The Sonos Ace headphones are striking, a triumph of form and function in the realm of personal, sonic pleasure, an attempt to integrate the company’s audio expertise into a place previously only touched by Sonos equipment. But how do they stand up? What do they offer in this often-overcrowded market?
Ace headphones have been engineered to look and feel as good as they sound. Sleek black and white finishes look as good as they feel. The slim wooden ear cups are shrouded in plush faux leather, and punctuated by a chrome metal yoke, which is complemented by a supple headband.
But first and foremost, the important part of any pair of headphones is the way they sound, and the Sonos Ace delivers an expansive and immersive soundfield assisted by the custom-designed 40mm dynamic drivers. And the support for spatial audio as well as Dolby Atmos doesn’t hurt, either. Every movie you stream can make you feel like you’re watching it in a theatre, and every gaming session can feel like a boot camp for the National Serious Games League with how in-tune the headphones are.
The noise cancellation on the Sonos Ace is excellent. It innately defends against excessive ambient noise because it is equipped with eight microphones that relentlessly seek out extraneous noise and subtract it before it reaches your ears. Turn the Aware mode on, and the Ace ensures that the world doesn’t go silent when you find yourself wanting to hear it.
Besides their superior fidelity and active, adaptive noise-cancellation, these headphones come packed with every feature imaginable. The most recent Bluetooth era is included, which supports LC3, LDAC, apt-X and apt-X HD audio codecs. And if you don’t know what those things are, don’t worry – it all works automatically. Smart wear-detection will let your music pause when you remove them from your head, and an equaliser function can be adjusted via a new Sonos app.
One of the best features of the Sonos Ace is something called TV Audio Swap, for when you’re watching late-night TV and don’t want to be a house disturbance, but you don’t want to miss your show, either. One press of a button on the headphones, and the audio shifts from your Sonos soundbar to the headphones.
Clocking up to 30 hours of listening time on a charge, the Sonos Ace aren’t going to let you down until you’re ready to plug them in. And incidental touches, such as being able to fast charge the earbuds so you don’t go long without them, are very welcome. It is a shame that the fancy TV Audio Swap feature is limited to the Sonos Arc soundbar, unless you want to use your headphones as an alternative Bluetooth speaker, and the premium pricing may start to ask questions.
Before diving in, let's summarize the strengths and weaknesses:
The Sonos Ace headphones are the crème de la crème of personal audio luxury, offering a level of design, audio quality, and technological innovation that’s unmatched. Their price and limitations of some features might be dealbreakers for some, while others who are heavily invested in the Sonos ecosystem or are just looking for a luxury audio experience will certainly find a compelling choice with the Sonos Ace headphones.
Headphones, in all their forms, have become our personal portals to sound. Whether it’s the humble earbud or a pair of over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, the technology has changed radically in the past few decades in how it delivers a more personal, rich and qualitative audio experience. Just take a look at the latest Sonos Ace headphones. We keep looking for better sound quality, the better comfort, the better technologies. Headphones are a necessity for how we consume music, movies, anything out in the world.
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