Sonos Gives Its Headphones Another Hearing

Sonos is one of the most famous and loved consumer audio brands in the world, known for its sound quality, elegant design and easy-to-use software, and easy interconnectivity. This made it all the more surprising that, until 2024, it never sold a pair of headphones.That changed with the Ace: a compelling, stylish pair of headphones that I loved using when they were first released. They were comfortable and stylish, had competent noise cancellation and an ambient-sound mode, and had an easy-to-enjoy, balanced sound. But this is a competitive market, and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra — which preceded the Ace by about eight months — provided better overall audio quality and the world’s best noise cancellation in a headphone built just as well.Finally, though, Sonos has returned with a successor, the Sonos Ace Ultra — and it promises lots of upgrades. It has new 40-millimeter Sonos-developed drivers and ten microphones for noise cancellation and calls — up from eight on the Ace — and Sonos promises the new drivers will make it sound significantly better than before. The expanded microphone array also provides 2.2 times as much noise reduction at 65 hertz and 1.8 times as much at 120 hertz — though how impressive that actually is will require testing.Sonos has also added dynamic equalization software that compensates for acoustic leaks caused by the arms of glasses, your hair, or just moving around, and you can further tweak the sound with three-band and eight-band equalizers in the Sonos app. It now also supports lossless audio over Bluetooth through Qualcomm aptX Adaptive Lossless — on the relatively limited number of Android phones that support it — or universally through USB-C. It remains a mystery to me why Apple hasn’t used this codec or developed its own lossless Bluetooth codec, given that Apple Music was one of the first streamers to add lossless audio — but still.It comes with Bluetooth 6.0, letting you connect to two devices at once, and with a travel case, which is hopefully better than the subpar one Sonos offered with the Ace. The actual case was fine, but the zipper was so terrible that you would never want to use it. The battery gets a minor upgrade — up to 35 hours with noise cancellation on, or five hours more than the original Ace — and both the battery and ear cushions are replaceable, with Sonos listing a battery kit for $25.Probably the most exciting feature for Sonos users, though, is that the headphones can play audio using a direct Wi-Fi connection to your home Sonos system. If you’re playing music on a Sonos speaker or watching a movie on a soundbar, pressing and holding the Content Key sends the audio to your headphones. The feature, called Headphone Linking, launches in Early Access and works with music services, line-in sources, and local-library audio already playing on a Sonos product.All in all, it seems like a pretty good upgrade to the original Ace, which will remain on sale for $50 less. These cost $449 and are available in Black, Soft White, Agave, and Sand.

Sonos Gives Its Headphones Another Hearing

Sonos Gives Its Headphones Another Hearing

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