150 in Ireland; however, it is unclear how many of them would be affected in this move. Coinbase did not provide SiliconRepublic.com with details when queried.
Restructuring expenses are expected to cost up to $60m. Company shares were up nearly 4pc in pre-market trading at the time of publication.
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In a post on X, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said that the company is “volatile from quarter to quarter”.
“While we’ve managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster and more efficient for our next phase of growth.”
AI is “changing how we work”, Armstrong said. The workforce adjustments are expected to make the company “lean, fast, and AI-native”, he added.
A joint report recently published by Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute and the Department of Finance has found that AI adoption in here is likely to lead to job losses, leading to increases in income inequality in the “short to medium term”.
“The biggest risk now is not taking action,” Armstrong continued in his post, calling this an “inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company”.
With a smaller workforce, Coinbase plans to “[concentrate] around AI-native talent” who can manage fleets of AI agents. The company is also introducing “one-person teams” who can manage engineering, design and product management.
Bose has unveiled its Lifestyle Collection of audio products, which include a new soundbar, smart speaker and subwoofer that now use Google Cast or Apple AirPlay instead of a proprietary app.
The range includes the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker ($299), the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar ($1,099) and the “most powerful” Bose Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer ($899) and are available to preorder now.
The range is not backward compatible with the company’s existing systems, though Bose says you can connect the company’s subs (or any other sub you choose) to the Sub Out port.
The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, which replaces the existing Smart Ultra Soundbar, features Dolby Atmos compatibility as well as the Alexa Plus virtual assistant. The speaker features two of the company’s proprietary PhaseGuides to fire sound out of the unit, in addition to six full-range drivers, two up-firing and four front-facing and a center tweeter. It features a glass-and-fabric look reminiscent of the previous soundbar.
The $299 Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is available in a choice of colors.
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Ty Pendlebury/CNET
The “smart” Lifestyle Ultra speaker is a single-channel speaker with a height driver that uses the company’s “direct reflecting” technology to add presence, though it’s not an Atmos height channel on its own. If you use the Ultra as a rear speaker, though, the height driver will act as an Atmos channel. The Ultra includes a 3.5mm input so users can connect a source component like a turntable to it. If you have two Ultras, you can pair them as a stereo system.
Unlike previous Bose systems, the Bose Lifestyle system doesn’t have a proprietary control app, and the company expects users to use either Apple AirPlay, Spotify Connect or Google Cast to manage speakers. The advantage is that you can now group non-Bose speakers, as well as not needing to control their music with a megalithic Sonos-style app. The Bose app is now used for setup only, while also replacing the clunky wired headset to calibrate the system with your phone’s onboard microphone.
Why would Bose ditch a music control app? Look to its competitor Sonos. Two years ago, Sonos owners complained of multiple issues with its all-in-one app — after the introduction of the Ace headphones — and this ultimately led to the departure of its longtime CEO, Patrick Spence. While Sonos and Bose helped invent the multiroom speaker systems we know today, the world has moved on from a single app that controls everything, and most people just use the streaming app they’re most comfortable with.
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David Carnoy/CNET
Ears on
I heard the three speakers playing music and with home theater content, and while Bose says the soundbar has the best bass the company has produced, it didn’t compare to my memories of the Sonos Arc Ultra — a speaker you can use without a subwoofer. Based on the demos I heard, the sub added much-needed bass to movies.
Bose’s Ultra speaker was fine, but I found the height effect subtle and would depend on your room’s layout. The Ultra didn’t have the punchiness I’ve heard in the (cheaper) Sonos Era 100, but I look forward to hearing it against its competition.
Sound quality aside, I think the lack of interoperability with existing Bose speakers will be of most concern to potential buyers. We shall see.
If you’ve ever been pregnant (or know someone who has), you know that sleep gets harder as the pregnancy progresses. One minute you’re freezing, the next you’re waking up to night sweats. Most likely, your sleep environment hasn’t changed, but your body has.
Eight Sleep, the company behind the Pod smart mattress cover and sleep tracker, just launched Pregnancy Mode, an AI-powered system built for the physiological changes brought on from pregnancy and postpartum. It’s available now as a free app update for all Eight Sleep members with a paid Standard, Enhanced or Elite subscription ($17 to $33 per month).
When you activate Pregnancy Mode within the app, the system uses your pre-pregnancy temperature baseline, your last menstrual period date and your estimated due date to automatically calculate weekly temperature adjustments across all sleep stages.
