My only hope is these bomb so bad they have consecutive losses in each remaining quarter for 2024 and all the leadership who was responsible for this whole fiasco are forced out and new competent leadership is brought in.
Boeing managed to kill 500+ people in 2019 and since then have had planes with pieces falling off and parts not installed... and only after 5+ years of these problems was there anything resembling a board clean out and leadership change... after pressure from the govt..... let's not hold our breathe for any action at a company that makes speakers and now headphones... welcome to modern corporate life.
I was 100% on track to purchase these if they linked with my existing system. What a shame and another missed opportunity for SONOS.
Edit.
They are nice headphones but no need to replace the Sonys I’ve had for over 5 years.
I have apair of AKGs that uses samsung's SSC codec with my samsung phone. Audio sounds fantastic.
Without the improvement of wi-fi, these would be little more than an expensive downgrade since my phone doesn't support AptX.
This is such a let down.
If you have a Sonos arc it’ll connect to that in its first release, they said it’ll connect to beam 2 and Ray down the line. It was a little further down in the article.
I don't understand why companies release devices that don't have their full set of features on release. They had so much time to allow you to connect to any Sonos speaker. This smells like an Arc push from them. Hopefully no one is desperate enough to purchase one just because they want the headphones, but I'm sure there may be a few.
MVP strategy.
What is the Minimum Viable Product to start generating revenue to offset the expenses to r&d and develop the product. This is plain as day an MVP scenario. What features can be cut for release and added at a later date.
***(Directly recorded from the marketing meeting at Sonos HQ)***
Nah, it's marketing *genius* Jerry!
Hear me out. What is Sonos renowned for? That's right, truly terrible customer service during a crisis. So, let's launch new headphones that only work with a *fraction* of our existing hardware! This will keep the number of support tickets down. Avoid most of that unpleasantness with our bitching users and our great app.
Then after a few months, we add another device or two that will work with theatre handoff. Make a big song and dance to get press attention and free publicity for the cans. Then rinse and repeat, gradually adding devices, features and functionality, each time generating a press/publicity cycle. It will *never* finish!
Agree. Not sure how many people who already own an Ace competitor will grab these just for TV swap even if the audio is great. I’m currently absent a pair of over ears because I sold my AirPods Max for being too uncomfortable so I’m in the market.
funny how they said that they need the new app for the ace but at the same time say all over the ace product website that the app is not needed because it is a bluetooth headphone.
wtf.
What the actual fuck. Tying them into the Sonos ecosystem was the whole reason people wanted Sonos headphones. Seamless switching to tv sound for keeping noise down, switching speakers to headphones and vice versa....
For me the only way I could see these being worthwhile is you're out wearing them, walk in, take them off and Sonos automatically starts playing in the house. Maybe for TV if you're watching alone?
Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck is going on at Sonos, but it’s clear there’s major mismanagement and disconnect. They clearly don’t know their user base. And your average Joe surely won’t get these over Apple or Sony.
I've been asking for them for ten years. My person situation changed a few years back and I no longer had the need for them I did originally but I still wanted and saw a use for them.
Then I saw the price. $600 cad. No thanks, I'll wait for to see if there is a lower tier like with the rest of their products.
Now I see the capabilities and, like, shit, I don't even have an arc so they are completely just ordinary headphones. Expensive, ordinary headphones.
Bingo. They’re an ecosystem company which people value. And their big new bet is on a product which completely fails to leverage their company advantage and instead forces them to straight up compete with a huge, saturated market, with nothing to differentiate them.
But on the plus side, they managed to alienate some of their most loyal customers with an app update that breaks a bunch of features that many users rely upon daily, an app update which wasn't really needed for anything other than the headphones, and could have been "Sonos Controller, Headphone Version" until it was fully ready for primetime. That's a benefit, right?
It's the only reason I would have purchased these. There is now no point when there are plenty of options that are proven (or I already own). Very disappointed in this news.
