There’s so much going on in the new $450 Sonos Ace headphones. With demand for the company’s speakers and soundbars cooling since the pandemic boom, Sonos could use a blockbuster product — or at least a strong debut in a massive product category. It could certainly be the Ace, but these headphones come in the shadow of the recent Sonos app redesign, which angered many customers who were left without many features after the update.
Sonos has pledged to restore those software features in the coming weeks, but the whole situation — and the unshakable sense that an app overhaul was hurriedly out the door — has shaken trust between the audio brand and some of its most loyal customers. This is No where Sonos wanted to find itself in the lead for what CEO Patrick Spence described as its most requested new device ever. But that’s where we are now, as the Ace headphones are up for pre-order ahead of their June 5th release.
Last week, the company hosted media in New York for a first look at the Sonos Ace. I got to test the noise-canceling headphones—not long enough to make a serious judgment about sound quality—and try out their main feature, which is the ability to instantly stream TV audio from a Sonos soundbar to the headphones with the push of a button. Ace headphones support surround sound and head tracking, providing a cinematic private listening experience for when you might otherwise need the quiet of the TV room. (Surround sound can also be used for normal 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 been circulating for years. There were many prototypes along the way, but the Ace hardware you see here went through a development period of about two years. And they certainly borrow some ideas from their contemporaries.
They look like what you’d get if you put the Sony WH-1000XM5 and Apple AirPods Max in a mixer. The leather ear cups are magnetic and easily removable, though Sonos offers a few thoughtful touches of its own; the insides are color coded so you can easily tell which side goes which way. There’s a fingerprint-resistant coating on the outside of the headphones to reduce smudges – especially useful for the black pair. And the memory foam headband has different levels of padding to prevent too much pressure on any part of your head.
Fortunately, the Aces are much lighter than the AirPods Max. There isn’t as much metal everywhere, but it still feels very well put together. And they were amazingly comfortable on my ears. “We’ve done more work on this product than anyone else in the industry to make sure it fits a variety of heads and ears – for men and women – and I think it’s going to be the most comfortable premium headphone yet,” Spence told the media.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find any obvious first-gen hardware bugs in my short time with them. Maybe it will tell when I review the Ace, but on first impressions it’s clear that Sonos has sweated the small details. (Another example: inside the fabric case is a case for USB-C cables and headphones, which too it attaches magnetically.) The controls are also done right, with physical buttons for everything and no tap or swipe gestures to remember.
But if you were expecting the Sonos Ace to inherit all the same features as the company’s home audio speakers, you’re in for some disappointment. They 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 a new splitter app to change settings or adjust the EQ – and although I’ve long dreamed of some intelligent automatic handover between headphones and speakers whenever you get home, it is also not present.
Right now, one big gimmick for the Sonos Aces is their ability to receive audio from the company’s soundbars for private listeners. (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 button”—that’s a metal slider that also controls volume and play/pause—and in Within a few seconds, the soundbar transmits Dolby Atmos sound to the headphones, complete with surround sound head tracking.
This works for any input device running through the soundbar. Streaming boxes? Sure. Gaming console? Cheque. You can walk around the house and listen to a sports game in the background while you clean or focus on other things. TV Audio Swap will be exclusively available to people with iOS devices at launch, with Android support for this core feature coming “soon.” So Android users can take advantage of better Bluetooth sound (thanks to aptX), while on the iOS side they can enjoy the main home theater trick.
Stereo content is mixed by default in home theater mode, but if you want to hear proper stereo without using any magic, you can always disable surround sound. Sonos audio guru Giles Martin told me the company is being “cautious” about how aggressively it virtualizes stereo. The head tracking effect is quite subtle because, as Martin noted, if it’s too noticeable or unusual, people will probably just turn it off. The headset can detect when you’ve stood up to go get something from the fridge, and in those situations head tracking will be temporarily disabled until you stop again.
All the intensive audio processing and binaural encoding is done on the soundbar side, but here’s the interesting thing: Sonos Yippee using Wi-Fi to stream audio to headphones in this home theater mode. However, it is not lossless. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming eats up the battery life, which is normally rated at 30 hours (with ANC on). But Sonos doesn’t share battery estimates for home theater playback — in part because the headphones support fast charging if you ever run out of them.
Private listening between TVs (or streaming devices) and headphones is by no means a new concept; you can listen to Apple TV with Apple AirPods. Roku has had a headphone jack on many of its remotes for years. You can pair Bluetooth headphones with any number of Google TVs.
But Sonos believes the Ace can dial up immersion to a level far beyond its competitors, and that’s in part due to a new feature the company calls TrueCinema. Your soundbar will calibrate the acoustic qualities of the room – kind of like TruePlay – while the microphones on the headphones help you determine your seating position and tailor the surround sound to your unique space. In theory, this data will make the surround sound of 3D surround sound even more convincing and as if you weren’t wearing headphones at all. I need more hands-on time to see if TrueCinema is really a difference maker. This feature will not be launched until the end of this year.
Can Sonos really go toe-to-toe with Bose and Sony in active noise cancellation? Will the Ace’s awareness/transparency mode prove as natural-sounding as the AirPods Max, which remain undefeated in this department? And how does the sound quality balance out after a longer period of listening?
Stay tuned for our full Sonos Ace review in the coming days, and if there’s anything in particular you’re interested in, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
Photo by Chris Welch/The Verge