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Eight Sleep
Eight Sleep’s dataset of over 100 pregnant members and 50,000 nights of sleep data found that in the early stages of pregnancy, your body tends to sleep warmer (about 0.4 to 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) than your pre-pregnancy baseline temperature. The study also found that by the third trimester, it’s the complete opposite — pregnant people were setting their Pods nearly 3.5 degrees cooler than normal. Pregnancy Mode also tracks that curve and continues to adjust eight weeks postpartum.
The feature includes a dedicated Pregnancy Insights card in the app, where you can see weekly biometric summaries of your heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, sleep stages and snoring. It’ll also compare these metrics to your pre-pregnancy scores.
Baby development milestones and prenatal visit reminders are part of this new feature, too. Partners sharing the bed will get their own weekly insights on what to expect and how to help their pregnant significant other.
Pregnancy Mode is now available in the Eight Sleep app on iOS and Android.
Bose has three new speakers to spice up your home listening. The company’s new “Lifestyle Collection”—designed with a snazzy fabric-wrapped grille and gentle curves—includes the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer, and Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. All of them can be connected to multiple units and third-party speakers via AirPlay and Google Cast for a better multi-room audio experience.
These audio products mark a “reentering” into the home speaker space for the company, bringing back the iconic Lifestyle lineup that originally debuted in 1990—known for simplicity and ease of use—which Bose subsequently discontinued in 2022.
To no surprise, Bose says the Ultra Soundbar is the “best soundbar we have ever made,” and that the Ultra Speaker might even be one of the company’s best in its storied history. The wireless speaker starts at $299, with a $349 limited-edition model in Driftwood Sand; the soundbar costs $1,099, and the subwoofer is $899. They’re available for preorder now and go on sale May 15.
Bose Luxury Ultra Speaker in Driftwood Sand.
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Courtesy of Bose
These Wi-Fi-enabled speakers support AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and, uniquely, are the first to integrate with Alexa+ (in the US only), allowing you to ask Amazon’s chatbot to play music through the speakers via voice commands. There’s also Bluetooth support, and even an auxiliary input for connecting the Ultra Speaker to a turntable.
You can group two Lifestyle Ultra Speakers into a stereo system in the Bose app, or group them all together for a home theater system. Sadly, if you hoped to use it as a surround system with your existing Bose soundbar, the company says it’s only backward compatible with the Bass Module 700. And with the new Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, it can only be used as a wired connection. For multi-room audio, the company has passed those grouping duties to the Google Home app for Google Cast technology, or Apple’s AirPlay for iOS users. Speaking of the app, there’s a redesigned onboarding process that purportedly makes setting up all of these speakers a breeze.
On the audio front, the Ultra Speaker notably features an upward-firing driver for Dolby Atmos–like spatial audio, along with two front-facing drivers. (It doesn’t seem to support Dolby Atmos Music at this time.) The company is also touting its CleanBass technology, which pairs Bose’s QuietPort acoustic opening with the woofer for deep sound that performs better than its size suggests, though we’ll have to hear it for ourselves to see if it lives up to Bose’s claims.
Secondary schools in the London borough of Sutton are using VR headsets to help students manage exam stress, ADHD, and difficult home lives. The headsets are made by tech firm Phase Space, and the schools are running the pilot alongside the local NHS mental health trust.
As reported by the Guardian, the seven-minute VR program gives students a quick mental reset, either during a scheduled slot or when they need to step away from class because anxiety has taken over.
According to Zillah Watson, the program’s co-creator and visiting professor at University College London, nine out of 10 participants have shown improvement, leading to a decrease in stress and anxiety.
Does seven minutes in VR actually makes a difference?
Watson, who is also the former head of VR at the BBC, designed the program specifically for overwhelmed and anxious students. She says it has led to improvements in attendance, behavior, and reductions in exam-related anxiety.
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Phase Space
Sixteen-year-old Lora Wilson described her experience: the program starts in an empty room where the light slowly fades until you feel transported somewhere else entirely. “Exams terrified me. They don’t scare me as much anymore,” she said.
What do teachers think?
Aelisha Needham, vice-principal at Ark Academy in north London, says they mostly use the headsets in the mornings, when students arrive anxious after disruptions at home or changes to their usual school routine. Since introducing the headsets, the school has seen fewer students being asked to leave lessons.
“Students are a lot calmer,” she said. Students now proactively ask to use the program when they feel overwhelmed, rather than simply walking out of class.