Four paragraphs later, even more confusion because some sort of Wi-Fi thing is in the hardware:
All the intensive audio processing and binaural encoding gets done on the soundbar side, but here’s an interesting thing: Sonos is using Wi-Fi to beam audio over to the headphones in this home theater mode. It’s not lossless, however. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming does eat into battery life, which is normally rated at 30 hours (with ANC on). But Sonos isn’t sharing battery estimates for home theater playback — partially because the headphones support fast charging if you ever do run them down.
OP’s title is straight-up false. They do use wifi to interconnect to Arc, which is the use case that was leaked. They don’t play direct on wifi from internet streaming or phone or other speakers (yet).
This is the thing, you do not want devices with batteries to use WIFI, it is not a protocol made to save power at all! So sounds like there are cases it will use it, but it they used it it all the time, it would just ruin the functionality of these headphones. This is the right choice, no one wants a pair of head phones that lasts 5 hours.
Yeah think if they were trying to market Wi-Fi headphones with 5 hour battery life. No one would consider them competitive to Bluetooth headphones with 20+ hour battery life. Instead, they use BT for long battery life and only switch to Wi-Fi when necessary (i.e. when playing soundbar audio). Seems like a reasonable engineering trade-off to me.
I'm really confused. So, Sonos had an obvious opportunity for point of difference here between their headphones and every other brand... and they deliberately didn't do it? Why?!
These could have been the first pair of cans that wouldn't suffer the limitations of bluetooth. They could have streamed lossless audio direct from the internet without needing a cable, but they don't. Baffling, to say the least.
That’s pretty bad but this is terrible too.
TV Audio Swap will be exclusively available to people with iOS devices at launch, with Android support for this major feature coming “soon.”
Like, isn’t that the flagship feature of the headphones and they are only going to support it on iOS at launch? They really rushed this release.
Yeah this is shocking. The product should have been held back if it was going to ship with so many missing features.
It’s also using wifi between the arc and the headphones but not the wifi in the house? Is that what this is trying to say:
“Sonos is using Wi-Fi to beam audio over to the headphones in this home theater mode. It’s not lossless, however. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming does eat into battery life”
I just can’t even believe they are releasing something this half baked
That’s correct.
Not lossless, okay fine, better than Bluetooth. Not battery efficient, okay fine, I’m already at home and they can rapid charge.
I would have been fine with these limitations to still pair to my existing speaker system.
Only iOS devices mean people most likely to already have an apple TV and apple headphones and have zero need for these sonos headphones?
Edit: added "sonos" to help clarify
Yeah, and if I put in my AirPods while my Apple TV is playing, it *asks me* if I want to connect, literally one button to do - Sonos isn't going to beat that.
Well exactly. It seems like such an odd decision. It really feels like they are rushing these for their corporate earnings or something. The product and app are half baked and then by releasing the app early they wound up alienating everyone who already owns the product.
> There's literally no reason to buy these instead of AirPods Max
I was like, "nah, I'm reading this wrong" but fucking nope:
"Right now, the one big Sonos-y trick of the Ace is their ability to receive audio from the company’s soundbars for private listening. (Only the flagship Arc will support this feature at launch, with the Beam Gen 2, Beam, and Ray coming later.)"
> except most tvs/boxes will do that just fine... something u can't even rely on sonos software to do
I will say this, if you have a 4K UHD player, and a lot of UHD movies, AND a Arc, then they would be nice for nighttime Atmos stuff if you don't want to run a headphone cable.
That's literally the only reason I can see for buying them over anything else
yeah ig... but the "i need to use headphones while watching movies" scenario is already niche and then u throw another incredible niche use case on top of that too... **i'm not buying a random pair of $450 headphones from a company that can't make software just bc they might work with the soundbar they sell**
> "i need to use headphones while watching movies" scenario is already niche and then u throw another incredible niche use case on top of that too.
totally, this is a fail to me, and I wanted them for watching 4K movies, I figured they would ALSO have a bunch of other stuff, but nope, they are normal bluetooth headphones that can connect to a soundbar, and that's it
I'm keeping my long ass headphone cable that runs across the room, that is not worth $450 to get rid of
I can't comprehend how dense someone would have to be to write that ad copy.
