Sonos Ace, The Morning After: On Their Way Back for Refund
As an avid Sonos fanboy, I am crushed. For the first time in my long Sonos relationship, thanks the new Ace headphones, I have experienced a terrible user experience from their products.
Initially, I was forgiving with the lack of Android support at launch (I have an iPad and my wife has an iPhone), but it became immediately clear that Sonos has shipped a half-baked product. Frustratingly, the hardware has built-in-in functionally for many features, but the software cannot fully support them.
I was mostly excited with the touch pass feature between my Arc and Ace headphones. This was the killer feature that I was waiting for. Dolby Atmos and head tracking? Sign me up! After spending a solid hour just making the handshake happen between the Arc and the Ace, I still could not get this feature to work, either with the content key or through the app. By the end of the night, I was left with a fancy pair of Bluetooth headphones. Before heading to bed, defeated, I logged into my Sonos account and requested the return.
To the credit of Sonos, my return label was in my inbox in the morning and I have already sent the headphones back, but what a huge disappointment.