When it comes to high-end headphones in the Indian market, we often think about Sony, Sennheiser, Apple and Bose for consumer offerings. There aren't too many brands with premium offerings that regularly come up with high-end mainstream consumer offerings. Sonos has launched its first ever over-the-ear headphones in India. At Rs 39,999, Sonos Ace is priced just above Sony and Bose's latest ANC headphones, but does it have enough to make it justifiable? Let's try and find out.
One of the first things you might notice about this pair of headphones is that the stainless-steel stem has only a small visible party as the bending mechanism sits on the inside. Available in White and Black colour options, I quite prefer the matte white ones with their subtle design plus it does not catch on to smudges quickly.
The external half of the earcups are magnetically attached and are removable. The inside of earcups is white and green with markings for left and right. The right cup on the outside carries the Sonos logo, the side houses the Content key (made of stainless steel again), ANC key and mic grille. The left earcup's side locates another set of mic grille (8 mics in total), circular power/pairing key as well as the USB type C port and a small status light. The middle band also has faux leather and memory foam around it for comfort. Both the earcups are slightly titled as per the respective side for a better fit over the ear. I found these to be comfortable to wear for over two hours on a single stretch at times without feeling fatigued or having any uncomfortable effects on the ears. The adjustable mechanism for size also helps while wearing them on for your head size and shape. Oh, and inside the box, along with a nice compact carrying case and a USB type C charging cable, you get a USb type C to 3.5mm audio back cable.
The Sonos Ace support Bluetooth 5.4 along with SBC, AAC as well as aptX audio codecs and powered by 40mm drivers. The Content key is a multi-purpose button -- slide it up to increase volume, slide it down to decrease volume, press it once to pause or resume playback. Pushing the ANC key allows you to switch between noise cancellation, awareness mode (transparency) or switching them off. Long-pressing the power/pairing key allows you to pair the headphones to a new device by putting them in the pairing mode. You can use the Sonos app on your paired phone to change settings, select EQ, multi-device connection, firmware updates or for adding more Sonos products to work with your older ones. The Ace paired with Android and iOS devices without any glitches, and it was convenient to add and pair for the first time, too.
When it comes to the audio quality, the Sonos Ace didn't disappoint and provided sound that could be termed as generally balanced and rich in details. The headphones aren't low on bass and offered clean and sufficient bass but I wouldn't say they are aimed at bass-heads in the first place. You get clear guitar strings and low-mids. It might be worth fiddling around with EQ in the Sonos app a little to match your preference since the headphones can sound quite a bit differently depending on your music genres when a different set of settings is applied. Head-tracing feature, when enabled from the app, works quite well and didn't result in distortion or jarring effects that happens at times with this feature on other headphones. I didn't see any major lag issues while using the Ace for watching TV shows, movies or YouTube videos. For active noise cancellation, the headphones did a decent job of cancelling out external noise, important you are wearing them with snugged fit for the effect to take place, but I felt Sony's WH-1000XM5 and Apple's AirPods Max (way higher priced, though) do a little better in cutting out noise while also not taking a toll on overall sound quality with ANC enabled.
Sonos Ace also have something called audio swap, where you can swap your Sonos Arc soundbar connected to your TV and quickly to your Ace with a single tap of a button (over WiFi). I tried this briefly with a controlled setup and it worked smoothly, with full head-tracking and Dolby Atmos effect in place. You can only do this with one pair of Ace as of now.
When it comes to battery life, the Sonos Ace doesn't disappoint – with ANC switched off, it gave about 40 hours of playback time in total, and around 30 hours with ANC enabled. Of course, you can also use it wired – 3.5mm audio jack or USB type C, which I tried for enhanced lossless playback.
In conclusion, the Sonos Ace comes across as a good start from the company when I comes to personal audio. The Sonos Ace is really comfortable to wear, looks nice and has good battery life, too. While sound quality is generally good for the most part, ANC has some room for improvement. With all that said, it seems to pack in enough to take on the likes of Sony, Bose and Sennheiser in the longer run.