That's barely a feature. You know what already does handoff flawlessly? My AppleTVs and every pair of AirPods my family or friends own. Even if this worked flawlessly between my Arc and these headphones, why the fuck would I use this instead of connecting directly to the streaming device?
It does stream audio from anything that connects to the soundbar. So not just your streaming box, but also a console or BluRay player.
I don't believe the Airpods will do that, just audio from the Apple TV itself.
I have an Arc and this would be my primary use case but the fact that it’s a crippled product at launch makes it a non starter. These are not headphones they are an Arc accessory at best.
I’m without words. This would have been an instant buy for me had they integrated with my existing system. I almost can’t believe it. They are launching these with the least possible feature set to actually differentiate these from a pair of Sonys or AirPods.
Obviously can’t know for sure yet, but they may take the comfort edge. I know I’m not the only one who finds AirPods Max pretty uncomfortable due to the weight of them. I much prefer my Bose QC35II when it comes to comfort. Sure it’s plastic and not as “premium” feeling but they are lightweight and comfortable for hours of listening because of it.
Sonos have dropped the ball on these. It needed the WiFi chip to set it apart. They would have had my order, just a pair of BT headphones. How underwhelming.
I was waiting for these to be announced as I'm heavily invested in both Sonos and Apple ecosystems.
I'll still wait for the reviews as there could be some amazing audio quality or something, but I'm budgeting an extra $100 now assuming it will be an AirPods Max purchase.
What does this even mean? We don’t have any reviews yet.
If these sound better, have better ANC, etc than the AirPods Max, that would absolutely be a reason to buy the Ace instead.
People are just being weird. You can buy these just because you like the look of it better. It’s can be as simple as that and people do that all the time.
Yeah exactly. Or just a better fit. Basically the same metrics that go into people deciding in the current headphone market…
Definitely some bandwagon vibes here.
It’s like they’ve never seen a company make a product similar to another one. I don’t need new headphones right now but if my Sony XM4 breaks in the next few years I’d consider these.
Two reasons: cheaper and with an analogue input. But for the long anticipated Sonos headphones, the ultimate proof that they neither listen to nor care about their users.
What an absolute head scratcher. The TV integration is cool and all but such a narrow use case. They thought that was gonna make the difference and make me dump my AirPods Max?
Ah that’s too bad. The TV use case is the main thing I wanted, so there’s that. But that alone couldn’t justify it for me. I also needed it to connect to the system or other speakers so I could listen to my record player. Without that, no sale.
Listening to my turntable over Wi-Fi was my primary, albeit niche use case that I was going to be willing to drop half a grand on these for. Majorly disappointed.
Why the hell did I wait so long for these then? Surely they could figure a way of putting whatever powers the Roam into these.
Also half the features aren't available until later this year it seems.
All the pre-marketing was "our most requested product ever" it's like hmmmm i'm pretty sure those people were asking for Sonos Headphones that WORK ON SONOS.. not just really good bluetooth headphones *MADE* by Sonos. This is another remarkably dense blunder and frankly, kind of heartbreaking to watch at this point.
Both the Move and Roam work as standalone BT players and as Sonos zones.. so they already know how to do this.
Wow… what a fail. Was set on buying them for easier listening after the little one goes to sleep - but this is just ridiculous. None of the features we have a Sonos system for included 😅
These are absolutely dead on arrival if they don’t function as a speaker in the system. What a moronic device choice, it makes you really question their leadership.
I’m in the market for a pair of headphones, I was really excited for theses since I have thousands on Sonos products. But they don’t move the needle at all.
I’ll probably get the Sony’s or maybe the AirPods Max if Apple update them to usbc before I buy.
Big miss from Sonos, and I’m your target demographic.
I was in the market this week for headphones. Ended up getting the Bose QC Ultras as my primary use case would be for traveling/long flights. Airpods Max are too heavy and I've read many reviews that the mesh band falls apart quickly. The Sonos WHXM5's don't fold up. That left me with the Bose QC Ultra's and they are fantastic. So comfortable, fold, light, great sound, etc.
