Sonos Ace Ultra Review: 35 Hours of Quiet and a Battery You Can Swap Yourself

Premium headphones usually come with an expiration date. The battery fades, the ear pads flatten and crack, and a few years later you’re shopping again. Sonos is trying to break that cycle with the Sonos Ace Ultra, its new $449 flagship. It pairs longer battery life and stronger noise cancellation with ear cushions and a replaceable battery. We spent close to a month wearing them on a daily commute between New Jersey and New York City to see how they hold up and whether they make sense outside a Sonos home.

The Sonos Ace Ultra is the most complete pair of headphones Sonos has made so far. Sound quality is excellent, noise cancellation handles trains and city streets with ease, and 35 hours of battery life with ANC on means the charger rarely crosses your mind. Add user-replaceable ear cushions and batteries, plus a TV-audio trick no one else can match if you own a Sonos soundbar, and you have headphones built to stick around.

They’re still expensive, Apple loyalists give up some integration, and Siri dictation could be sharper, but those are small knocks on an otherwise outstanding pair.

Quick Specs:

• Price: $449
• Colors: Black, Soft White, Agave, Sand (we tested Black)
• Drivers: Custom 40mm driver in each ear cup
• Microphones: 10, used for noise control, calls, Aware mode, and TrueCinema
• Noise control: Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation and Aware mode with voice boost
• Battery: 1060 mAh, up to 35 hours with ANC or Aware mode on
• Fast charging: 3 minutes for up to 3 hours of playback; full charge in up to 3 hours
• Wireless: Bluetooth 6.0, plus WiFi for linking with a Sonos system
• Wired audio: USB-C and 3.5mm
• Audio formats: Lossless via aptX on supported devices or over USB-C, Dolby Atmos, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking
• Weight: 0.71 lb (322 g)
• Replaceable parts: Ear cushions ($39) and battery kit ($25)
• In the box: Headphones, travel case with removable cable pouch, USB-C to USB-C cable, USB-C to 3.5mm cable

Sonos didn’t reinvent the look of its headphones with the Ace Ultra, and that’s fine by us. The matte black finish is clean and understated, with none of the loud branding you find on many headphones at this price. They look expensive in the good way.

The controls are simple once you learn them. The Content Key on the right cup handles volume, calls, and swapping audio with your Sonos gear; a separate button cycles between noise cancellation and Aware mode, and the power and Bluetooth button sits on the left cup.

Comfort is where the Sonos Ace Ultra really wins you over. The memory foam ear cushions are thick and plush, and they fully surround your ears instead of pressing on them. At 0.71 pounds, they aren’t the lightest headphones out there; the Beats 360 come in a bit lighter. Still, they’re noticeably easier to wear than AirPods Max, and we never felt the need to pull them off partway through a commute.

Sonos says the Ace Ultra uses a new custom 40mm driver, tuned with help from GRAMMY and Oscar-winning engineers, and whatever went into it worked. The sound is rich and detailed, with bass that has real weight without muddying everything else. We ran a mix of music and podcasts through both Apple Music and Spotify, and everything sounded fantastic.

Vocals were clear, instruments had room to breathe, and podcasts were easy to follow even in noisy spots. If you want to tweak the sound, the Sonos app offers both 3-band and 8-band EQ, and we spent some time dialing it in. Lossless playback is available over aptX on supported devices or via a USB-C connection, though most iPhone users will listen over standard Bluetooth.

Noise cancellation is excellent. Sonos claims up to twice the low-frequency noise cancellation of the original Sonos Ace, and on the train that showed. The rumble of the tracks and the chatter around us faded into the background, and the same was true walking through Manhattan. In fact, it works almost too well. Tuning out the world entirely on a busy New York street isn’t the safest move, so we switched over to Aware mode.

Aware mode is very good at letting the outside world back in, so you’ll hear traffic, announcements, and the person asking if the seat next to you is taken. The catch is that it can let in a little too much. With heavy road noise around us, outside sound started competing with whatever we were listening to.

What worked best for us was turning off both ANC and Aware mode. The ear cups provide enough passive isolation to take the edge off the outside world, so we could still hear what was going on around us, just at a lower volume, while our music and podcasts came through clearly.

