Bose x Steve Lacy Ultra Open Earbuds

The Bose Ultra Open Earbuds are a totally new kind of audio wearable device: premium sound built into a cuff-shaped earbud that doesn’t cover your ear. Proprietary Bose OpenAudio technology allows the earbuds to play rich, immersive audio privately even though the speakers on the earbuds sit a short distance from your ear canal, leaving you open to the sounds of your surroundings. The cuffs hook around the outside of your ear so gently that you might forget they’re even there, so you can leave them on all day, always ready for music, calls, or videos.

The Open Earbuds were designed from the ground up to give you a soundtrack for your life: to let you enjoy your music without blocking your ears, in a shape so comfortable you can almost forget you’re wearing any earbuds at all. The engineering of these earbuds was a matter of squeezing Bose OpenAudio technology — which projects deep, rich sound across a short distance of open space to your ear canal — into a shape that could grip your ear extremely gently, leave your ear open to outside sounds, and contain a long-lasting battery. This design process resulted in the Open Earbuds’ unique shape, inspired by ear cuff jewelry. The light-as-air flex arm connects the audio portion of the earbud to a battery barrel that goes behind your ear, providing just enough grip to keep the earbuds secure on any size ear.

Yes. The Open Earbuds are excellent for exercise, thanks to their confident stability on your ear, powerful sound, and open design. Bose’s unique OpenAudio technology allows air to keep your ears cool and dry while you enjoy both your music and sounds from your environment, such as city sounds, nature, input from a coach or workout partner, or sounds that help you play a sport such as tennis or basketball.

Yes. The combination of skin-safe materials, a fully open design, long battery life, and unparalleled comfort means you can leave the earbuds on all day, always connected to your device and ready to produce rich audio the moment you need it.

In stereo mode, the earbud batteries will provide up to 7.5 hours of play time or 48 hours of standby time (no audio playing). For all-day wear that involves a mix of audio listening and standby, the battery life will vary depending on the proportion of each. For example, 5 hours of audio would leave 10 hours of standby life remaining. And if the battery does run out, a quick 10-minute charge in the case will add up to 2 hours of play time.

Yes. You can slide the earbud slightly up or down the outside of your ear to adjust for comfort, preferred sound balance, looks, or to avoid interference with jewelry. 

Yes. The Open Earbuds are uniquely designed to attach to a part of the ear that does not interfere with most glasses, hats, and piercings. If your accessories touch the product, that’s no problem as long as the earbuds remain comfortable and secure. The magnets that help the earbuds attach to their charging case may occasionally stick slightly to jewelry made of ferromagnetic metals like nickel; this is not damaging to the earbuds or the jewelry, but if bothersome can be avoided by slightly sliding the earbud up or down the ear, away from the jewelry.

OpenAudio is a proprietary Bose technology that allows audio played a short distance from your ear canal to be rich, deep, and private — without sealing your ear. Each earbud uses a tiny dipole transducer system engineered for loud-and-clear personal audio that stays at the ear — instead of going everywhere else.

It’s easy to hear the difference Bose OpenAudio makes by comparing the power of the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds with a traditional set of earbuds held slightly outside your ear. If you remove the traditional earbud from your ear canal and hold it near your ear at the same distance that the Open Earbuds sit, you’ll notice the much greater volume and richer bass from the Open Earbuds.

Bose OpenAudio directs rich, deep audio into the ear canal while using proprietary technology to minimize sound spillage in other directions. In most environments and at most listening levels, people around you won’t hear a thing. If you turn up the volume all the way in a very quiet environment, others may hear that something is playing from your earbuds, but they won’t be able to hear any detail unless they get very close.

No. By design, the Open Earbuds don’t block out the world or have noise cancelling, so you can enjoy your music while staying open to the sounds of the world around you. They do have an automatic volume control feature, available in the Bose Music app, that helps you hear your music evenly as your environment changes from quiet to loud and back. 

Bluetooth multipoint, a feature that will allow the Open Earbuds to connect to two source devices at the same time, will be available through a software update coming later this year. Be sure to set up your earbuds with the Bose Music app to receive software updates.

The Bose Music app also allows you to customize the shortcut function on each 
earbud’s button, and one of the available options is Switch Source. Setting a 
shortcut to Switch Source will enable you to switch between previously connected 
Bluetooth source devices with a press and hold of the earbud button without 
needing to take the earbuds off.