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.

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.

 

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.

As a "Charter Member" of Sonos equipment,  I've lived through many iterations of Sonos growth process. Mostly good, some dissatisfactory. Overall I love my Sonos. But get back to me when the Ace is ready to receive my proprietary Sonos transmissions direct via my existing bridge, amps, etc. I can appreciate you Bluetooth & direct wire options, but I already have 5 different headphones that have been giving me all, or some of the perks from Ace. Give a real differentiating product that is truly part of the "Sonos Family" we've grown to love for close to 20 years now. Thanks

You are probably correct in identifying these two probable ‘primary target markets’ - but I wonder just how big these two markets will turn out to be?  And will they generate the volume revenue for Sonos that Mr Spence claims to expect?  Sonos products are clearly high end hardware, but competition in these high end niche markets is strong, and the problems/publicity with the recent app upgrade will unfortunately make that competition even tougher. 

Hello,

You're advertising the product as being able to deliver lossless audio. I've had a thorough look through the user guide & so far haven’t been able to find any information on supported bluetooth audio codecs. Can you provide more information regarding this? For instance, from the below list, what is / isn’t supported. Also, I’m a little confused about your headphone tracking technology. When you’re listening to headphones, you’re always centered. The sound field is passing directly into the head through the ears. Why would any tracking be needed? If you’re watching a film with DA, and you move a metre to the left, why would the virtual sound stage be affected at all?

aptx

aptX Low Latency

aptx HD

aptx Adaptive

aptX Lossless

LDAC

LHDC

AAC

LC3

Regards,

Chris

Here's the info from the Sonos FAQ. No mention of supporting codecs, but Lossless is via Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound AptX (assuming you have an Android device with a compatible Qualcomm processor), or via cable if you have an iPhone.

It's also worth noting that not all Snapdragon Android phones support Qualcomm Snapdragon Sound AptX - Samsung uses their own codec, so they won't get lossless via Bluetooth either. There are a *lot* of caveats regarding the Ace's feature set…

Supported AptX phones.

Thanks Ian. I read that as well. Given that there’s so many different AptX codecs, the marketing team at Sonos need to clarify what they mean because “AptX for Lossless is too ambiguous for me. A CD audio file is 1,411kbps. LDAC is 990kbps which is the closest we’ve been to achieving that.

According to what I’ve read, AptX Lossless maxes at 1,200kbps - so even with this you can’t retain all the data. It’s meant to be the equivalent to FLAC - I have no issue with this. FLAC is all I need. Even Aptx HD & adaptive are great. I just don’t like ambiguous claims...;).

Chris

What a disappointment!

I was hoping Sonos Ace would allow a person to listen to TV at high volume whilst allowing (long suffering) partners to listen via ARC or beam at normal volume, But no. They have taken an age to develop this but it is launched only partly finished in my view

Just had it confirmed through Sonos sales: Headphones are useless without Arc. Only Bluetooth.
No integration. This would make them hight quality, regular headphones.
Magical how Sonos misses the mark twice in one month.

Yeah, I think the main capabilities they need to work on that’s missing are:

• Make the Ace a regular speaker like Move and Roam with the ability to live in your wifi environment. Be able to add, group and remove as need be to ALL speakers (not high priority but would be nice).
• Have the Ace be added to an Arc, Beam, Ray for accessibility so hard of hearing can get the volume that they want.
• Add multiple Aces to an ABR for movies at night-kids or apartment scenario.
• Ability to Bluetooth into any device directly (Apple TV, Roku, TV itself, Fire Stick, etc.., iPad, phone, etc..)
• Support all codex no different than any other BT speaker or Headset. 
• What else am I missing?

Good list. The Ace already has the ability to connect via bluetooth with devices that support bluetooth. For devices that don’t support Bluetooth (which I believe is the case for some of the devices you listed), that would never be an expected capability. So not sure I understand your fourth bullet. I agree with your first bullet. But I’d like to strongly disagree with your suggestion that integrating the Ace into the zone ecosystem is not a high priority. From my perspective, not having that integration is a complete deal breaker. I‘ll buy an Ace in a heartbeat once that’s addressed, but not before. 

