Maximize your immersion with lossless streaming, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and world-class Active Noise Cancellation.
Hear whats going around you with Aware mode.
Enjoy up to 30 hours of battery life, exceptional comfort, and flawlessly clear calls.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
Connect to your devices wirelessly via Bluetooth, or use the included USB-C and 3.5 mm cables.
Price and Availability
The Sonos Ace headphones go on sale June 4th and retail for $449.
They’re available to pre-order now and come in black and soft white colors.
Maximize your immersion with lossless streaming, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and world-class Active Noise Cancellation. Hear what’s going around you with Aware mode. Enjoy up to 30 hours of battery life, exceptional comfort, and flawlessly clear calls. Connect to your devices wirelessly via Bluetooth, or use the included USB-C and 3.5 mm cables.
They look like nice Bluetooth headphones because thats exactly what they are.
Theres no fancy Wi-Fi grouping with Sonos music speakers, at least none for now.
The connection to the companys ecosystem of other products is extremely limited.
Maximize your immersion with lossless streaming, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and world-class Active Noise Cancellation. Hear what’s going around you with Aware mode. Enjoy up to 30 hours of battery life, exceptional comfort, and flawlessly clear calls. Connect to your devices wirelessly via Bluetooth, or use the included USB-C and 3.5 mm cables.
So whats the point?
In my initial two weeks with the headphones they nailed those easy targets.
The Ace headphones sound fantastic, theyre wonderfully comfortable, and they offer competitive ANC.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
But I could just as easily reach for the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones.
The Sonos Ace have some nice details to them, however, which some consumers may prefer.
The first is having only physical buttons.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
There are no controls that require swiping or touch recognition.
I liked this a lot.
The primary Content Key shifts up and down to raise or lower the volume.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
It had a nice motion to it that never felt wobbly or cheap.
A press of that button will pause or play your music.
A third button for power rounds out all the buttons.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
I didnt have to spend mental energy trying to remember where the buttons were or what they did.
The Ace headphones come with a double-ended USB-C cable and a 3.5 to USB-C cord.
Both of those can be used for lossless listening, in addition to using the first for charging.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
Those accessories tuck nicely into a magnetic pod inside a slim travel case.
The inner ear cups are also different colors for a visual cue as to their orientation.
The total package is elegant and hard to find fault with.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
The price may be hard to swallow, but the design and execution are solid.
The Sonos Ace perform spectacularly in this regard.
Audio gear is supposed to be a magical looking-glass for your ears.
Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek
I could hear tiny inflections in singers voices.
I could hear minute reverberations from acoustic guitar strings.
Bass guitars and kick drums were always tight and potent.
If you need one reason to be tempted by Sonos Ace, it should be their excellent sound.
The best part was that I rarely felt like I was wearing headphones.
Despite their overall slim exterior, my ears tucked nicely inside the ear cups and they felt invisible.
The headphones clamp on snuggly, but are wonderfully comfortable, even for long stretches.
Using the headphones to watch movies was equally compelling.
It has it all in the first several minutes.
Its always fun to hear how an audio gadget handles Kylo Ren’s voice through his apparatus.
The Ace did great with that movie and others.
No Time To Die also sounded riveting.
I have nothing to complain about in this department.
Simply, movies sounded incredible while watching with Sonos Ace.
When I was upstairs, the headphones knew to swap audio with that one.
When I was downstairs, it was smart enough to know I wanted to link to that Arc.
Its a neat feature.
I was extremely impressed by how well it worked too.
Is it enough though?
Sonos Ace Vs.
Competitors
I did a little mini-shootout between some top consumer headphones.
The Sonos Ace did a good job overall too and were very comparable to Sonys pair.
The headphones performed well at removing more ambient sounds.
I suspect these will be a great travel machine for this reason.
Unfortunately, there isnt any level of control over ANC in the app.
It’s all or nothing.
The transparency mode on the Sonos Ace highly amplified sounds around me, which is the goal.
It worked extremely well.
But Id argue that the eight mics across the gear might be tuned too sensitively.
(A fine distinction for sure.)
Both the Bose and Sony headphones felt the lightest because they were.
The QC Ultra Headphones come in at 254 grams, while the 1000XM5 are 249 grams.
The Ace is more than 50 grams heavier at 312 grams.
Sonos headphones dont feel heavy, but they do feel tighter than the other two.
The Sonos Ace was a very close second in wearability.
Sonys WH-1000XM5 are hardly uncomfortable, but my ear touched the inner foam in those.
The Sonos Ace felt the sturdiest of the three and I liked the headphones media controls the best.
The other two relied on touch controls for at least some of the interactions.
To me, the Maxs 384.8-gram weight overshadows their solid sound and great controls.
More importantly, I would avoid the AirPods Max for now simply because of their age.
Sonos Ace for Work
I had no complaints about using the Sonos Ace for work.
Because they’re regular Bluetooth headphones, they connected to my Mac the same as all other ones.
I had no problems using them for video calls and thought my audio sounded great.
The app got completely overhauled in May, seemingly rushed for the sake of these headphones.
There are varying levels of frustration with the Sonos app currently.
Having been in the Sonos ecosystem for more than a decade, I can see the big picture here.
The new app is frustrating, full stop.
It sucks to be going through these growing pains.
But I also dont think the issues will last forever.
I wouldn’t let any app concerns stop you from at least considering the Ace.
Should You Buy the Sonos Ace Headphones?
Ultimately, Sonos knocked it out of the park with itsAceheadphones.
Eventually, iPods led some people to consider Apple’s computers creating a halo effect.
It seems that’s what Sonos is hoping for here.
The biggest shame is that Sonos Ace dont bring much to existing Sonos owners at launch.
If you want the best Bluetooth headphones right now, these are certainly in the mix.
If you’re looking for something beyond that, however, these aren’t that quite yet.
