The Sonos Ace promises a familiar look and a different sound

Sonos is looking to make some noise in the noise-cancelling headphones niche with its first set of wireless headphones.

The new Sonos Ace headphones feature a sleek design that feels like a natural extension of the minimalist aesthetic that the audio brand has established elsewhere. At the same time, it's packing a handful of intriguing home entertainment features designed to help those already in the Sonos ecosystem extract a little bit more value from it.

While the Sonos Ace hardly looks like the Tesla Cybertruck of noise-cancelling headphones, there are plenty of small details that echo the kind of thoughtful product design that the brand involved is known for. To the eye, it's selling itself as a very Sonos take on a familiar formula. For example, the earcups here are detachable by design with plush pleather padding, a matte finish and stylish metal accents.

Where the Ace differs from its rivals is in its control scheme. Rather than the usual set of buttons (or a touch-capacitative control scheme), Sonos has opted for a more bespoke button layout. The left earcup features a single key that's used for power and pairing. The right earcup is where you'll find a button that toggles between noise-cancelling and an aware mode plus a nifty slider key called the content key. This input allows you to nudge volume up or down as needed while pressing it will allow you to play, pause or resume content.

If we're talking numbers, the Sonos Ace weighs just 314g and features two dynamic drivers, six microphones, thirty hours of battery life and fast charging that promises three hours of playback from three minutes of charging.

While the Ace does include the usual premium perks like auto-pause, spatial and multi-point audio, it lacks any IP rating or sweat resistance. Even if it's the rare Sonos product designed to be carried around with you, it's not quite gym-friendly.

Perhaps there's no better expression of this than the TrueCinema feature that sets the Ace apart from its many competitors in the market. When paired with a Sonos soundbar, you can seamlessly pull an audio stream from your TV to your headphones.

More than just crossing the streams, Sonos even uses acoustic data collected by your soundbar to mix the stream to sound closer to the experience offered by your home theatre setup. As far as unique selling points go, it's a fairly novel one that both plays to Sonos' strengths and promises to make them as compelling to listen to inside your home as outside it. That said, Sonos has said the feature won't be available in full until later in the year.

In Australia, the Sonos Ace will be available from 5 June 2024 at an RRP of $699.