- Excellent sound quality
- Thoughtful design
- TV audio swap is very neat
- Expensive
- Features missing at launch
- Buggy app
The main reason you’d consider the Sonos Ace for your next headphones is if you’re already in the ecosystem. They are, after all, designed to work with other Sonos products, and trust in a brand can help make the $699 price tag a bit more palatable.
This shouldn't be the only reason, as the Sonos Ace genuinely go toe-to-toe with the best over-ear headphones on the market. While they're not perfect, the Ace are surprisingly impressive for Sonos' first attempt in a new product category.
Thoughtful design
Thoughtful is the first word that comes to mind when discussing the Sonos Ace. There are a lot of small decisions that elevate the product before you even start listening to music.
To start, it's always easy to know if you're putting the headphones on correctly. The interior of the right ear cup is coloured, and the headband has an indent that also works as a guide.
Controls have been split between the two ear cups; the left has the power button, while the right features playback and noise cancellation. There's a simple toggle for swapping between noise cancellation and a transparency mode, while the playback controls take the form of a bespoke button called the "Content Key".
The Content Key is a tiny slider that handles volume and playback. Sliding it up and down adjusts volume in a satisfying way, while clicking it in is used for pausing or resuming playback. There's a nice tactility to it, and much like the digital crown on the AirPods Max, it's a clever solution to implementing physical controls that work well when you can't see them.
In general, I'm a big fan of the design. The Sonos Ace feel like the love child of the AirPods Max and Sony WH-1000XM5s, borrowing some of Apple's best ideas and balancing them out with Sony's practicality. Aluminium sliders and hidden hinges give the Sonos Ace a premium look and feel, but the build is predominantly plastic for a lighter weight.
That being said, the Sonos Ace still weigh 314 grams, making them heavier than top-end options from Sony and Bose. They're about 70 grams lighter than the AirPods Max, however. While the AirPods Max can definitely feel too heavy at times, I didn't have that issue with the Sonos Ace. They're incredibly comfortable headphones, even during extended listening sessions.
The thoughtful design extends to the included carrying case. Inside there's a little pouch for carrying the included cables - a USB-C to USB-C, and a USB-C to 3.5mm - that's attached magnetically. Getting cables in and out of the pouch can be a little annoying, - the fit is quite tight. Overall, the case feels appropriately high-end for $699 headphones, but it's on the larger size. It's quite wide, but it is reasonably thin.
Acing the test
In terms of sound quality, the Sonos Ace are among the very best consumer-grade over-ear headphones I've tested. They aced every song on our Audio Testing playlist, which so far, is a feat only one other pair of cans have pulled off: the AirPods Max.
The Sonos Ace sound great no matter what you're listening to, deftly handling the entire frequency spectrum. You get brain-tickling sub-bass, punchy bass, balanced mids, and crystalline highs. Instrumentation in densely layered tracks like Opeth's "The Funeral Portrait" and Radiohead's "The National Anthem" is clear and easy to follow. These are the kind of headphones that can reveal new details about favourite songs.
Sound quality is also pretty consistent across volume. You don't see a significant drop off in bass response when listening at lower volumes (although you do get a fuller sound as you crank it), and I couldn't perceive any distortion when the Ace were maxed out.
The Ace have the same kind of balanced sound profile that you get from Sonos speakers, but the companion app lets you tweak bass and treble. There's also a "loudness" option you can toggle on to boost bass and treble at lower volumes if they're too restrained for your liking with the out-of-the-box settings.
On the noise-cancelling front, the Sonos Ace do well, but they're not up with the best of the best. Sony and Bose have a lead in the space, offering more powerful reduction as well as granular options for fine-tuning your level of cancellation. What's on offer here certainly isn't bad, however. The Ace comfortably block out other passengers on public transport, for example, and significantly reduces the sound of my robot vacuum's scheduled clean each morning.
Similarly, the Sonos Ace's transparency mode could use a little tweaking too. It's certainly better than most, but doesn't compare to the clarity and natural sound Apple have achieved with AirPods Max and AirPods Pro. Microphone quality is more than good enough for a phone call or Zoom, but could be clearer.
The Sonos Ace can last up to 30 hours per charge with noise-cancelling on, and from my testing, that seems pretty accurate. While that's not quite as high as the 50 hours promised by alternatives like the latest Sennheiser Momentum cans, it's definitely above average. If they run flat, a three-minute charge should get you three hours of playback.
