When it comes to TV, these new Sonos headphones outperform the competition

There are many excellent headphones. We will just mention Sony, Bose and Apple as examples here. This quickly raises the question of why the Californian audio specialist Sonos has to get involved too.

After spending some time with the Sonos Ace, however, a completely different question has occurred to us: why only now? We would have loved to have had these headphones much earlier. But Sonos was unable to give us a satisfactory answer to this question either.

Sonos is known for its wirelessly networked speakers that can stream music to multiple rooms. There have been rumors about Sonos headphones for years, but the company is only now delivering.

Fortunately, the manufacturer remains true to its simple design. And so the Sonos Ace is not too bulky. Its headband and ear pads are padded with soft synthetic leather.

They are comfortable to wear for hours at a time. Unlike many other headphones, they don’t make the mistake of pinching your head. At 312 grams, the Sonos Ace are not lightweight, but they aren’t particularly heavy either.

Sonos has solved the control problem very well – and has done without touch-sensitive surfaces. There is only one button on the left earbud, which is used to turn the device on and off and, if pressed for a longer period, to connect to Bluetooth.

On the right there is a button for noise cancellation and transparency mode and a rocker button that you can also press. This is where you regulate the volume and music and accept or reject calls.

All buttons are easy to feel and distinguish. The headphones also have a USB-C port for charging and for connecting a cable that has a jack plug at the other end, which is particularly useful on airplanes for connecting to an in-flight entertainment system. Sonos supplies the cable required for this.

Fortunately, Sonos hasn’t made any mistakes when it comes to sound. There is a 40-millimeter driver on each side. The result is well balanced, perhaps a little reserved. But not too bass-heavy.

Even at high volume, the Sonos Ace is easy to bear, the sounds are natural and full of detail. When connected to an Android device, they support the high-quality aptX HD Lossless Codec for lossless audio quality. SBC and AAC are also supported.

But what’s really fun is Dolby Atmos for the 3D sound, which breaks music down into its individual components even more beautifully. This only works in conjunction with a streaming service that supports it, such as Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited.

Sonos states a music playback time of 30 hours, which is consistent with our experience. After three minutes of charging, the battery lasts for another three hours. The Sonos Ace can be connected to two devices at the same time via Bluetooth, for example a smartphone and a computer.

This works perfectly. It is also ideal for making phone calls; our conversation partners could understand us well and we could understand them. The active noise cancellation is very effective and is able to block out most of the ambient noise.

Only Sony does a better job here. We particularly liked the transparency mode, which sounds very natural on the Sonos Ace. This doesn’t seem to be an easy task, most headphones fail here.

Sonos has built a total of eight microphones into its Ace headphones. But even with the Sonos Ace, you can’t completely forget that you’re wearing them, unlike Apple’s AirPods Pro earphones, for example. But that’s probably mainly because the Sonos Ace completely encloses the ears.

The Sonos Ace can be used like any other Bluetooth headphones. But in combination with a Sonos Arc soundbar, you can do even more.

Here you can transfer the Dolby Atmos sound from the soundbar to the headphones at the touch of a button. Sonos calls the function TV Audio Swap. If head tracking is activated, the effect is particularly good.

Then the sound always comes from the direction in which the TV is positioned, even if you turn your head. Another feature will be added later this year, which Sonos calls TrueCinema.

This is a sound measurement method that adapts the sound to the conditions in the room. As a result, the user forgets that they are wearing the headphones because they really sound like the surround sound system in the room. We can confirm the effect because we were able to try it out briefly in a separate test environment.

If the sound is transferred to the Sonos Ace using the TV Audio Swap, the soundbar is muted. Unfortunately, parallel operation at different volumes is not possible. The Audio Swap is mainly useful when two people are watching TV and one of the viewers falls asleep.

At launch, this feature is only available with the Sonos Arc soundbar. The other two Sonos models, Beam and Ray, will also support audio swap at a later date.

We don’t think the integration of the headphones into the Sonos sound system is very successful. In fact, the headphones aren’t integrated properly at all – with the exception of the audio swap.

They have a special position in the app. There you can make a number of settings, including head tracking, an equalizer and the multipoint connection. However, music cannot be streamed from the app to the headphones, as is the case with other Sonos speakers.

In general, the app is still very prone to errors. It sometimes takes several minutes for the Sonos Ace to even appear there after switching it on. The TV Audio Swap can currently only be configured in the app for iPhones; it will only be possible in the Android app at a later date.

Conclusion: The headphones debut was a success. The Sonos Ace are comfortable to wear, sound very good – especially with Dolby Atmos music – and have all the features you would expect from headphones in this category. In combination with the soundbar, they raise the bar even higher and outdo the competition. Both the noise cancellation and the transparency mode are of a very high standard. The integration into the smartphone app, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

At a price of 499 euros, you should expect that all functions will be available to both iPhone and Android users without any problems. It’s actually surprising that this isn’t the case. Sonos took its time with the Sonos Ace – and yet they seem to have been released a little too quickly.