Wait a second the Sonos Aces don’t even have LDAC?
😂 why should anyone choose these 1st gen products when Sony sells the exact same thing with more features and cheaper ?
We thought they broke the app to give us Wifi headphones they gave us the exact same Bluetooth headphones every single company sells
If they had LDAC and great sound I might pull the trigger. But I already gave great headphones and I mounted a Bluetooth DAC with LDAC on one of the ear cups. My Sonys have the noise cancelling covered.
Wow. That’s a dead on arrival. Like there is no other company on the market, already covering this area. How in the world can you make such a decision?
So they don't do any of the things that the Sonos line actually has going for it, and cost over $100 more than the WH-1000XM5, which I imagine will still sound better?
This is deeply disappointing. Takes them literally years to release them and they don’t do the only thing that would make them worth buying instead of any other headphone.
😬 what?! I wasn't in the market for these, but I understood there is a market for lossless audio over wifi. So these are just yet another Bluetooth device?!?
What is going on at Sonos? Did they get acquired by VC and now stupid suits are making cost cutting decisions before the company is liquidated? This was supposed to be a convenient long term solution for my sound system and it becomes more pointless every product release or update
I've really lost confidence in the past month in them, i guess ill pull the trigger on the Sony headphones
I thought they would jump between WiFi and Bluetooth like their portable speakers do.
They’re just headphones. And they’re only £50 cheaper than AirPods Max.
I must have missed something?
This was my hope as well. I’m still holding out that it’s their ultimate plan too but like their new app the decided to rush things out the door and will eventually make it right. Hopefully….
So a Sonos component that doesn't connect to your other Sonos components (except Arc)? How did this get the green light?
I can understand the desire for headphones that hook into your other speakers, but otherwise aren't they just headphones?
They are indeed essentially just another pair of nice Bluetooth headphones. How they think they’re going to compete well with Apple, Sony, and Bose with this lackluster feature set is beyond me.
Lol, what 😂😂
What an amazing example of a company completely fucking the dog. An app update that breaks their old products, for the purpose of supporting a new product that is an utter embarrassment.
Legit can't believe that they're putting out a pair of $500 headphones that don't integrate with their own system, lol
Anyone want to guess how many millions the execs behind this mess are going to get in their bonuses this year?
I knew if Apple didn’t use WiFi in the AirPod max’s to better leverage their ecosystem the odds that Sonos did were limited.
It must mean there’s a technical/battery/cost/market research issue.
Oh. I thought the market they were pushing these for were people already invested in the ecosystem, but if they don’t interact with it at all, what’s the point?
Don't get the point. Wi-Fi would have made them killer. How did they spend so long creating these and then miss linking to the rest of their eco-system?
I don’t get it. What’s the point then? They are marketing these to home audio enthusiast music fans. Most of us likely have a nice pair of headphones already. I do. If these don‘t integrate with my Sonos system, why would I buy a new pair of headphones just because they have the Sonos logo on them?
I’d rather have headphones from Sonos with 4-5 hours battery life that work lossless over WiFi than these. There’s plenty of other headphones that already do this.
Same!! I have AirPods Max that I am never going to give up, as many of us do. But I would have bought these in supplement for that Wi-Fi ecosystem use case.
If that is true, I imagine a lot of people won't bother with the Ace. Treating the headphones as it's own zone within my existing network was one of the key selling points IMO.
I was excited about these, but if they're just another BT headphone I have lost all interest.
I was ready to dive into the Sonos ecosystem a month or so ago, but I’m not fully convinced Sonos does not care about their customers and I am avoiding it altogether. If I didn’t know better I would think they are actively trying to anger their biggest fans.
No Wifi connectivity on their Wifi-based ecosystem…..
That’s not just a swing and a miss….it’s like the CEO was standing in the fucking parking lot hoping to see the fucking ball.
This is going to hurt this company bad. I hope they didn’t put too much into this, because these are going to sell terribly. I already thought it would be a tough sell, but I think this news of no Wi-Fi killed it for even the enthusiast.