This is a really novel idea and one of the best applications of VR technology in recent times. Currently, it’s being tested in 15 schools. If the impact can be replicated over longer durations and across hundreds of schools, VR headsets could become a low-cost, effective way to support struggling students before things escalate.
OpenAI on Monday began emailing more than 8,000 developers who applied for its invite-only GPT-5.5 party with a surprise consolation prize: a tenfold increase in Codex rate limits on their personal ChatGPT accounts, effective immediately and lasting through June 5.
“We had over 8,000 people express interest in just 24 hours, and while we wish our office was big enough to welcome everyone, we weren’t able to make space for every person who applied,” the company wrote in the email, which VentureBeat obtained. “As a small token of appreciation, we’ve 10x’ed your Codex rate limits until June 5th on your personal ChatGPT account.”
The gift is not limited to the lucky few who scored invitations to the party itself. Everyone who raised their hand — whether they were accepted, waitlisted, or turned away — received the rate limit boost, according to the email and confirmed by multiple recipients on social media.
CEO Sam Altman telegraphed the move on X shortly before inboxes started lighting up. “We are gonna do something nice for everyone who applied for the GPT-5.5 party and that we didn’t have space for,” he wrote. “Hope you enjoy!” The post amassed more than 521,000 views within hours.
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What a month of supercharged Codex access actually means for developers
The practical implications are huge. Codex, OpenAI’s AI-powered coding agent, operates under daily usage caps that vary by subscription tier. A tenfold increase to those caps gives developers dramatically more room to prototype, debug, and ship code using GPT-5.5 — which OpenAI says matches GPT-5.4’s per-token latency while performing at a higher level of intelligence and using significantly fewer tokens to complete tasks.
The 31-day window is generous enough to reshape habits. By flooding thousands of developers with expanded access during a critical adoption period, OpenAI is effectively subsidizing the kind of deep, sustained usage that turns a curious trial into a daily dependency. It is a bet that once developers experience Codex at full throttle, they won’t want to go back — and that when the limits reset on June 5, a meaningful number will upgrade their subscriptions to preserve the workflow they’ve built.
An email sent to developers who applied for OpenAI’s invite-only GPT-5.5 party in San Francisco. Applicants who didn’t receive an invite were offered 10x Codex rate limits on their personal ChatGPT accounts through June 5 as “a small token of appreciation.” More than 8,000 people expressed interest within 24 hours, according to the email. (Image: Screenshot provided to VentureBeat)
The developer community responded with a mix of glee and regret. “I’m literally not taking my Codex hat off for the month,” one developer declared on X. Others kicked themselves for not signing up. “That’s the last time I don’t sign up just because I’m not in SF,” one wrote.
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Several users raised a question OpenAI has yet to answer publicly: does the boost stack with the existing Pro $200 tier’s 20x multiplier? One user reported that OpenAI support said no — users get whichever limit is higher, not a combined total. “The key question isn’t whether the 10x boost is only for party applicants,” they wrote. “It’s whether it stacks with Pro.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the boost stacks with Pro-tier limits.
Inside the low-key meetup that an AI planned for itself
The rate limit gift is a sidecar to the main event: “GPT-5.5 on 5/5,” an invite-only gathering running tonight from 5:55 p.m. to 8:55 p.m. PDT at an undisclosed San Francisco venue. OpenAI billed the evening as “a low-key meetup with Sam and the team behind GPT-5.5,” promising food, drinks, community, giveaways, and swag — not a product announcement. Even the address remained secret until invitations were confirmed — a touch of exclusivity that generated its own buzz.
In a detail that doubles as a product demo, Altman revealed that GPT-5.5 itself planned the party. The model proposed the May 5 date, suggested that human developers give the toasts rather than the AI, and recommended setting up a suggestion box for the next-generation model. Altman described this as “weird emergent behavior.” Registrations closed shortly after opening due to overwhelming demand, with Codex handling the selection process.
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Altman also extended an unlikely invitation. He publicly asked Elon Musk to attend, saying, “He can come if he wants… the world needs more love.” The gesture arrives amid Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI seeking up to $150 billion in damages — a fact that makes the invitation read less like diplomacy and more like performance art.
Anthropic’s competing reception turns a scheduling overlap into a Silicon Valley spectacle
Here is where the story gets interesting. VentureBeat has confirmed that Anthropic is hosting its very own invite-only event in San Francisco on Tuesday evening — a “Media VIP Welcome Reception” at nearly identical times to OpenAI’s party. The reception serves as a warm-up for Anthropic’s Code with Claude developer conference, the company’s second annual gathering focused on its API, CLI tools, and Model Context Protocol (MCP). The conference proper takes place tomorrow.
