Sonos Ace ushers in new era of premium personal audio

The arrival of Sonos’ first yet headphones has sparked plenty of buzz among the brand’s devoted fan base who have been waiting for this product since rumours first emerged in 2021. Boasting a sleek yet robust design, this latest innovation from the Santa Barbara-based audio gurus delivers breathtaking lossless and spatial audio with active noise cancellation — all meticulously crafted to look and sound sublime.

At first glance, the Sonos Ace bear a familiar silhouette reminiscent of heavy-hitters such as Sony’s WH-1000XM5 and Apple’s AirPods Max. But upon closer inspection, Sonos’ signature industrial design philosophy shines through in thoughtful touches such as magnetically removable vegan leather ear cushions that are colour-coded to easily show proper ear placement. There’s also a fingerprint-resistant coating and varying density foam padding in the headband to relieve pressure points.

“The Ace represent our ambition to create moving sound experiences that are equal to the moment we live in,” said Maxime Bouvat-Merlin, Sonos’ chief product officer. “True to Sonos’ heritage, each individual detail has been expertly crafted and tuned by the world’s leading sound engineers.”

While lighter than the aluminium-clad AirPods Max, the Ace still feel reassuringly robust thanks to a premium plastic construction with a matt finish that looks super slick. The physical controls are refreshingly straightforward rather than finicky touch gestures, and those premium vegan leather earpads are shaped to provide all-day comfort without catching on hair or causing ear fatigue.

But the real star of the show is the Sonos Ace’s audio capabilities. Custom 40mm dynamic drivers in each earcup render music, movies, and calls with stunning fidelity and clarity that belies the headphones’ relatively compact form factor. Eight beamforming microphones enable seriously impressive active noise cancellation to virtually eliminate external noises, as well as an ambient aware mode that seamlessly blends them back in so you can stay aware of your surroundings.

And that spatial audio with Dolby Atmos support? It creates a hyperrealistic 360-degree soundstage that seems to defy the laws of physics. Sonos claims this advanced 3D audio processing will make you forget you’re wearing headphones at all, discretely virtualising a full home theatre set-up around your head with precise timing, imaging and enveloping immersion that puts you at the centre of the cinematic action.

Lossless audio

It’s in this uncanny sense of being sonically transported that Sonos has clearly invested tremendous R&D resources to perfect. The heavy lifting is actually handled by the company’s intelligent soundbars, with optimised 3D sound data beamed over a bespoke 345 Kbps Wi-Fi connection to the Ace headphones while still allowing for an estimated 30 hours of noise-cancelling battery life. And quick USB-C charging replenishes several hours of playback in just minutes when you’re running low on juice.

The pièce de résistance, however, is Sonos’ ingenious new TrueCinema technology for a best-in-class private viewing experience. After mapping your room’s acoustics similar to the company’s TruePlay room correction, the Ace can wirelessly receive lossless audio directly from Sonos’ top soundbars like the Arc and render a complete surround system around your head. Dynamic head tracking ensures the virtualised effects remain precisely positioned even if you shift positions to grab some snacks. It’s a technical feat that promises the most convincingly immersive personal home theatre yet. 

The comprehensiveness extends way beyond just movies too. You can pipe gaming audio from consoles, live sports from streaming boxes, YouTube videos, or even music from your TV’s apps into the headphones for a private listening session — all while benefiting from that immersive spatial audio that intelligently follows you around the room. It’s an experience that could revolutionise everything from family movie nights to marathon gaming sessions by eliminating noise distractions.

Now for a few let-downs: while the Ace support higher quality aptX Adaptive Bluetooth streaming from modern Android devices, they don’t inherit the same multiroom speaker grouping or direct Wi-Fi streaming functionality as Sonos’ wireless home speakers. There’s also no automatic headphone handoff when strolling away from the company’s other speakers — a dream feature I was hoping for. For now, the flagship TrueCinema experience is limited to the high-end Arc soundbar at launch too, with support for the Beam (first and second generation) and Ray coming later down the line. It will be iOS-exclusive initially as well, with Android following shortly after.

Still, if Sonos can nail the basics such as sound quality, noise cancellation transparency, call performance, and battery life to the same standard as category leaders, the Ace seems poised to reset expectations for what premium personal audio can achieve. With the brand’s pedigree for audio excellence now bolstered by seriously impressive spatial processing capabilities, the Sonos Ace could spark a quantum leap for immersive home entertainment from the comfort of your couch.

Available globally on June 5

R12,999

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