The Sonos Ace is a tale of two products: a superb home-theater headphone with post-update flagship ANC, 32-plus-hour battery and a TV Audio Swap no rival matches, and a divisive music listen that What Hi-Fi rated three stars. Buy it for movies and a Sonos soundbar setup; buy the Sony WH-1000XM6 for pure music.
— THE VERDICT · JUDGEANY EDITORSSound quality: movies shine, music divides
The Sonos Ace is built around two custom 40mm dynamic drivers and Dolby Atmos spatial audio with head tracking. TechRadar's review calls the sound "powerful but oddly compact" — weighty bass and aggressive mids that make Dolby Atmos films genuinely thrilling, yet a soundstage that feels compressed next to the AirPods Max and Bose QuietComfort Ultra when the playlist switches to music.
Reviewers genuinely split on the sound. Tom's Guide found the Ace "utterly engaging" on an Android phone over aptX Adaptive, while What Hi-Fi, after hours of listening, gave the headphones three stars for "lack of clarity and expression" and "stunted dynamics." SoundGuys' 2025 comparison lands in between: a cinematic tuning with heavy bass and bright highs that flatters movies but turns fatiguing in everyday listening, with recessed mids that push vocals back — and an EQ that lacks a midrange slider to fix it.
Codec support is platform-lopsided: aptX Lossless works only with Snapdragon Sound Android phones; iPhone owners get AAC over Bluetooth but can go wired-lossless over USB-C, including Apple ALAC files. If neutral stereo music is your priority, the Sony WH-1000XM6 is the safer buy.
Noise cancellation: a firmware update rewrote the story
At launch, ANC was the Ace's weak link — ZDNET's review rated the headphones 3.5/5 and judged noise cancellation inferior to rivals at the price. Then Sonos shipped a major firmware update (TrueCinema included) that transformed the picture. SoundGuys retested the Ace afterward and measured roughly 88% reduction of bus, train and airplane-engine noise — up from 74% at launch — putting it level with the AirPods Max and ahead of the Sony WH-1000XM5.
Reviewers now describe the ANC as comfortably flagship-class: HardwareZone calls it "easily one of the best" they've heard, and Android Police lists "brilliant ANC" among the Ace's strengths. The Aware (transparency) mode earns repeated praise for sounding natural — several reviewers rate it better than Sony's. Two caveats: there is no adjustable ANC level — just On / Off / Aware — and the new leakage-compensation feature only partly fixes a broken seal with glasses or hair.
Design, comfort and controls
Eight microphones, a stainless-steel headband and magnetic, replaceable memory-foam earpads come together in a 312-gram frame that reviewers consistently praise for comfort — HardwareZone notes the clamping force is lighter than the AirPods Max it competes with. Controls are physical buttons rather than touch gestures, a choice most reviewers prefer.
Day-to-day usability is more mixed. The Sonos app was buggy at launch and still draws complaints from owners for limited EQ (bass and treble sliders only) and occasional glitches. Wear detection pauses playback when the headphones come off, and multipoint pairing works for juggling a phone and laptop.
Battery life
Sonos rates the Ace at 30 hours with ANC on, and independent testing came in above the claim: SoundGuys measured 32 hours 13 minutes with ANC enabled in its standardized test. A three-minute charge over USB-C adds about three hours of playback, and a full charge takes roughly two hours. That is strong for the class — longer than the Bose QuietComfort Ultra's 24 hours and the AirPods Max's 20-plus.
Features: TV Audio Swap is the reason to buy
The Ace's signature trick is TV Audio Swap — press a button and the TV audio jumps from a compatible Sonos soundbar (Arc at launch, later extended to Beam, Beam Gen 2 and Ray) straight to the headphones, ideal for late-night watching. The promised TrueCinema mode arrived with the firmware update: the soundbar measures your room's acoustics and the Ace's microphones locate your head, rendering a more convincing virtual surround stage.
The catch is ecosystem depth: the Ace cannot join Sonos multi-room groups and has no Wi-Fi music streaming — it is a standalone Bluetooth headphone wearing Sonos branding, not a Sonos zone. If you don't own a Sonos soundbar, much of the magic stays out of reach.
Where the consensus breaks down
The headline conflict in the published evidence is sound quality: What Hi-Fi's three-star "disappointing debuts" verdict sits opposite Tom's Guide's "spectacular introduction" and Android Police's "wonderful audio." The recommendation still stands because the disagreement is scoped to stereo music tuning, while the areas of agreement — comfort, flagship-tier post-update ANC, above-rated battery life, and home-theater features no rival offers — are exactly what the $449 flagship buyer is paying for. What Hi-Fi is right that Sony and Apple rivals sound more expressive with music; Tom's Guide is right that nothing else swaps a soundbar to your head with one press. Buy the Ace for movies and the Sonos ecosystem, not to win an audiophile shootout.