Sonos Ace

For years we've heard rumours of a Sonos headset, which at first seemed like a curious market for Sonos to break into, but given their track record of creating truly excellent sound in living rooms around the world, there's been a lot of interest in seeing what such a set of headphones would actually look like.

And now here they are, the {Sonos Ace}. It's a curious, almost bizarre situation, because while the {Ace} is inexplicably missing the one feature everyone expected a set of Sonos headphones to offer, this is still a rock-solid headset that truly goes toe-to-toe with the giants.

Okay, let's address the issues in the paragraph above. The {Sonos Ace} has no WIFI functionality. They don't show up in the Sonos app, they can't pull sound directly from your {Sonos Arc}, there's no interaction between them and your other Sonos products, even though they've just settled on a cohesive product ecosystem. It's strange mostly because such a feature would also appear relatively unique, and so that's left out. There's no "but" here - it's just a shame.

If you get over it, however, you're left with a headset that nails pretty much every aspect of the overall user experience. First of all, the design is relatively traditional, using no fancy materials like mesh fabric or heavy metal cups like {AirPods Max}, but the comfort is downright sublime. Yes, they grip the ears relatively hard, and the fit would probably have to be described as "tight", but God, they fit well. Combined with sublime breathability inside the cups and plenty of foam at the top, there was never the top-down pressure on the skull that causes problems for competitors.

Like Bose's QuietComfort series, for example, the {Sonos Ace} also uses physical buttons, and thankfully so. There's a nice little elastic slider that turns up and down, and there are enough other buttons to summon your favourite assistant, receive calls and switch between ANC and transparency. Furthermore, the {Ace} lasts 30 hours with everything switched on, which is also a reliable figure, and charges pretty quickly via USB-C.

The sound quality is also clearly superior to a number of established competitors. No, the active noise cancellation isn't nearly as effective as {AirPods Max}, which remains the shining example of both that and transparency mode, and you can find headsets from the likes of Bowers & Wilkins and perhaps Sony that deliver more complete soundscapes. But that's not to write {Ace} off, because there's a balance here, an accessibility, a breadth of soundscape that makes them easy to access, both for experienced listeners and those who are a little more green behind the ears. My girlfriend is far from being a witness of truth, but the comfort, looks and build quality as well as sound made her instantly say, "there's my birthday present".

The 40-millimetre drivers do their job to the letter, and combined with rock-solid Bluetooth 5.4, I experienced no range or clarity issues during testing. It also supports slightly more exotic codecs like aptX Lossless, LC3, AAC, and SBC, and while these don't quite reach the heights of more audiophile headsets, it's a pretty mesmerising combination, that's for sure.

The main problem here is the price, because Sonos has chosen to launch the {Ace} for the tidy sum of £450. That's over £200 more than the Bose QuietComfort 45, £150 more than the Sony WH-1000XM5 and just under the price as {Apple}'s {AirPods Max}. It's too high a price, there's no getting around that.

I recommend the {Sonos Ace}, even though they lack WIFI functionality and are way too expensive. Great design, sublime build quality, cool buttons and good sound and ANC quality make them a sure winner, but there are definitely some missteps here.