Today we are announcing the launch of our first-ever headphones, Sonos Ace, marking the brand’s long-awaited entry into the personal listening category. As a leading innovator in sound, Sonos is now using its renowned audio and design expertise to transform the way we listen on headphones.
The premium over-the-ear Bluetoothheadphones feature breathtaking lossless and spatial audio, world-class Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and Aware Mode, as well as the most precise and immersive home theater experience possible using Sonos’ new TrueCinema technology. Sonos Ace will be available globally in both Black and Soft White.
Sonos Ace
Superior Sound on a Personal Level
Artfully crafted and masterfully tuned, Sonos Ace defies expectations with a range of features that bring the best of Sonos to headphones.
Indulge in high-fidelity sound: Savor every second of your favorite song, podcast or friend’s phone call thanks to Sonos Ace’s two custom-designed drivers that render each frequency with impeccable precision and clarity.
Your own private cinema: Sonos Ace lets you enjoy a surround sound home theater experience while giving your household the gift of quiet. Instantly swap the TV audio from a compatible Sonos soundbar to Sonos Ace with just the tap of a button. Spatial audio with Dolby Atmos envelops you in dramatically detailed sound from all directions and dynamic head tracking keeps you centered in the action even if you need to grab a blanket or reach for the snack bowl. Coming later this year, Sonos’ all-new TrueCinema technology precisely maps your space then renders a complete surround sound system for a listening experience so realistic you’ll forget you’re wearing headphones.
Turn the world on or off: Make personal listening even more personal with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), or activate Aware mode when you want more awareness of your surroundings - be it walking on a busy street or working in the office.
Day-long battery life and ultra-fast charge: Listen or talk for up to 30 hours with an extended, energy-efficient battery life. Ultra fast charging ensures you’ll never miss a beat - get 3 hours of battery life with a quick 3-minute charge using the included USB-C cable.
Sonos Ace Controls
Elegant Design and Long-Lasting Comfort
Sonos Ace was made to look and feel as good as it sounds. Its distinctive, slim profile beautifully blends metal accents with a sleek matte finish, complementing any style no matter how fast trends move.
Endless Comfort: Sonos Ace uses lightweight, premium materials for an airy fit that gently hugs your head. Its pillowy soft memory foam interior is wrapped in vegan leather, while a custom headband and ear cups that hide the hinge create the perfect acoustic seal without catching on hair.
Intuitive Design: Wearing and storing Sonos Ace is a breeze - contrasting colors inside the ear cups subtly signal which way to put the headphones on and beautifully-tactile buttons make controls easy to use while wearing them. When you’re done listening, put Sonos Ace away effortlessly thanks to its fold flat design that fits snugly in its lightweight travel case.
Responsibly Made: Sonos Ace is built to last and made for daily wear. The headphones feature replaceable ear cushions, circular materials that allow us to use 17% less virgin plastic, and a 75% recycled felt travel case made from plastic bottles. Engineered to drive energy efficiency, wear detection pauses your music when you remove Sonos Ace from your ears, minimizing the need for charging.
Sonos Ace will be available on June 5 for $449 USD (499 EUR, 449 GBP, 699 AUD). For more information, visit sonos.com, and follow along on @sonos.
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Hi Kumar
The question is will these work directly with an Apple TV or an Amazon Fire Cube, or is the presence of a Sonos soundbar a prerequisite, and if so, only some models? Will someone that has just a TV being supplied by a video streamer be able to use these for surround sound? I suspect not.
A compatible Sonos soundbar will be a prerequisite, yes.
That doesn’t make any sense - I can connect any of my bluetooth headphones directly to my FireCube and take over the audio - why would these be different?
I got excited seeing the ad for these headphones. I imagined Sonos quality hardware that I could use along with my overall system, but quickly had my hopes dashed.
I would want something that acted more as another speaker set on the system. WiFi capable. Perhaps in Gen 2. I’ll save my money until then.
Hi Kumar
The question is will these work directly with an Apple TV or an Amazon Fire Cube, or is the presence of a Sonos soundbar a prerequisite, and if so, only some models? Will someone that has just a TV being supplied by a video streamer be able to use these for surround sound? I suspect not.
A compatible Sonos soundbar will be a prerequisite, yes.
That doesn’t make any sense - I can connect any of my bluetooth headphones directly to my FireCube and take over the audio - why would these be different?
I’m sure you’ll be able to do that, but you’ll be limited to BT audio quality rather that atmos audio.
