Sonos Ace Ultra as a room in the S2 app

I was very excited when I saw the Ace Ultra announcement, as I assumed that I would finally be able to add headphones to my Sonos system as a full member. As I gradually came to understand the linking concept, however, I became increasingly disappointed.

I have plenty of Bluetooth devices that I use with my phone, but obviously this means using multiple apps. I actually really enjoy the Sonos app and would prefer to use it when playing music from Spotify, various radio stations and, most importantly, my extensive music library on my NAS.

I however find the Linking concept, where an existing speaker has to act as a proxy, rather clumsy and not a particularly good user experience. I don’t understand why Sonos has not added Ace Ultra as its own ‘limited’ zone in the Sonos app, allowing me to choose and play content from all available sources directly.

I can appreciate the challenges involved in making it a fully fledged, groupable Sonos zone, but I could easily live with the limitations that battery life, etc. would place on the Ace Ultra zone, as long as, from a UX perspective, I could treat it in the same way as my other speakers.

When this happens I will purchase them immediately. Until then, I will make do with what I have.

It was explained in the launch presentation that functioning as a full room without piggybacking on another device requires too much processor, too much battery, and too much weight/space to be practical for headphones.

I agree with the above from ​@jgatie - I think Sonos has a good compromise with this new Ace Ultra.

Also if a person has a 15% discount available from the Sonos site, then it makes the new headphones a good price IMO. I have mine on pre order for £339 here in the UK with the discount and I have sold my first gen Ace headphones on eBay for an OK price too. 

For me, the function of pulling active music from a speaker into the headphones, then maybe transferring it to another speaker in a different room, is a solution looking for a problem almost nobody has.

If I want to listen to music on my Ace headphones, I simply turn them on and open the source music app or Sonos app to select the music. I'm sure the Ace Ultra will perform the same way.

Your experience and expectations may vary from mine...

How are you selecting music from the Sonos app for the Ace headphones to play?  The Sonos app doesn't allow you to select music to play on the Ace, because the Ace is Bluetooth only for music sources.  That's one of the main complaints when the Ace was launched. 

You're right I stand corrected about that. But still it's not terribly inconvenient to open up the music source app (Amazon, Spotify, etc) to listen through the Ace.

So maybe I will have an occasional link "transfer from the surround system” use case for the Ace Ultra when it arrives, beyond the promised better sound experience.