When Sonos released its Ace headphones earlier this year, the company promised to expand compatibility soon. At launch, the headphones could only be paired with Sonos’ most expensive soundbar, the Arc, but now they can be paired with both generations of the Sonos Beam and the entry-level Sonos Ray. This means you don’t need to invest in the $900 Arc to take advantage of one of the Ace’s main selling points: its TV Audio Swap feature.
Sonos seemed pretty confident when it released the new headset in May, pricing the Ace headphones at an ambitious price of a whopping $450. The Ace was praised for its eye-catching design and snappy sound, but criticized as a flawed product. The Ace had a TV Audio Swap feature, but it only worked with one of the company’s soundbars, the Sonos Arc. The feature lets you seamlessly switch audio between the Ace and Arc by holding down the Control key.
We didn’t like that the company limited its vertical integration to the $900 soundbar. It’s one thing to create a walled garden around a service — Apple does it all the time with its products — but it’s important to do it wisely. The integration didn’t provide enough value for the product, especially given its price. The company said it would expand support for other soundbars “soon,” but at the time that wasn’t enough of a reason for me to invest $500.
Expanding compatibility to cheaper soundbars means you can now enjoy the features with the $270 Ray and $500 Beam 2, and your $450 headphones finally become a little more user-friendly. Sonos is also working on improving its troubled app to make it more efficient and functional, and it’ll be exciting to see how that rolls out.