And WiFi headphones, as zone player, is just what most of us were hoping for. So, another missed goal for Sonos
If “most of us” is just a subset of the consumers Sonos wants to sell too. Plenty of people have requested headphones primarly for TV audio, while clearly there is a market for BT headphones. I would even say that very few people were asking for WiFi music to headphones before the Sonos headphones rumor was asked for.
I’m not saying that Sonos wouldn’t win over some more customers by making Ace it’s own zone, but they would be losing a lot more customers if Ace didn’t do TV audio or didn’t have BT capabilities.
No integration with my Sonos system !!!!!!!
We’ve all been waiting for headphones we can add to our Sonos systems like any other Sonos speaker product.
These new Ace headphones are just fancy bluetooth headphones - no better than Sony or Bose.
First the app upgrade disaster and now headphones that won’t work as part of an existing Sonos system.
Ridiculous!
It’s a “no purchase” from me!
I’ve been in the market for headphones and after the app debacle committed to waiting for reviews of the headphones before pre-ordering.
But now that we know that these don’t act as their own zone AND only one pair can connect to the soundbar at a time I don’t even need to wait for a review.
Sonos has failed as a company and will not be getting my money for their headphones.
Looks like a close system headphone and it must be, because of noise canceling. I wouldn’t buy to listen to my music at home (open or semi-open is the thing) and I wouldn’t buy it for travelling because of the bulk.
So who should buy it? Some nerd who want’s to be hip? They go for Apple.
Unbelievable, that you ruined your system for this useless product.
It’s even more confusing that the disaster with the app initially seems to have been driven by this product, but the app isn’t even required. The people most likely to benefit from the spatial audio are exactly the same population as have been throroughly alienated over the past few weeks, for no obvious benefit.
The app absolutely *is* required for Arc connectivity. It states (rather ambiguously) in the Ace features that this feature is currently only supported via iOS, with Android support following 'soon'.
I find it extremely troubling that Sonos do not already have Android functionality implemented for the headphones' most unique selling point, and the fact that there is no date for this functionality to be introduced even more so.
I will not even be considering purchasing these headphones until Android compatibility is implemented.
Hi Kumar
The question is will these work directly with an Apple TV or an Amazon Fire Cube, or is the presence of a Sonos soundbar a prerequisite, and if so, only some models? Will someone that has just a TV being supplied by a video streamer be able to use these for surround sound? I suspect not.
A compatible Sonos soundbar will be a prerequisite, yes.
That doesn’t make any sense - I can connect any of my bluetooth headphones directly to my FireCube and take over the audio - why would these be different?
I’m sure you’ll be able to do that, but you’ll be limited to BT audio quality rather that atmos audio.
For knackered hearing, it's a bit academic. Admit it, man. These BT headphones are not what most Sonosistas wanted or expected. The expectation was that they'd act like a zone player.
The convesation is about using Ace for TV audio and you’re talking about using Ace as zone player.
No one who understands anything about how these things work expected to get TV audio in the headphones without using BT or a soundbar in between. How could the audio possibly get to the headphones?
Hi Kumar
The question is will these work directly with an Apple TV or an Amazon Fire Cube, or is the presence of a Sonos soundbar a prerequisite, and if so, only some models? Will someone that has just a TV being supplied by a video streamer be able to use these for surround sound? I suspect not.
A compatible Sonos soundbar will be a prerequisite, yes.
That doesn’t make any sense - I can connect any of my bluetooth headphones directly to my FireCube and take over the audio - why would these be different?
I’m sure you’ll be able to do that, but you’ll be limited to BT audio quality rather that atmos audio.
For knackered hearing, it's a bit academic. Admit it, man. These BT headphones are not what most Sonosistas wanted or expected. The expectation was that they'd act like a zone player.
The convesation is about using Ace for TV audio and you’re talking about using Ace as zone player.
No one who understands anything about how these things work expected to get TV audio in the headphones without using BT or a soundbar in between. How could the audio possibly get to the headphones?
They could do both. Leverage the Arc as a bridge for TV audio, then switch to zone mode for music.
I see that Sonos is selling a bundled pair of headphones. Can 2 headphones be bonded to the same Arc?
No. We’ve conducted user research and learned the most common use case for wearing headphones with a home theater is for viewing content alone, so you don’t disturb others in your household. We’ll continue to learn how customers are using Sonos Ace and explore additional features over time.