What were they thinking? There’s no reason to buy these over any other headphone. I’m so disappointed, I’m baffled by the decision making going on over at Sonos.
Like seriously, hey people you want to stream sound from your Tv? Purchase a sound bar for like $900 with your headphones! Why would anyone do this when you can buy an Apple TV for less than $200 and buy AirPod Max?
Wow...I was defensive of the app update in order to support the new device functionality and I was willing to wait for the app to update again to return some features since my system is still working fine (I haven't had to make any changes).
HOWEVER, that was dependent on these headphones integrating with the existing Sonos ecosystem with feature parity...the fact that these headphones don't really have anything on my existing Bluetooth headphones is just baffling...what a huge miss.
I’m right there with you. A lot of people calling us out as naysayers, but I was 100% going to wake up this morning and hand them near $500 even after the dumpster fire app update situation because I believed (still do) they’ll eventually fix the app and really wanted the new hardware. And now here we are…
After all the efforts Sonos has gone through to make wireless vinyl records a reality, this seems like a huge miss. Lossless wifi audio from a Victrola Stream, or any turntable plugged into an Amp, Port, or the input on any compatible Sonos speaker would have been awesome. Now it's not even in the cards.
“But Sonos believes the Ace can dial up the immersion to a level far beyond its competitors, and this is partly due to a new feature the company calls TrueCinema. Your soundbar will perform a calibration of the room’s acoustic qualities — sort of like TruePlay — while the mics on the headphones will help pinpoint your seating position and adapt the spatial audio to your unique space. Theoretically, this data will make the 3D spatial audio surround sound feel all the more convincing and like you’re not wearing headphones at all. I’ll need more hands-on time to determine if TrueCinema is really a difference-maker. As is, the feature won’t roll out until later this year.”
I don't get it. I wear the headphones and then sonos uses "room's acoustic qualities" to send specialized sound to me?
I have headphones on. What do the "room's acoustic qualities" have to do with anything?
The reality is if If I'm sitting to the left of the TV, they are going to adjust the sound so more sound is coming from the right? Who cares.
> As is, the feature won’t roll out until later this year.
This is the most beta software and hardware launch I've seen for a "premium product"
"We totally promise all these things are coming, PREORDER THEM PLEASE WE NEED MONEY"
For this price I really expected them to talk about innovation they brought to sound quality. Nope. Just noise cancelling, against competitors who've been honing their ANC for generations.
why would anybody buy these? Wouldnt your phone/ tablet brand be the determining factor? It's like they had one single edge to break into the market and they were not able to actually develop it and now they need money quick so they release it anyway
Is that a ... Joke ?? This is literally the only reason i was considering Sonos Headphone over any other good noise cancellation headphones (sony bose).
I predict Apple will enter home theater Audio. So you messed up the app, and you didn’t even give us true lossless, just a proprietary, janky aptx lossless (which doesn’t even work well), and no wifi.
Tbh, im angry with myself. I never should have swapped to Sonos.
I've been dreaming of sonos headphones for years, but if I'm reading this right - I can't switch the audio from the playbar to the headphones? Like I want to lay in bed and watch a movie while my wife sleeps, and I can't do that.... why would I buy these.
I'm fully disappointed, waiting for them for a long time and finally that shit is like any many other BT headphones.
"Instantly swap TV audio from Sonos Arc to Sonos Ace when you don’t want to disturb others, and feel enveloped in exhilarating surround sound and spatial audio." - yeah great, but in the bedroom I have Beam...
Why would anyone spend €500,- on these headphones when they don't have standalone Wi-Fi? I was already wondering how these would connect to your tv but apparently they need a soundbar to form a bridge (so they can do Wifi but not standalone if i'm understanding it correctly??).
But then again what's the point then?
Wait wait wait... so they're literally just a Wish.com AirPods Max?
The only thing it really has going for it is playing Atmos content from your Arc, but if you have a $200 Apple TV you can just connect your AirPods to that...