The scheduling overlap is difficult to dismiss as coincidence. Both companies are hosting developer-focused events on the same evening, in the same city, targeting many of the same people. Whether this was deliberate counter-programming or genuine coincidence, the optics neatly capture where things stand in the industry’s most consequential rivalry.
Anthropic’s conference will feature its executive and product teams discussing Claude Code, agent implementation strategies, and the product roadmap — all squarely aimed at the same developer audience that just received a month of free Codex upgrades from OpenAI.
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How Anthropic overtook OpenAI in revenue — and what it means for the coding wars
The dueling cocktail hours are a social manifestation of a far more consequential battle playing out in revenue, developer adoption, and investor confidence — one that has tilted sharply in Anthropic’s favor.
According to Counterpoint Research data, Anthropic surpassed OpenAI for the first time in global LLM revenue market share in Q1 2026, capturing 31.4% compared to OpenAI’s 29%. But the headline near-tie obscures a dramatic structural divergence. Counterpoint estimates Anthropic achieved that share with roughly 134 million monthly active users, compared to approximately 900 million for OpenAI — yielding average monthly revenue per active user of $16.20 for Anthropic versus $2.20 for OpenAI. OpenAI commands massive scale; Anthropic extracts roughly seven times more revenue per user. That gap is the central tension in this rivalry.
Anthropic led all large language model providers in revenue during the first quarter of 2026, claiming 31.4 percent of a $20.7 billion global market — narrowly edging out OpenAI, which held 29 percent despite having nearly seven times as many users. (Source: Counterpoint Research)
The enterprise shift has been building for over a year. Menlo Ventures — whose portfolio includes Anthropic — estimates the company now captures 40% of enterprise LLM spend, up from 24% the prior year and 12% in 2023, while OpenAI’s share fell to 27% from 50% over the same period. Anthropic has maintained an almost unparalleled 18 months atop the LLM leaderboards for coding, starting with Claude Sonnet 3.5 in June 2024. That dominance in code — AI’s first true killer app — has become the on-ramp to broader enterprise adoption and the engine behind Anthropic’s revenue acceleration.
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The top-line numbers tell the rest of the story. Anthropic said earlier this month that its annualized revenue has topped $30 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025, with more than 1,000 business customers now spending over $1 million annually — a figure the company says has more than doubled since February.
Sources familiar with Anthropic’s financials told TechCrunch the run rate is currently closer to $40 billion, driven largely by demand for Claude Code and Cowork. OpenAI, meanwhile, topped $25 billion in annualized revenue as of February, according to Reuters — but the Wall Street Journal reported that the company has recently missed its own projections for user growth and revenue, with CFO Sarah Friar warning colleagues that if growth doesn’t accelerate, the company could face difficulty funding future compute agreements.
The momentum has carried into fundraising at a pace that could redraw the industry’s power map. Anthropic raised $30 billion at a valuation of $380 billion in February. Bloomberg reported last week that the company has begun weighing a fresh funding round that would value it at more than $900 billion, potentially leapfrogging OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in late March after closing a record-breaking $122 billion funding round. If Anthropic proceeds at the terms described, the company would not only more than double its valuation but would also surpass OpenAI — a reversal that seemed unthinkable six months ago.
Two parties, two visions, and one city at the center of the AI industry’s defining rivalry
For the 8,000-plus developers who applied for the GPT-5.5 party, the immediate value is straightforward: a full month of dramatically expanded Codex usage, free of charge, during a period when both companies are shipping at a breakneck pace. For the industry, the signal is harder to miss. The two most valuable private companies in the world are competing for developer loyalty with a combination of free perks, invite-only parties, celebrity CEO engagement, and multi-billion-dollar enterprise ventures — all within the same 24-hour window, in the same seven-square-mile city.
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The broader stakes extend well beyond cocktail napkins and rate limits. Both companies are barreling toward potential IPOs. Both are courting the same Wall Street backers for enterprise joint ventures. Both are racing to define how the next generation of software gets built — and by whom. The developers caught between them are, for the moment, the beneficiaries of a spending war that shows no sign of cooling.
Tonight in San Francisco, the Anthropic reception starts at 5pm. The OpenAI party starts at 5:55pm. VentureBeat will be at both. And somewhere between the two venues, 8,000 developers who couldn’t get into either room will be burning through their new rate limits — building the future with whichever model they opened first.
