It’s been a busy few months for high-end consumer phones, with the latest addition to the market being the Sonos Ace Ultra, launched alongside the Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar.  

The Ace Ultra are Sonos’ next generation on from the popular Ace headphones and arrives sporting a similar design but improved noise cancellation, a longer battery life and are the first headphones built on Headphone Engine 2, new hardware that lets you link the headphones directly into the Sonos system.

Design and Comfort

The design of the new Sonos Ace Ultra is extremely similar to the first-generation Sonos Ace, with a few highlight changes but the overall design language continues – and why wouldn’t it?  The Ace Ultra looks well-refined, stylish and classy.  That subtle design language continues, with the metal arms adding to the solid look.  There is no plastic, cheap-looking design here.

The headband is thin but well padded, with a soft vegan leather covering memory foam that lets them sit comfortably on your head for long periods.  Combined with the earcups’ clamping force, that makes for very comfortable headphones.

The earcups aren’t touch-sensitive but look great, with subtle SONOS branding etched on the outside of the right earcup.  Each earcup houses a Sonos-designed 40mm driver that produces high-quality sound—more on that below.  It is unclear whether it is the same 40mm driver as in the Ace, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Sonos wouldn’t be the first company this year to use a driver from previous years in its new headphones.

The earcups house buttons, but there aren’t many; the ones that are present though, look and feel great.   The left earcup has the power/Bluetooth button, and the right earcup has the “Content Key”, a slider that adjusts volume, skips tracks, and answers calls, and the Noise Control/Voice assistant button.

One big addition to the Ace Ultra, thanks to the new Sonos 27 software upgrade, is the ability to change source with a simple long press of the content button.  One press pushes whatever’s playing on your compatible Sonos system to your headphones; another press reverses it.  

My usual soundbar is the Sonos Playbar I bought about eight years ago, but because of its age, the long-press function didn’t work.  When I hooked up the new Sonos Beam Ultra (review coming later this week) to my sound system, the button switching worked perfectly.

I could easily move the sound from the TV from the Beam Ultra to the Ace Ultra and back.  This is great if you are watching something, move to another room, and want to keep listening to whatever is playing.  Unfortunately, there was no way to keep the sound on the Beam Ultra as well, so my wife, who was watching Outlander, was less than impressed.

The earcups are wrapped in “plush memory foam and soft vegan leather.”  They are indeed soft on the ears and while they don’t seem as padded as something like the Sennheiser Momentum 5, their earcups are equally large enough to cover the ears entirely.  

The clamping force of the earcups is significant in the Ace Ultra as it not only helps to isolate the sound to the ears but also takes pressure off the headband on the top of the head, making the fit extremely comfortable.  The clamping force is certainly higher than that on any other headphones I have reviewed this year.  At the same time, they are not distorted nor uncomfortable while wearing glasses – they seem to mould around them well.

Other features

One feature worth mentioning is the on-ear detection.  Just as for the Ace, the Ace Ultra has sensors that detect when the headphones are on your ears.  Take them off your ears – to your desk or even around your neck – and the playback stops.  Playback restarts automatically when you place them back on your ears.  Other headphones have this but it just shows that not much was forgotten in the design and build of the Ace Ultra.

Sound Quality

The Sonos Ace Ultra have an extremely high-quality sound.  I went back and forth between them and my Sennheiser Momentum 5 to determine which sounded better.  In the end I decided on the Momentum 5, but that is for me and my preference.  

The lows and bass were decidedly stronger in the Ace Ultra which is a big plus for them.  Sonos did say for the Ace that the “ported acoustic architecture enhances the bass response of each driver” and it seems it has included this in the Ace Ultra as well.  The bass is deep and powerful but still crisp to a certain extent.  

The overall soundstage of the Ace Ultra was good, but it didn’t seem to have the frequency differentiation available on the Momentum 5.  That said, I had to switch between songs and headphones to really hear the difference.  There were some songs that you could not hear much of a difference at all, if any.

The upper end of the sound stage is good too, without being overpowering.  The sound quality is what you would expect from headphones retailing for AU$699 RRP.

As for audio codecs, the Sonos Ace Ultra supports fewer codecs than the Momentum 5, but it covers most of what the average consumer will use.  They support SBC, AAC, aptX Lossless via Snapdragon Sound, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD and aptX Adaptive Low Latency.  That should be enough for virtually everyone, I would suspect.  

If you need more support than that, you are a serious audiophile, and I dare say you will be spending more than AU$699 on your headphones so you won’t even be looking at these.

Sonos App

Sonos made a big song and dance about the new Sonos 27, the next generation of its audio system, accompanied by a redesigned app.  The new app is a lot more intuitive and easier to use than the previous version.  The app also gives you prompts to go where it thinks you need to.  

One thing I noticed though was that if you had the app open before the headphones were connected, it would not recognise them.  You need to close the app and reopen it and then it will recognise the Ace Ultra and actually pop up a notification within the app asking if you’d like to control your Ace Ultra headphones.  Tap the notification, and you’ll be taken to the Ace Ultra settings.  This is an early release of the app, so I expect, and hope, that this issue will be fixed before too long.

The app is well laid out, with a home page that shows which device(s) are currently in use, along with various media services and content to connect to.  Next is the System tab where each of your Sonos groups are shown, and the last tab is the search button to help you find content to watch – all without leaving the Sonos app.

The app settings has some detail but is not overly complicated, with separate sections for “Your System” and “Headphones.”  Within the headphones settings, you will see the battery life, control the noise cancellation, adjust the EQ and change some of the hardware controls – this is limited to a couple of options to turn on or off, rather than the ability to remap buttons to do different things.  

There isn’t much to set up with the Ace Ultra headphones, in keeping with nearly all Sonos products I have used over the years.

Sonos has included an easy-to-use EQ in its app for the Ace Ultra and it works well.  For most people, this is enough to tweak the headphones to sound the way you want.  The Sonos app doesn’t offer customisation, so you have to rely on trial and error to find the sound you prefer.  I still prefer something a bit more detailed, like the parametric EQ in the PowerAmp app.

Battery life

I have been using the Ace Ultra extensively for the last week or so, and there is still 44% of battery charge left.  

The battery life on the Ace Ultra is stated by Sonos to be “up to 35 hours” which seems about right.  Of course, given I have been playing with them a lot and blasting the music out loudly, they will not make it to 35 hours in my case.  I’d still be around 25 hours at least given my current usage.

The Sonos Ace Ultra do support fast charging – at 0%, a three-minute charge will provide three hours of playback.  That should be enough for a quick top-up in the most extreme cases. The hard case includes a headphone jack-to-USB-C cable. The case itself is slim and solid, and although the design of the zip looks great slightly hidden away, it is difficult at times to unzip due to its close proximity to the edges of the case.

Final Thoughts

The Sonos Ace Ultra are definitely a step up from most other high-end consumer headphones and fight a close battle on all fronts with the Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones. They offer extreme comfort thanks mostly to the clamping force of the earcups, which doesn’t affect your comfort if you wear glasses like I do and a sound quality that is heavy on the bass and crisp in the mids and upper range of the soundstage. They slightly lack the soundstage of the more expensive Sennheiser Momentum 5 but they’re more comfortable for longer listening sessions.

At RRP $699, the Sonos Ace Ultra are not cheap but you get what you pay for. These are a step above the $500-mark models — they sound better, look better and fit better.

Sonos Ace Ultra are available for pre-order now at sonos.com.au and select retail partners, priced at RRP $699 AUD / $749 NZD respectively, with general availability on September 29, 2026.  They come in Black, Soft White, Agave and Sand colourways.