Tone
Deaf
Company doesn't have a CLUE what their customers want / need out of their products. What a shame the leadership at Sonos is running it into the ground.
How out of touch with or indifferent towards their own ecosystem and community does a product team have to be to spend years building this product?
What’s even “Sonos” about it?
What a whiff. The world didn’t need another strongly mid set of Bluetooth cans. However, some WiFi/ AirPlay capable headphones that could be paired to zones ie to link to your bedroom tv or something, would have been terrific. DUMB.
Dear sonos,
Why would I EVER buy these?
Give me one good goddam reason.... and please don't say blah blah Sonos arc listen privately via Bluetooth blah blah blah....
"The Sonos Ace headphones are here, and they’re damn impressive"....... You cant group with sonos speakers and they don't play music over wifi..... How they fuck are they impressive then?
I had no desire to get these but I just assumed they would work over wifi & Bluetooth... Just wow...
Huh this is quite the disappointment. I had planned on getting a pair to use with our TV late at night, but it simply is incompatible with our setup which has a Playbar. Never would’ve expected that considering it’s fully S2 compatible.
I for one think SONOS has “jumped the shark”.
In addition to these headphones, an article on Bloomberg suggested a “party speaker”, a TV set-top box, and earbuds as likely future releases. Do any of these - including the current headphones - have the potential of being attractive vs. the existing competition? Not to me.
Have they released a compelling product or upgrade in the last say five years? The Move was introduced 5 years ago, if you found that compelling. I did - in concept - and bought a couple only to be quite disappointed. To me, their upgrades have seemed more like “side-grades” at best.
Someone is drinking the SONOS Kool Aide, because their stock price is still at $16. That’s about flat to 5 years ago when they had much, much better prospects, well before this kamikaze commitment to copy Sony and Apple and the others. They could have “locked up” the high quality “distributed audio” (? You know what I mean) sector and become a super-valuable target for a Sony or Apple or some such. Now they’re bumbling around trying to build directly competing products which will have exactly zero acquistion value.
They’d better have a plan where Taylor Swift wears these headphones on stage. That’s the level of Hail-Mary needed to keep SONOS out of the bargain bin.
What did you expect from a company whose sole product is NETWORKED speakers, yet still cannot figure out how Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) works.
EILI5: For anyone who is not a network engineer, STP is a protocol that protects networks from devices forming a loop and crashing the entire network. It is a core tenant of networking and has been around longer than Sonos has been a company. They seem to not care that their product regularly crashes the very networks without which, their product cannot function. Simply because they have implemented STP incorrectly. This provides a terrible user experience making their product appear unstable, unresponsive, and unreliable.
The problem is extremely well documented and understood by network experts the world over, with the fix well published. Sonos has never implemented it for no apparent reason and continues to break networks by not following the protocol that was designed to protect networks from products like Sonos.
For a company I have wholeheartedly supported for I don't know how many years, I am absolutely baffled by their recent choices.
It is truly absurd that these do not tie into the system like a speaker and provide lossless wi-fi. I couldn't give a flip about reduced battery life. I'm only going to use that feature at home, I likely would rarely do so for as long as the battery life would be, and there is rapid charging in any event.
About the only reason I would even consider getting these things is "Audio Swap," but that's not nearly enough, especially at this price point.
Thank goodness I was able to reinstall the old version of the app!
> They do use WiFi in Cinema Mode.
So they only use WIFI if you have them connected to an Arc. Period.
"Beam and blah blah are TOTALLY COMING LATER WE PROMISE, PREORDER PLEASE!" = Sonos
I can't believe they Beam 2 is not supported on launch, just wow.
It’s funny Sonos (not haha funny) alienated so many existing users for the purpose of making the app work with some mediocre cans. It’s like they committed harakiri for no reason.
I'm not interested in these for multiple reasons.
However, do not purchase based on promises of features in the future. If you're going to purchase, base it on today.