Did your user research also tell you that Sonos users wouldn’t prefer utilizing headphones as their own zone or do we only talk about user research when its convenient to justify the mindless exclusions?
What a missed opportunity to have truly wireless uncompressed headphones. We sold our Arcs for Amps so clearly we won’t be buying these. AirPod Max supports head aware atmos perfectly already. These could have been innovative instead they seem like last gen product that’s late to the game and focused on only arc users. Went from excited to disappointed quickly. Another Sonos Fail.
What a missed opportunity to have truly wireless uncompressed headphones. We sold our Arcs for Amps so clearly we won’t be buying these. AirPod Max supports head aware atmos perfectly already. These could have been innovative instead they seem like last gen product that’s late to the game and focused on only arc users. Went from excited to disappointed quickly. Another Sonos Fail.
100%
Is the audio from the Arc that can be sent to the Ace headphones only limited to TV audio? If I were to send line-in audio from a turntable or play a song from my music library from the Sonos app to the Arc, can it be sent to the Ace headphones too?
Hi Kumar
The question is will these work directly with an Apple TV or an Amazon Fire Cube, or is the presence of a Sonos soundbar a prerequisite, and if so, only some models? Will someone that has just a TV being supplied by a video streamer be able to use these for surround sound? I suspect not.
A compatible Sonos soundbar will be a prerequisite, yes.
That doesn’t make any sense - I can connect any of my bluetooth headphones directly to my FireCube and take over the audio - why would these be different?
I’m sure you’ll be able to do that, but you’ll be limited to BT audio quality rather that atmos audio.
For knackered hearing, it's a bit academic. Admit it, man. These BT headphones are not what most Sonosistas wanted or expected. The expectation was that they'd act like a zone player.
The convesation is about using Ace for TV audio and you’re talking about using Ace as zone player.
No one who understands anything about how these things work expected to get TV audio in the headphones without using BT or a soundbar in between. How could the audio possibly get to the headphones?
Few expected the headphones would be for TV audio. Sonos did nothing to diabuse people's expectations. Little wonder users are shunning another massive fail (whatever contorted defence you conjure up.)
Is the audio from the Arc that can be sent to the Ace headphones only limited to TV audio? If I were to send line-in audio from a turntable or play a song from my music library from the Sonos app to the Arc, can it be sent to the Ace headphones too?
I’m unsure about this as well. I don’t see why the audio would limited to TV audio source only, but the message is definitively emphasizing TV audio as the reason the feature exists..
They could do both. Leverage the Arc as a bridge for TV audio, then switch to zone mode for music.
Again, variations of this feature have been requested for years, and never been implemented. The assumption that they could just have a speaker just seamlessly move from one zone/room to another, or be it’s own room, hasn’t shown to true.
The convesation is about using Ace for TV audio and you’re talking about using Ace as zone player.
No one who understands anything about how these things work expected to get TV audio in the headphones without using BT or a soundbar in between. How could the audio possibly get to the headphones?
Few expected the headphones would be for TV audio. Sonos did nothing to diabuse people's expectations. Little wonder users are shunning another massive fail (whatever contorted defence you conjure up.)
Consumers were absolutely asking for TV audio. We saw that request here many times, and no doubt Sonos marketing backed that up, since that’s the feature they created and are promoting. I’m not saying that no one is asking for headphones as a zone, as they obviously are. If Sonos had made Ace be a zone player without the ability to connect to a TV, the outcry would be just as much as if not more, and I have little doubt that you be here happily complaining about that too. Honestly, if Ace could do TV audio, act as a zone, and do BT audio, the mob will still declare it a failure. I’d rather just wait and see what actually happens.
What’s the IP rating? Not seeing anything so …?
What’s the IP rating? Not seeing anything so …?
You're grasping a little now. Few over-ear headphones are IP rated. Absolutely nobody was expecting these to have an IP rating.
What’s the IP rating? Not seeing anything so …?
You're grasping a little now. Few over-ear headphones are IP rated. Absolutely nobody was expecting these to have an IP rating.
Airpod Max do not have a rating which is why I don’t own them or other high end over ear headphones as I wouldn’t want to risk light snow or rain which is common where I live.
Would have been pleasantly surprised if these had IPX4.
headphones feature breathtaking lossless and spatial audio, world-class Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and Aware Mode, as well as the most precise and immersive home theater experience possible using Sonos’ new TrueCinema technology. Sonos Ace will be available globally in both Black and Soft White.