Michael Nunez is an editor at VentureBeat covering artificial intelligence. He is attending both the Anthropic Code with Claude Media VIP Welcome Reception and the OpenAI GPT-5.5 launch party tonight in San Francisco.
[TheHyperFix] had a problem. He’d spied a brilliant camera slider, but didn’t want to lay out big money to acquire it. The natural solution? Build one! Only, life is seldom so straightforward.
The plan was straightforward – take an old broken 3D printer, and repurpose its parts to make a camera slider instead. The build started with a aluminium extrusion, some V-slot wheels, and a 3D printed platform to hold the camera. Moving the platform was done via a belt drive, using the stepper motors and some software to tell the original printer controller what to do.
Unfortunately, the early experiments failed when the controller blew up under load. An Arduino was subbed in with a CNC shield, which got things back on track, and [TheHyperFix] had a somewhat functional slider with relatively jerky movement. A tough iterative design process ensued to work out problems with bearings and the Arduino’s pulse limit, among others.
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As it stands, the slider is semi-functional, but it’s not quite well behaved enough to use for professional shooting. Still, for a first attempt at electronics prototyping, we think [TheHyperFix] did a pretty solid job. It might not be all there yet, but it’s well on the way, and a great deal was learned in the process.
When [Joel] and his partner got married, they had a goal to create a home with a healthy relationship to technology, which largely means avoiding smartphone use. Smartphones aren’t without their benefits, though, like being clocks and calendars, so [Joel] started looking for other options to replace these capabilities. At first he went with a “magic mirror” solution, but quickly pivoted to a wall-mounted e-paper solution he calls Timeframe which has evolved into a respectable overview for his home and life.
E-paper has a number of advantages over LCD and LED displays, one of which being that its resemblance to real paper makes it feel more organic. The first e-paper iterations of Timeframe used multiple displays in wooden frames, and [Joel] had a few different ones stationed around the house. They received their data from a custom-built Rails backend which sent pictures to the devices. This made the refresh rate possible fairly low, but a new 23.5″ display from Boox eventually enabled an acceptably high resolution and refresh rate which could support more traditional display uses. But this display required that [Joel] rewrite the entire back-end, an effort that took quite a bit of time but resulted in an impressive final product.
Like any custom-built project like this, [Joel] still has plans for improvements including those around further integration with his Home Assistant and reducing costs for future platforms. E-paper displays are popular pieces of technology for home dashboards like this, in the past we’ve seen similar, smaller builds which coincidentally have the same name.
When Bose acquired McIntosh Group in late 2024, the audiophile world did not just raise an eyebrow. It looked up from its $12,000 power cords and wondered what just happened. One of the most successful consumer audio brands on the planet, better known to most people for ANC headphones, automotive audio, soundbars, and mass market dominance, suddenly owned McIntosh and Sonus faber, two of the most respected names in high-end audio. That made some people nervous. It should have made them curious.
After spending the day with the Bose team at Bose House on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last week and hearing the new Bose Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Speaker, along with the rest of the Lifestyle Ultra lineup that includes speakers, a soundbar, and a wireless subwoofer, one thing is obvious: a lot of audiophiles have been missing the boat. Bose is not guessing. This team knows exactly what it is doing.
With all three products in-house for reviews that will publish on May 15, the bigger question is rather obvious: does Sonos need to be worried? And for that matter, should Bluesound, Denon, Samsung, and LG be paying attention as well? Bose has clearly been working on the Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Speaker, Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar, and Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Bass Module for some time, and the goal is not subtle.
The company wants to rebuild its wireless speaker and soundbar lineup around better sound, broader streaming support, and pricing that does not require a family meeting. The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Speaker starts at $299 in the standard Black Smoke and White Smoke finishes. Bose is also offering a limited-edition Driftwood Sand version for $349, with a soft beige finish and a solid white oak base that gives it a warmer, more furniture-friendly look. Sonos has had a long run in this category. Bose just walked back into the room with a Boston attitude, sharper pricing, and zero interest in playing nice.
The new Lifestyle Collection is also a reminder that Bose did not appear in home audio last week. The company has been shaping compact, easy-to-use home audio systems for more than 40 years, from the original Lifestyle systems to the Wave radio, which became one of the most recognizable audio products of its era.
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That history matters here because the new collection is not trying to win over the cable riser crowd with exposed transformers and a chassis that looks like it was machined for a submarine. It is built around a simpler idea: make better sound at home easier to access, easier to control, and easier to live with, without asking buyers to choose between convenience, design, and performance.