The ecosystem play
The most intriguing Sonos Ace feature is how they integrate into the broader Sonos ecosystem. While they're not a WiFi device like other Sonos speakers, they can pair with Sonos soundbars. Dubbed TV Audio Swap, this functionality pipes the audio from your soundbar directly into the Sonos Ace, for a personal listening experience.
At launch, this feature is limited to iPhone users and the Sonos Arc, but will be expanded to the Beam (both first and second-generation models) and the entry-level Ray "soon". Android support is also on the cards.
The initial implementation works reasonably well after you've got it set up, and has features like head tracking so you can pin the audio source to your TV. The Sonos Ace are also able to handle surround sound mixes surprisingly well. It's the kind of thing I can see being very useful when I'm gaming at night and my partner is already asleep.
At this stage, the functionality isn't that different to connecting AirPods to an Apple TV, but with a slightly broader remit. Any content you're engaging with on your TV can be piped through to the Sonos Ace - whether it's from an integrated streaming app, a console, or a set-top box.
This soundbar integration is set to get a lot more interesting down the line, however, with a feature called TrueCinema. This maps the audio profile of your room, and uses it to remix the audio sent to your Sonos Ace using the room's acoustics. The idea here is to make it feel like you're not wearing headphones, and in a brief demo, it was surprisingly convincing. There's no time frame for when this feature will launch, however, which is a real shame. It's exciting, but I obviously can't judge or recommend the Sonos Ace on features that aren't available.
It's also worth noting the Sonos app isn't in a great state right now. You can mostly avoid using it with the Ace, but you'll need it to set up TV Audio Swap. When I first attempted to enable the feature, it would error constantly without suggesting any fixes.
I tried restarting my soundbars, restarting the headphones, and turning off other Sonos products in the house to no avail. Eventually, I realised an update was available for the Sonos Ace, which has a separate update menu from other Sonos speakers in your app. After installing that, I was able to set up Audio Swap, but it was a frustrating 30 minutes of troubleshooting.
Only one Sonos Ace can be used with a Sonos soundbar at a time. If you and your partner both get a pair of Sonos Ace, you won't both be able to pair them an Arc simultaneously.
Reality and expectations
As a Sonos product, it's natural that there were certain expectations around the Ace. Sonos is known for wireless speakers that integrated with one another, and I personally was hoping the Ace might have worked a similar way. That isn't the case, however. While the Ace can connect with Sonos soundbars, they don't have any interaction with the broader Sonos portfolio or do playback over WiFi.
These decisions were made for weight and battery life - adding WiFi playback would have made the Sonos Ace heavier and listening to music over WiFi drains battery faster. They make sense, but I did have a vague dream that I'd be able to use my Ace with the turntable I have wired into my system. Alas.
Broadly speaking, it is kinda interesting that Sonos didn't go for deeper integration with its product portfolio, as ultimately, many of the Ace's competitors have ecosystems built around them. I typically work in the Apple ecosystem, and losing the iCloud multipoint that keeps my AirPods Pro paired to my iPhone, Mac Studio, and MacBook is a minor frustration, for example. The Ace have basic multipoint, but it isn't quite as convenient.
They're also missing other little quality-of-life features like fast pairing. None of these should be dealbreakers for most, but it's clear that Sonos is doing its own thing with the Ace.
Sonos Ace - Final Thoughts
Sonos has played to its strengths with the Ace. Sound quality and hardware design are both top-tier, and the TV Audio Swap functionality is promising even if not quite fully rolled out yet. These are all impressive enough to make up for first-attempt features like noise cancellation and transparency mode, which while good, doesn't quite equal the best.
On the whole, the Ace are a very compelling package with some caveats. To start, $699 is a lot of money for headphones. That's cheaper than the AirPods Max, but pricier than rivals like Sony's WH-1000XM5s and Bose's QC Ultra. Secondly, missing proper Android support at launch may narrow the appeal. While they'll still work well with any Android phone, there's no telling when Android users will get TV Audio Swap functionality. Similarly, TV Audio Swap only works with the Arc right now. And lastly, the Sonos app is kinda janky right now. While you can largely ignore it, it can get annoying the times you actually need it.
The latter three caveats will hopefully disappear over time, but are definitely worth considering now. Especially at $699.
As aforementioned, the TV Audio Swap functionality is easily the Sonos Ace's most interesting feature, and could make them a no-brainer for many existing Sonos users. But even as standalone pair of headphones, the Sonos Ace stand out thanks to how damn good they sound and how comfy they are. They might be pricey, but for some, they might just be worth it.
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