Battery life is one of the Sonos Ace Ultra’s biggest strengths. It’s rated for up to 35 hours with ANC or Aware mode on, and in our daily use it lived up to that. Charging became an afterthought. That beats the new Beats 360, rated at 32 hours with ANC on and dropping to 24 hours in Transparency mode. When you do run low, three minutes on a charger gets you up to three hours of listening, compared with about an hour from a five-minute charge on the Beats.

We took plenty of calls on the Sonos Ace Ultra during testing. Sonos uses ten microphones across the headphones, and a sidetone feature feeds a bit of your own voice back into your ears when ANC is on, so you don’t end up talking louder than you need to. One small letdown was Siri voice dictation.

Dictating messages wasn’t as accurate as we’ve experienced with Jabra headphones in the past, and we found ourselves correcting more of what Siri heard. It’s a minor issue, but if you dictate a lot of texts on the go, it’s worth knowing.

What sets the Sonos Ace Ultra apart from the competition is its connection to your Sonos system. With a compatible Sonos soundbar, one press of the Content Key sends TV audio straight to the headphones, including Dolby Atmos. We tested this with the new Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar, which we’re also reviewing (look for that review soon), and used it for late-night TV. It worked well.

You get a full home theater experience without waking anyone up, and the sound sends back to the soundbar. Sonos also supports TrueCinema, which tunes the headphones to your room and soundbar, along with dynamic head tracking to keep sound anchored in place.

Sonos is also rolling out headphone linking, which lets you pull whatever is playing on your Sonos speakers over to the Ace Ultra and push it back again. It’s a clever idea, especially for anyone who wants to switch from listening out loud to private listening without interrupting anything. The feature is still in Early Access, though, and with just the Beam Ultra in our setup, we don’t see ourselves using it very often. If you have Sonos speakers spread through the house, you’ll get a lot more out of it.

The feature that may matter most over time is repairability. The ear cushions and battery are designed to be replaced by the owner, and Sonos already sells replacement cushions for $39 and a battery kit for $25. Ear pads and batteries are usually the first things to go on a pair of headphones, and being able to swap them yourself means the Sonos Ace Ultra could easily last for years.

That does depend on Sonos keeping those parts available, but it’s a big step in the right direction. The Beats 360 also offer swappable cushions, but Sonos goes further by letting you replace the battery too.

If you live in the Apple ecosystem, note that the Sonos Ace Ultra doesn’t have the same deep integration as AirPods Max 2. You won’t get the same seamless automatic switching between your Apple devices. We’ll be honest, though: we didn’t run into any connection issues during our time with them.

At $449, the Sonos Ace Ultra is firmly premium. That’s $100 more than both the Beats 360 and the original Sonos Ace, which are each about $349, and $100 less than the AirPods Max 2’s $549 list price. Compared with the original Ace, you’re paying for stronger noise cancellation, longer battery life, a replaceable battery, and headphone linking. Against AirPods Max 2, you’re getting better battery life, lower pricing, and replaceable parts in exchange for tighter Apple integration.

So, should you get the Sonos Ace Ultra? If you own a Sonos soundbar or speakers, the answer is an easy yes. The TV-audio swap alone makes them more useful at home than anything else in this category, and the sound and noise cancellation hold their own against anything we’ve tried. They’re also a great pick for commuters who want strong ANC and battery life that lasts for days.

If you’re all-in on Apple and want every device to switch automatically, AirPods Max 2 may still be the better fit, and if you want to spend less, the Beats 360 or original Sonos Ace are worth a look. For everyone else, the Ace Ultra is easy to recommend, and we can see ourselves wearing ours every day for years.

The Sonos Ace Ultra sells for $449 from Sonos (in Black, Soft White, Agave, and Sand); it is available directly from the manufacturer and other retailers, including Amazon.

Source: Manufacturer-supplied review sample

What I Like: 35 hours of battery life with ANC on; User-replaceable ear cushions and battery; Excellent noise cancellation, even on trains and city streets; Rich, detailed sound with deeper bass; Plush, comfortable ear cushions; Clean, understated design; Aware mode lets in plenty of the outside world; One-press TV audio swap from a Sonos soundbar; $100 less than AirPods Max 2 at list price

What Needs Improvement: Premium pricing; Aware mode can let in too much in heavy traffic; Less Apple integration than AirPods Max 2; Siri voice dictation isn’t as accurate as some competitors; Headphone linking is still in Early Access and most useful with multiple Sonos speakers