The Sonos Ace are a great product that came at the wrong time. The company’s app crisis pretty much overshadowed their debut in 2024, which is a shame considering they’re a gorgeous pair of over-ear headphones with powerful, detailed sound and a comfortable design that lets you easily swap the ear pads. Sound-wise, you can expect something on par with what you might get from a pair of Bose or Apple headphones, with a natural-sounding transparency mode that’s really only second to the original AirPods Max (no word on the Max 2).
The biggest downside to the Ace is that you can’t play music over Wi-Fi or group them with the company’s in-home speakers (although they do support wired audio over USB-C). However, for me, the fact that they can leverage Sonos’ TV Audio Swap feature is what makes them a standout. The unique tool allows you to instantly transfer the sound from a Sonos soundbar — including the Sonos Arc, the entry-level Sonos Ray, and both iterations of the Sonos Beam — to either one or two pairs of the Ace with the simple press of a button. You can also trigger the feature within the Sonos app, which lets you enable spatial audio and head tracking for a fuller, more cinematic experience.
Admittedly, TV Audio Swap is only going to appeal to those already tapped into the Sonos ecosystem. That said, I routinely use the feature to listen while watching movies and gaming (with minimal lag!), mostly so I don’t disturb folks in my household who might be sleeping. Sonos’ newer TrueCinema mode even lets me fine-tune the virtual surround sound in a similar fashion to the company’s speaker-based TruePlay feature, ensuring the headphones reflect the acoustics of my space.
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