There’s so much riding on the new $450 Sonos Ace headphones. With demand cooling for the company’s speakers and soundbars ever since a pandemic boom, Sonos could use a hit product — or at least a strong debut in a massive product category. The Ace could certainly end up being that, but these headphones arrive under the shadow of Sonos’ recent app redesign, which has angered many customers who were left without many features after updating.
Sonos has vowed to restore those software functions in the weeks ahead, but the whole situation — and the unshakeable feeling that the app overhaul was rushed out the door — has rocked the trust between the audio brand and some of its most loyal customers. This is not where Sonos wanted to find itself in the lead-up to what CEO Patrick Spence has described as its most-requested new device ever. But it’s where we are now as the Ace headphones go up for preorder ahead of a June 5th release.
Last week, the company hosted media in New York City for a first look at the Sonos Ace. I got to test out the noise-canceling headphones — not for long enough to form any serious judgments on sound quality — and experience their headline feature, which is the ability to instantly transfer TV audio from a Sonos soundbar to the headphones with the push of a button. The Ace headphones support spatial audio and head tracking, providing a cinematic private listening experience for those times when you might otherwise need quiet in the TV room. (Spatial audio can also be used during regular music listening.)
During the briefing, I sat down with Spence to discuss the headphones, which he said have been requested by “tens of thousands” of customers. Rumors of Sonos entering this space have swirled for many years. There were many prototypes along the way, but the Ace hardware you see here underwent a development period of around two years. And they certainly borrow some ideas from their contemporaries.
These look like what you’d get if you put Sony’s WH-1000XM5 and Apple’s AirPods Max into a blender. The pleather ear cushions are magnetic and easily removable, though Sonos tosses in some thoughtful touches of its own; the insides are color-coded so you can easily tell which goes on what side. There’s a fingerprint-resistant coating on the exterior of the headphones to reduce smudges — particularly helpful for the black pair. And the memory foam headband has varying levels of padding to avoid putting too much pressure on any one section of your head.
Mercifully, the Ace are far lighter than the AirPods Max. There’s not quite as much metal throughout, but they still feel very well put together. And on my ears, they felt wonderfully comfortable. “We’ve done more work on this product than anyone in the industry to make sure it fits a variety of different heads, ears — both men and women — and I think this is going to be the most comfortable premium headphone yet,” Spence told media.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any obvious first-generation hardware flaws in my brief time with them. Maybe they’ll reveal themselves as I review the Ace, but on first impression, it’s clear that Sonos sweated the small details. (One more example: inside the fabric carrying case is a pouch for the USB-C and headphone cables that also attaches magnetically.) The controls are done right too, with physical buttons for everything and no tap or swipe gestures to memorize.
But if you were expecting the Sonos Ace to inherit all the same functionality as the company’s home audio speakers, you’re in for some disappointment. These don’t play music over Wi-Fi. The best you’ll get is aptX Adaptive on modern Android devices for higher-bitrate Bluetooth streaming from compatible music services. You can’t group the Ace with Sonos speakers or set the headphones as their own “zone” in the app — yes, you’ll need the divisive new app to change settings or adjust EQ — and while I’ve long dreamt of some intelligent automatic handoff between headphones and speakers whenever you arrive home, that’s not present, either.
It’s possible that some of this could change in time. “We want to see how customers use it [and] see what kind of feedback we get as well,” Spence told me. “And then look at where else should we take it and what else do they want? Do they want that Sound Swap you talked about? We’ll learn and we’ll continue to adapt and make it better through software.” But you know what we always say about buying gadgets for what they’re capable of right now and not future what-ifs.
Image: Sonos
Right now, the one big Sonos-y trick of the Ace is their ability to receive audio from the company’s soundbars for private listening. (Only the flagship Arc will support this feature at launch, with the Beam Gen 2, Beam, and Ray coming later.) You hold down the “content key” — that’s the metal slider that also controls volume and play/pause — and within a couple seconds, the soundbar beams over Dolby Atmos audio to the headphones, complete with spatial audio head tracking.
This works for any input device running through the soundbar. Streaming boxes? Sure. Gaming consoles? Check. You can walk around the house and keep listening to a sports game in the background as you clean up or focus on other things. TV Audio Swap will be exclusively available to people with iOS devices at launch, with Android support for this major feature coming “soon.” So Android users can take advantage of better Bluetooth audio (thanks to aptX), while the iOS side gets to enjoy the headlining home theater trick.
Stereo content is upmixed by default in home theater mode, but you can always disable spatial audio if you prefer to hear proper stereo without any wizardry applied. Sonos’ sound guru Giles Martin told me the company is being “careful” about how aggressively it virtualizes stereo. The head tracking effect is fairly subtle because, as Martin noted, if it’s too obvious or gimmicky, people will likely just turn it off. The headphones can detect when you’ve stood up to go grab something from the fridge, and in those situations, head tracking temporarily gets disabled until you’re stationary again.
All the intensive audio processing and binaural encoding gets done on the soundbar side, but here’s an interesting thing: Sonos is using Wi-Fi to beam audio over to the headphones in this home theater mode. It’s not lossless, however. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming does eat into battery life, which is normally rated at 30 hours (with ANC on). But Sonos isn’t sharing battery estimates for home theater playback — partially because the headphones support fast charging if you ever do run them down.
Private listening between TVs (or streaming devices) and headphones is by no means a new concept; you can listen to the Apple TV with Apple’s AirPods. Roku has included a headphone jack on many of its remotes for years. And you can pair Bluetooth earbuds with any number of Google TVs.
But Sonos believes the Ace can dial up the immersion to a level far beyond its competitors, and this is partly due to a new feature the company calls TrueCinema. Your soundbar will perform a calibration of the room’s acoustic qualities — sort of like TruePlay — while the mics on the headphones will help pinpoint your seating position and adapt the spatial audio to your unique space. Theoretically, this data will make the 3D spatial audio surround sound feel all the more convincing and like you’re not wearing headphones at all. I’ll need more hands-on time to determine if TrueCinema is really a difference-maker. As is, the feature won’t roll out until later this year.
Can Sonos really go toe to toe with Bose and Sony in active noise cancellation? Will the Ace’s aware / transparency mode prove as natural-sounding as the AirPods Max, which remain undefeated in that department? And how will the sound quality stack up after some extended listening time?
Stay tuned for our full review of the Sonos Ace in the coming days, and if you’re curious about anything in particular, don’t hesitate to drop a comment.
Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge
