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Retired Sonos Staff
May 21, 2024 1:05 PM UTC
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The long-awaited first headphones: Sonos Ace

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The long-awaited first headphones: Sonos Ace

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 Bluetooth® 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.

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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310 replies

May 21, 2024 4:36 PM UTC

 

The reason to have a soundbar and headphones is so that everyone in the room can listen to the soundbar when that’s desired, and only you hear the audio when that is desired.

To switch between Arc and Ace is a cool little feature, but it’s just that.  This seems to be the USP for Ace and not that it become part of the speaker set up

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Vanzs
Contributor I
May 21, 2024 4:46 PM UTC

I gotta say I’m disappointed in the absence of adaptive audio and voice detection. It’s something I’ve gotten really use to with my AirPod Pros. I would hope and think Sonos would include something similar with a high end product like this. Maybe they’ll introduce something like that with a firmware update, but you can’t buy something with hopes of features getting added. 
 

Until they add the support for TV audio with the Beam gen 2 and something equivalent to adaptive audio + voice detection, I’ll wait. 
 

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melvimbe
May 21, 2024 4:49 PM UTC

 

The reason to have a soundbar and headphones is so that everyone in the room can listen to the soundbar when that’s desired, and only you hear the audio when that is desired.

To switch between Arc and Ace is a cool little feature, but it’s just that.  This seems to be the USP for Ace and not that it become part of the speaker set up

 

If “not that it became part of the speaker set up” means that Ace can’t be it’s own Sonos room, then agreed.  The text  you quote though was answering the question of why anyone would want both a soundbar and headphones, not really tied to Sonos products really.

 

The more I think about it, I think there are two primary target markets here. One is the consumer who  may have gotten a custom installer for their system  see that they can pay $2k for the wireless home theatre setup or $2.5k for the setup with headphones, and considers it a no brainer add on.  They don’t care about a separate Sonos room or anything other than just being able to flip a switch  to from sound system to headphones and back again. 

The other market is really just the high end headphone market in generally.  They don’t necessarily have a Sonos system and would want to use these just like any other headphones.  

This is just not a typical Sonos speaker in headphone form factor, like many people were hoping for.  As much as I would like it to be usable as it’s own room, if I only get 2 out of the 3 options (home theater headphones, BT headphones, and WiFi headphones), WiFi headphones are probably the feature I would drop.

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Danny
melvimbe
May 21, 2024 4:52 PM UTC

@Corry P are there any new SVC voice commands specific for Ace?

 

It looks like there is no voice control built into Ace at all, looking at the specs.

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Danny
Lyricist I
May 21, 2024 4:57 PM UTC

Coming soon - our most requested product…

Seriously Sonos? I’ve been waiting card in hand (and that’s despite the app catastrophe) but this is a huge letdown. Was your customers’ most requested product a pair of standard Bluetooth headphones with almost no connectivity whatsoever to either their Sonos system, or to the app that you crippled to enable it? Did they not realise that other perfectly acceptable offerings have been available for years?

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Lyricist I
May 21, 2024 5:11 PM UTC

 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?

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Lyricist I
May 21, 2024 5:12 PM UTC

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.

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melvimbe
May 21, 2024 5:21 PM UTC

 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.

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Danny
melvimbe
May 21, 2024 5:24 PM UTC

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.

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Danny
Matthew UK
Contributor I
May 21, 2024 5:30 PM UTC

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! 

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