The Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) are my favorite pair of headphones. They’re the rare jack-of-all-trades: They’re plush enough for all-day wear and make for solid workout headphones. They are also great for focused work like video editing and immersive enough for when I need to disappear into a few episodes of Love Island. They’re also on sale this Amazon Prime Day, which makes them an easy recommendation if you’ve been thinking about upgrading.
Hear me out, though. The original QuietComfort Ultra are also discounted and significantly cheaper. For the price of $269, they’re arguably the better value depending on what you care about most (more on that below). Either way, you really can’t go wrong with either pair, but I’d make a decision sooner rather than later. This is the last day of Prime Day, and these deals won’t stick around.
For more headphone deals this Prime Day, check out our full roundup. And if you’re still shopping, we also compiled the Absolute Best Prime Day Deals.
The Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) keeps the standout features that made the first generation a WIRED favorite: a comfortable fit you can wear for hours, rich audio, and a transparency mode that actually sounds natural. Plus, its noise canceling is one of the best we’ve come across. You can lay the headphones flat to put them to sleep, and they’ll automatically wake up when you put them back on. As someone who constantly forgets to turn my headphones off, I appreciate that feature more than I should.
That said, while the Ultra (2nd Gen) are on sale for $379 ($70 off), I’d actually steer most people toward the OG, which has dropped to just $269 ($160 off). You’ll miss out on a few upgrades, like lossless audio over USB-C, a longer battery life, and the new Cinema mode that enhances dialogue in movies and TV shows. But if your priority is premium sound and elite noise canceling, the originals deliver nearly the same experience for a whole lot less. That’s the deal I’d be adding to my cart.
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