Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds drop to $279 at Amazon for early Black Friday

10 Nov 2026, 15:32 by https://www.facebook.com/vincentnguyen · The Gadgeteer

If you buy something from a link in this article, we may earn a commission. Learn more

Amazon has the first-generation Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds at $279 this morning, $20 under the $299 list price, and the color split is worth knowing before you click. Black, Lunar Blue, and the Diamond 60th Anniversary finish are all $279. Moonstone Blue undercuts the rest at $274.99.

These are the original Ultras, not the second generation Bose put out this year, and that distinction is the reason the deal works. The newer model kept the same noise cancelling platform, the same Immersive Audio, and the same CustomTune calibration. What’s left is a flagship earbud whose core hardware Bose carried straight into the replacement, discounted because the box is last year’s.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds
Immersive Audio with head tracking · CustomTune sound calibration · Quiet, Aware and Immersion modes
Price: $279.00 ~~$299.00~~ (save $20); Moonstone Blue $274.99 (save $24)
Where to buy: Buy on Amazon

The noise cancelling still sets the pace

Bose built its name on killing cabin drone, and the Ultra is still the deepest cut the company sells in an earbud. Quiet mode doesn’t just turn the world down. It takes the low roar out of a jet cabin or an open-plan office and leaves the room feeling emptied, which is a different thing from quiet. Voices and keyboard clatter fade to the edge of attention instead of competing with your music.

CustomTune is doing real work here. Every time you put the buds in, they play a tone, measure how your ear canal answers, and adjust both the sound and the cancellation to your ears. Two people wearing the same model aren’t hearing an identical product.

Aware mode lets the room back in, and ActiveSense listens for a sudden spike, a dropped pan or a passing siren, and raises the cancellation just long enough to cover it. Immersion mode stacks full cancellation on top of Immersive Audio for flights.

It’s the mode that makes a red-eye survivable.

Immersive Audio earns its battery cost

Bose’s spatial audio puts the soundstage in front of you instead of inside your skull, and head tracking holds it there when you turn to look out the window. Set it to Still for a desk or a plane seat. Motion keeps the stage steadier when you’re walking. Once you’ve heard a live recording hold its shape like that, plain stereo in the same buds feels like a step back indoors.

The Ultra in place, where the seal and the stability band do their work. Image: Bose.

There’s a trade. Immersive Audio cuts a charge from six hours to about four, so it’s a feature you switch on for the album or the flight, not a mode you leave running through a workday.

Sound itself is classic Bose: full low end, vocals pushed a little forward, and nothing harsh up top when the volume climbs. The app’s three-band EQ lets you pull the bass back if your library doesn’t need it. Out of the box, the tuning flatters pop, podcasts, and film scores more than it flatters a string quartet. On Android, phones with Snapdragon Sound stream to the buds over aptX Adaptive, a clear step up from standard Bluetooth audio.

The fit kit does quiet work

Cancellation this strong starts with the seal, and Bose ships three sizes of eartips with three sizes of stability bands, nine combinations in the box. The bands tuck against the ear and hold the bud without hooks or wings digging in. Get the seal right and the bass fills in, the cancellation deepens, and the buds stay put on a run without constant readjusting.

Eartips and stability bands ship in three sizes each, nine combinations in the box. Image: Bose.

If none of the nine land, Bose sells extra-small and extra-large tips separately. Most ears won’t need them.

Battery life is fine, and the case has one gap

A charge runs up to six hours with Immersive Audio off, and the case carries three more full charges, 24 hours in total before you need a cable. A 20-minute quick charge returns about two hours of listening, enough to cover a delayed connection.

The case charges over USB-C. It doesn’t charge wirelessly. That’s the one hardware gap the second generation closed.

Three full charges wait in the case, 24 hours of listening in total. Image: Bose.

Calls and codecs, where the years show

Multipoint Bluetooth keeps two devices connected, so the buds can sit on your laptop and your phone at once and take whichever call comes in. Call quality is the weak spot. Your voice carries fine in a quiet room. In street noise, the people on the other end hear the street too.

What the second generation actually fixes

Bose’s own comparison is specific: better call quality through AI-based background noise suppression, wireless charging, improved ActiveSense, the case battery level reported in the app, and an option to turn the touch controls off. Read that list closely. None of it touches the noise cancelling or the sound. It’s a quality-of-life upgrade, and a good one, priced like a new flagship.

For context, Sony’s WF-1000XM6 sits at $298 on Amazon this morning, and it launched this year. The Ultra design is older. Its cancellation isn’t.

Buy the original Ultras if your listening happens on planes, trains, and office floors, and you want the strongest noise cancelling Bose has put in an earbud without paying a new model’s launch price. Take the second generation if your earbuds double as your phone headset, because calls are where its upgrade lives. At $279, the first Ultra is the previous flagship that still embarrasses fresh releases at its price.

Love our content? Sign up for our newsletter today. No ads, no spam, just links to our latest articles!