Sonos Ace Ultra Launches at $449 With Wi-Fi Audio and Sonos System Linking

The original Ace were well built, sounded good and were comfortable, The Verge said, but they were not good Sonos headphones. Their flagship TV audio swap feature let users move audio from a Sonos soundbar to the headphones, but it was glitchy. At launch, it worked only with the $1,000 Arc soundbar and only with one pair of Ace headphones at a time. Both issues have since been fixed. The original Ace also could not connect to the rest of the Sonos system for music streaming. The Verge said the original Ace were overshadowed by Sonos’s disastrous app redesign.

The Ace Ultra keep the original’s clean, understated look and remain comfortable for hours, even while the reviewer wore glasses, The Verge said. They weigh 0.71 pounds, slightly more than the Ace at 0.69 pounds, but the weight was not a problem. Ear cups are squishy, spacious, magnetic and easily removable; Sonos sells extra pairs for $39. The battery is user replaceable, with a kit costing $25, though the listing warns that swapping it requires disassembly, tools, time and patience. The headphones keep tactile buttons and the Content Key volume slider rather than capacitive controls.

The Ace Ultra address one of the original’s biggest gaps with headphone linking. The headphones appear in the Sonos system list, and pressing the slider button can move music from any Sonos speaker or speaker group, not just TV audio from a soundbar, to the headphones and back. That includes audio coming into the Sonos system from a record player or CD player. TV audio swap and headphone linking both use Wi-Fi.

The feature is not flawless. The Verge said it sometimes took a couple of presses to transfer audio. If a user pulls audio from speakers to the headphones and later sends it back, it only returns to the closest speaker, not the speaker or group that was playing before. Adding it back to a speaker group must be done in the Sonos app. The headphones also cannot be grouped with speakers. If different music is playing on different speakers, pulling music to the headphones from one does not affect the others. Headphone linking is in early access, according to Sonos, so the experience may change.

Wi-Fi audio streaming has a caveat. Sonos’s own Wi-Fi vs. Bluetooth explainer says higher bandwidth allows hi-res and lossless audio, but the Ace Ultra do not take advantage of that right now. During the headphone linking early access period, audio over Wi-Fi with headphone linking is lossy. Sonos has not said how long the early access period will last. Andrew Sutherland, Sonos senior director of product management, told The Verge by email that the focus is on making the core experience solid and reliable with a high-quality, lossy-compressed stereo audio stream optimized for Wi-Fi listening, and that Sonos has been happy with the results. He said Sonos will continue to build out the capabilities.

The Verge said the Ace Ultra improve sound and ANC performance but that both still are not quite as good as competitors. The review listed the inability to group the headphones with Sonos speakers, the competitive gap on sound and ANC, and lossy Wi-Fi audio during early access as negatives. The Verge said it appreciated Sonos’s caution in making headphone linking work properly but found it disappointing that a flagship feature shipped in beta.