

As of August 2011, the set had sold 127,000 copies in the United States. In the United States, the album entered the Billboard 200 at number seven with 38,000 copies sold in its first week, earning the band their ninth consecutive top-10 album on the chart. The Ultimate Collection debuted at number eight on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 15,184 copies, becoming Sade's seventh top-10 album in the United Kingdom.

As things stand, a more accurate title would be The Adequate Collection because there's little ultimate about this bare bones piece of product." Commercial performance From 1985's jazzy 'Smooth Operator' to tracks from last year's excellent 'Soldier of Love', it's all state-of-the-art slow-jams all the time, driven by Sade Adu's touch-me-now contralto." Lloyd Bradley of BBC Music commented, "The best thing about this set is it'll allow anybody who didn't quite get the band first time around to catch up." In a mixed review, Jeff Winbush of All About Jazz wrote, "No such luck. Will Hermes of Rolling Stone stated, "Few singers have the consistency of vision to produce a career retrospective that doubles as a seamless 'let's make out on the carpet' mixtape.
