Sonos Ace headphones finally announced, aiming for the Royal Flush of over-ears

Sonos headphones have been rumoured for years – since 2019 if you’ve been counting. I remember interviewing the company’s CEO Patrick Spence at the launch of the Sonos Move in September 2019 in Berlin (a few months after the first rumours) and cheekily asking what other audio products he would like to see Sonos do given the choice. 

I was well aware he wouldn’t answer the question out right, so much so that I was laughing as I asked it. And I was right, he didn’t mention headphones directly. But he did say “there’s lots of opportunity out there, Britta, lots of opportunity,” before grinning and adding “great ones that bring in new perspectives and build on all our strengths”.

Well, one of those great opportunities has now come to fruition with Sonos (finally) announcing those long-awaited headphones in the form of the Sonos Ace. 

Sonos Ace design and features

Offering a sleek and sophisticated design, the Sonos Ace are very much a premium set of cans. They nod to the rest of the Sonos portfolio with a matte finish and black and white colour options. Sorry, Black and ‘Soft White’ because there are different shades of white and the white of the Sonos Ace headphones doesn’t match that of the Era 100 or Era 300. 

They feel very light – though it should be known that the over-ears I currently opt for are the Apple AirPods Max and they are by no means what anyone would call “light”. The Sonos Ace headphones come in at 312g so not as light as the Sony ULT Wear that sit at a cool 255g, but around 60g lighter than the AirPods Max. There are no aluminium ear cups in the Sonos Ace headphones, but there is a similar low profile design to the AirPods Max, along with a “race track” shape that delivers soft, smooth curves. 

The Sonos Ace headphones are comfortable – I tried them out in London before this announcement – with a soft memory foam wrapped in Vegan leather making up the ear cushions. There’s also a different colour inside one of the ear cushions, in order to help distinguish left from right without needing large letters and it’s a lovely green in the white variant. Memory foam is present in the headband too – it’s not an unusual material for headphones – though the headband foam is firmer than what you’ll find in the ear cushions to help distribute the weight.

That’s not all. Just in case different types of memory foam wasn’t doing it for you, there are a couple of extra interesting design features about the Sonos Ace headphones. The first is that the stainless steel arms have hidden the hinge into the swivelling ear cups themselves, allowing for a more seamless look. 

The second is what Sonos calls the Content Key button. The company has placed the Sonos logo on the outside of the right ear cup to highlight this button on the edge. Messing around with the logo is something Sonos does quite a bit. For the Sonos Play:5 (Gen 2), for example, it drilled 800 holes into the logo tag on the front grille so it didn’t mess with the sound quality, and you may or may not have noticed, the name itself is a palindrome.

The Content Key button performs a similar function to the Digital Crown on the AirPods Max, but there’s an extra function. Move it up and down to adjust volume, press once to play or pause, twice to skip forward and three times to skip back a track, while you can also end and answer calls – nothing particularly unusual. Where it offers something a little more unique is its ability to swap audio with your TV, though there is a caveat – you need a Sonos Arc soundbar. Should you have the company’s top-of-the-range soundbar, the TV Audio Swap feature will allow you to tap that Content Key button – or use the Sonos app – to move your audio from your Arc soundbar to your headphones, and vice versa. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with any other soundbars yet, although Beam (Gen 2) and Ray will be supported in the future. It also doesn’t work with Sonos speakers like the Sound Swap feature the Sonos Roam Bluetooth speaker offers. If you do the switch through the Sonos app rather than using the Content Key though, you get the option to turn spatial audio on or off. I tried the feature out with Barbie on screen when I saw these headphones in London and it works well, with head tracking delivering an interesting experience.

Sound and specs

I mentioned the Sonos Ace headphones have dynamic head-tracking, and I mentioned spatial audio too, with Dolby Atmos supported as well. The headphones will also offer a technology called TrueCinema later this year, which will map your space and create a surround sound experience for your ears based on that space. If you’re familiar with the company’s speakers, it offers similar to those with Trueplay tuning, so this technology is an extension of that but for the headphones specifically.

There are custom 40mm dynamic drivers within each ear cup and there’s a ported architecture for an enhanced bass response and greater depth. I’ll need some more time with these before I talk about sound performance, but from what I have heard so far, they didn’t disappoint. There was plenty of detail and clarity in tracks, along with decent bass, as Sonos fans will expect. Like the speakers, you can adjust the EQ of the headphones in the Sonos app. 

Last thing to mention on the specs front – Sonos claims the Sonos Ace headphones will last 30 hours on a single charge, which is a little longer than the Apple AirPods Max’s 20 hours. The Ace headphones have fast charging on board for up to 3 hours listening time with a 3-minute charge. They are charged via USB-C and they have wear detection so they will automatically pause content when you remove them to help preserve battery life.

Sonos Ace price and availability

Let’s talk about the price then shall we? If you know Sonos products, you’ll know these headphones were never going to be cheap. They will be available from 5 June and they will set you back £449. It means they are quite significantly more expensive than Sony’s superb WH-1000XM5, coming in around the same price as the AirPods Max, which usually go for around £499 now despite launching at £549. 

They come with a felt travel case, which is made from 75 per cent recycled plastic bottles. There’s also a handy little case for storing the cable that sits between the headband and the ear cups. Like AirPods Max and the Sony WH-1000XM5, the Sonos Ace headphones remain flat in their case, no folding these bad boys.