There's a difference in meaning between 'codex' and CODECS.(!?!?).

Roverandom, Actually not surprising they missed the mark twice in a month, bad shooters consistently miss.  Sonos came out with an app that the alarms didn’t work for about three weeks and the snooze function still doesn’t work.  My am/fm radio from the seventies has a functional alarm and snooze function.  If Sonos can’t master technology that has literally been around for fifty years why would you think they could do anything cutting edge?  I don’t say that to be mean to you, they suckered me in too, big time.  I have thousands of dollars in speakers that since the app update can’t play one song I like since all my playlists are gone.   

I’ve ordered the white pair and cannot wait to get my grubby mits on them

Could we have a complete list of supported Bluetooth codecs please? The product page only mentions AptX Lossless, which hardly any phones (with latest Snapdragon chipset) support. Other reviews have also mentioned AptX Adaptive, which again, only a few phones support. What about Apt X (supported on Samsung) and AptX HD (supported by Google Pixels), are these codecs supported as well?

Let me start by saying I absolutely love the look of the Sonos Ace, especially in white. I even am starting to get used to the new App… But.. and this is a big but for a lot of people I think, why on earth would you not have this headphone act like their own zone within your household? You did it with the Roam and the Move. How is the Ace any different than those speakers? I truly do not understand. That would be the no.1 USP to buy Sonos and not another brand. Let’s face it, sure transferring the sound from a soundbar to the Ace is a nice party trick, but who is seriously gonna use that a lot? I mean most people bought the Arc en possible sub and surround to blow the roof off! I am certainly not gonna buy 2 for me and my wife so we can sit next to each other wearing our Sonos Ace headphones watching a movie when I have invested thousands in Arc + Sub + Era 300. Sorry makes no sense to me..  Hopefully this can be added with a software update.

Smaller, lighter battery I imagine. In addition, beyond knee jerk reaction to omission I’m not sure the use case for acting like a regular zone is hugely compelling. The only thing we really miss out on by not being able to add as a regular zone is access to Sonos line in ports. This is something I would like, but I suspect I’m in a relatively small portion of the potential user base. Everything else (streaming music services and local music library) can be easily played from other apps. We do also miss out on ability to group the Ace with other speakers in the house but I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that.

If you live in an apartment you can’t really use full 5.1 or 7.1 home theatre setup to max potential without annoying your neighbours. A single soundbar and an Ace may be a good, and regularly used solution for this group of customers. 

How long before these stop working when Sonos releases another product and updates its Sonos app leaving existing customers unsupported.
I’m NOT BUYING, Sonos FIX your APP for ALL customers!!!

Max potential =/= Max volume. 

osm

Whistler wrote:

Let me start by saying I absolutely love the look of the Sonos Ace, especially in white. I even am starting to get used to the new App… But.. and this is a big but for a lot of people I think, why on earth would you not have this headphone act like their own zone within your household? You did it with the Roam and the Move. How is the Ace any different than those speakers? 

Smaller, lighter battery I imagine. In addition, beyond knee jerk reaction to omission I’m not sure the use case for acting like a regular zone is hugely compelling. The only thing we really miss out on by not being able to add as a regular zone is access to Sonos line in ports. This is something I would like, but I suspect I’m in a relatively small portion of the potential user base. Everything else (streaming music services and local music library) can be easily played from other apps. We do also miss out on ability to group the Ace with other speakers in the house but I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that.

I think the user base for being a zone player is greater than one would imagine. there is also just an expectation - well it is a Sonos product so it must work like a Sonos product. Without this there is very little that makes these expensive headphones stand out against the existing very good competition

You loose the ability to access your local library as well as access to line-in. I may not want to have all the services I use in Sonos installed on my phone. BT means that I have to keep my phone with me if I move around. I can see, admittedly few, scenarios where you would want to group with other Sonos speakers. 

Unless there’s a longer term plan to incorporate a Bluetooth TX in a future Sonos product, such as a new Sonos Port, for example. That way the Sonos eco-system could be output to the Ace.