As Raza Haider, president of premium consumer audio at Bose Corporation, put it, “With the Lifestyle Collection, we wanted every detail to serve a singular purpose: making exceptional sound easy to enjoy.”
Bose Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Speaker: Features and Core Technology
The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker is the most flexible product in the new Lifestyle Collection because it can be used in several different ways without changing the core hardware. A single speaker can work in an office, bedroom, kitchen, or smaller living space for everyday listening. Add a second unit and Bose supports 2.0 stereo pairing. Use two of them with the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar and Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer, and they function as rear surround speakers in a larger home theater system. Bose lists supported configurations as 1.0, 2.0, 7.0.4, and 7.1.4, which makes the speaker more than a standalone wireless product. It is the modular piece that helps tie the whole Lifestyle system together.
The hardware is compact, measuring 4.8 inches wide, 7.3 inches high, and 6.6 inches deep, but Bose is using a three-driver array to create a larger presentation than the enclosure suggests. The layout includes two front-facing drivers and one up-firing driver, with Bose’s TrueSpatial audio processing analyzing content and adding height and dimensional depth through that up-firing design.
That matters because the speaker is not relying only on left-right dispersion from a small cabinet. It is using direct sound, reflected sound, and DSP to create a broader soundstage from a single speaker, with the effect becoming more substantial when two are paired in stereo.
Bass performance is handled through Bose CleanBass technology, which combines the speaker’s woofer, advanced digital signal processing, and a proprietary QuietPort acoustic opening designed to reduce distortion in a compact enclosure.
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That is the important part to understand: Bose is not claiming this replaces a large speaker or a proper subwoofer. The goal is controlled low-frequency output from a small wireless speaker without the bloated, one-note bass that often ruins products in this category.
The Lifestyle Ultra Speaker also supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3, and 3.5mm AUX, along with Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Spotify Connect for multi-room streaming. Setup, stereo pairing, home theater pairing, EQ, controls, and settings are handled through the Bose app, while the speaker’s tactile controls cover playback, track skipping, volume, microphone mute, Bluetooth, and Alexa prompts. The new Lifestyle Collection also supports Alexa and Alexa+ in the U.S., with Alexa+ adding a more advanced AI layer to voice control.
What the Bose app does not do is replace your streaming apps. It is there for setup, system control, EQ, and configuration, not as a full music browsing hub. Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, and Spotify Connect are supported, but TIDAL Connect and Qobuz Connect are not supported at launch, and Bose has not indicated that either one is coming. That matters for listeners who use TIDAL or Qobuz and expect direct app-to-speaker control without using AirPlay or Cast.
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Bose Lifestyle Ultra Wireless Speaker (Black)
Bose Lifestyle Ultra First Impressions: Bose Puts Sonos on Notice
One of the most useful parts of the Bose Lifestyle Ultra demo was the setting itself. Bose did not park one speaker on a table in a quiet showroom and call it a day. The system was installed throughout a large brownstone, which looked far more modest from the outside than it felt once you were inside. The center staircase ran from street level, what the rest of civilization might call a basement but New York real estate law apparently calls ambition, all the way to the top floor. Think John McClane working his way up Nakatomi Plaza, minus the broken glass and Alan Rickman.
Bose placed Lifestyle Ultra Speakers in bedrooms, hallways, dining areas, the kitchen, and a home office to show how the system works in real rooms, not just in a controlled demo space with one perfect chair and suspiciously expensive lighting. The point was practical: different room sizes, different layouts, different placements, and different use cases. Some speakers were used on their own, others were grouped for multi-room listening, and the broader setup showed how the Lifestyle Ultra range can move from casual background music to more focused listening without making the house feel like it had been wired by a panic-stricken installer at 2 a.m.
Because of embargo rules, I can’t go too deep into full sonic impressions yet. That has to wait for the review. But I can say this without needing a lawyer, a priest, or a burner phone: Sonos has a problem. Did Bose hit one over the Green Monster, clear Lansdowne Street, and send somebody scrambling into the parking lot?
For $299, the Lifestyle Ultra Speaker makes a very strong first impression. It sounds larger than its cabinet suggests, throws a surprisingly wide and tall soundstage, and delivers the kind of imaging precision and clarity I was not expecting at this price.
Our in-depth review lands on May 15, alongside reviews of the other two Lifestyle Ultra products. Don’t forget to bring the cannoli. Or the Fluffernutter. Bose came dressed for Boston, but apparently packed like it had business in North Jersey.
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