The Sonos Ace Ultra are the headphones Sonos should have made the first time
Sonos has released the Ace Ultra headphones, which improve upon the original Ace model by adding long-requested features like system-wide audio pass-through. While the original headphones were criticized for software limitations, the Ultra version aims to deliver the seamless experience users expected from the brand.
Why it matters
It illustrates the challenges hardware companies face when software integration fails to meet consumer expectations at a premium price point.
The original Sonos Ace headphones should have been a triumphant entry into a new product category. Instead, they were overshadowed by Sonos’s disastrous app redesign. And while the original Ace are well built, sound good, and are incredibly comfortable, they weren’t good Sonos headphones: Their flagship feature let you reroute audio from a Sonos soundbar to the Ace headphones so you could listen to your TV audio without disturbing anyone. But it was glitchy, and at launch it only worked with the $1,000 Arc soundbar, and only with one pair of Ace headphones at a time (Both of those have now been fixed). It also couldn’t connect to the rest of the Sonos system for music streaming.
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