I use a Port now with a 1Mii B03 Pro transmitter and that outputs all Sonos audio, including line-in audio (Turntable etc.) and Sonos Radio to my Sony Headphones… it’s just that setup is no good for TV audio due to the GAD buffer that Sonos uses, but that of course should all be resolved with the new Ace headphones and TV SoundSwap.

On demand: obviously we’re just going on hunches, but I expect Sonos will have done research to determine that there is enough demand for headphones that don’t act as regular zones.

On local library: you don’t lose ability to play this. There are many music player apps that can connect to basic smb network shares. And those who configure their local library using Plex can obviously just use Plex app.

On having to have additional apps on phone to stream music to the headphones: Yes, this will be needed, but given Sonos app is just a controller rather than a player, how would you expect to be able to use the headphones outside the home without doing this? I guess there may be some people who would only ever want to use headphones at home, but presumably this isn’t Sonos’ main target group for this product.

As a frustrated owner of a pair of Bowers & Wilkins PX7 (the faulty model with a muted right ear piece which the quality team doesn’t take responsibility from), I was waiting for Sonos’ approach to headphones. Can’t really tell if I had a list of tech specs or functionality to cross examine. However, WiFi playback, c’mon… it’s synonymous to Sonos! Then I remembered some Audi cars have Sonos speakers. And the car it’s not a zone in the car owner system, right? No WiFi playback there. 
 

Pre-ordered one pair of black Aces. Time will tell. I do expect sound clarity and build quality.
 

With all due respect, speak for yourself. That feature would be immensely compelling for me. It is the only reason I’ve been waiting patiently for years for Sonos headphones.  Without that feature, the Ace is basically just another pair of bluetooth headphones. And the market is already saturated with them. I get it that people use Sonos in different ways. For me, one of the killer features of the Sonos ecosystem is the ability to integrate numerous streaming services with local files seamless together in one interface. And to easily combine all of those sources into a queue, or multiple queues if you like, one for each zone, and save a queue as a playlist, if you like, a playlist that can combine multiple sources and services. I want my headphones to be a part of that ecosystem. And I want the ability to switch what I’m listening to from playing on speakers to headphones or the other way around. You may use Sonos differently, but for me this is a huge use case.

None of that necessarily requires the headphones to have full WiFi capabilities and be a so-called zone or room in the Sonos system the same vein as the speakers and ports. That integrated software experience could be achieved with the headphones still tethered to phone  by Sonos updating the system controller app with player capabilities (or releasing a separate Sonos player app). For me this would be a more compelling solution to achieving an integrated software experience because you would get the same experience both at home and away from home. Headphones being zones/rooms in the system would only serve to achieve the integrated software experience when using the headphones at home.

Aside from being one (but not the only) way to achieve a unified software experience, what would be other potential benefits of the headphones having full WiFi capabilities and acting as a zone/room in the system? One might be the ability to group the headphones with other speakers in the home for synchronised playback. I really don’t see there being much demand for that. Another is that you wouldn’t need to keep your phone in bluetooth range when wandering about the home with headphones on. But is that really such a big deal? Another is the ability to route system line-in audio to the headphones. This I get and I want this functionality too. But I suspect the number of potential customers for whom this is a crucial feature would be fairly small.

I don’t really see Sonos wanted to turn the Sonos app into a player outside of your home since that doesn’t really sell any speakers for them.  Perhaps a subscription service, but would anybody want to pay for that?  That’s assuming that all the various streaming services would even want to be included in such an aggregator app, instead of having users use the app they’ve develop. 

Grouping would allow you to start playback on speakers in one room, then transfer the audio to your headphones without having to start and stop another stream.  You could get TV audio, local library, and aux sources that are not available through your phone.  Multiple people in the home can use the same pair of headphones without have to deal with connecting/disconnecting bluetooth connections.   There is potentially the ability to have multiple headphone users listening to the same source at the same time. There is also audio quality differences depending on source.

I think there is also some comforting in just knowing that your audio sources area all connected, even if that doesn’t result in a ton of useful functionality you can use. In the same way that you want a Sonos aggreator/player for use away from home despite having separate apps for all your audio needs, consumers would want headphones that are part of the overall system, rather than a separate system tied to bluetooth.   I am good with Ace effectively being BT only, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want more.

My bad.