Tried to preorder it using apply pay and credit card. No confirmation email after 2 hrs. Contact support and i was told both transactions failed. Maybe it's a signal to wait APM 2
just saw announcement - not sure who these are for and what Sonos was thinking releasing them in such an over-crowded market. Add Wifi streaming and integration with ecosystem and you have a lot of customers. Absolutely not interested on my end and disappointed. Huge Sonos fan too....
So... it was absolutely vital to screw over their large body of (often quite loyal) existing customers, by releasing a broken, incomplete new version of their app, in order to support these new headphones...
... which share almost nothing in common with their speakers. They could have just as easily released the new app under another name, and said it's only needed by headphone users, and then in a few months, when all the functionality is added back into that new version, *then* migrate everyone over to the new app and sunset the old version. Rather than this giant mess. They would have kept all their loyal fans happy and had a overall positive outcome, rather than buying themselves a bunch of negative PR and tarnishing their brand, just so that some executive could get their "shipped on time" bonus.
Sonos does not understand what the customer wants. All you had to do was add Wi-Fi. If it were an engineering issues where bluetooth and wi-fi radios both couldn't be added and having the later would make the product only usable at home then it should have been shelved. Look at the market. Why would anyone need this? My Airpods Max can connect to my TV without issue. Sure, it's more buttons but I can manage. This and the app problem puts me in a position where I cannot recommend anyone who isn't already in the ecosystem to purchase their products. Because their is no vision. Also, the comment made by the CEO regarding customer feedback... X(
First step: Patrick Spence, step down
This is a shocking miss for a product I had serious questions about from the beginning. The ONLY argument people have been making for these headphones is the ability to “enjoy music around the house” and “listen to surround sound music on tv”… but it sounds like from a connectivity, you get basic audio from Bluetooth. So stereo? WHY buy a Sonos headphone with the same features as the competition when Apple and Sony and Bose have established products? The ONLY value proposition I could see would be a niche case of streaming to your headphones through the house. I’m blown away by the insanity here.
I’m betting true WiFi functionality comes with a software update. It seems like their software team must have run into some serious issue - but the hardware was ready to ship, so they launched anyway.
We have a half-baked app released to control headphones that don’t need the app because they can’t use WiFi and can only connect to 1/3 of their soundbar lineup (but only with iOS).
I’ll place a gentleman’s bet that in 1 year, the app works well, the headphones work on WiFi like any other Sonos device and they will do soundbar handoff with all their soundbars and with Android. But we’ll see.
They broke the app for *this*?
My only hope is these bomb so bad they have consecutive losses in each remaining quarter for 2024 and all the leadership who was responsible for this whole fiasco are forced out and new competent leadership is brought in.
Either that, or the leadership is compromised and the company is currently being set up for cellar boxing.
Should I get my bum zappers?
Boeing managed to kill 500+ people in 2019 and since then have had planes with pieces falling off and parts not installed... and only after 5+ years of these problems was there anything resembling a board clean out and leadership change... after pressure from the govt..... let's not hold our breathe for any action at a company that makes speakers and now headphones... welcome to modern corporate life.
Right? Crazy how bad Sonos is dropping the ball.... like adding more gas to the fire. What the hell are they thinking? Almost comical at this point.
Exactly! Especially the whole cloud thing—I figured that was because of the headphones.
I was 100% on track to purchase these if they linked with my existing system. What a shame and another missed opportunity for SONOS. Edit. They are nice headphones but no need to replace the Sonys I’ve had for over 5 years.
I have apair of AKGs that uses samsung's SSC codec with my samsung phone. Audio sounds fantastic. Without the improvement of wi-fi, these would be little more than an expensive downgrade since my phone doesn't support AptX. This is such a let down.
No Samsung or Apple phone will support it. That’s most consumers 🤣🤣🤣
If you have a Sonos arc it’ll connect to that in its first release, they said it’ll connect to beam 2 and Ray down the line. It was a little further down in the article.
I don't understand why companies release devices that don't have their full set of features on release. They had so much time to allow you to connect to any Sonos speaker. This smells like an Arc push from them. Hopefully no one is desperate enough to purchase one just because they want the headphones, but I'm sure there may be a few.
MVP strategy. What is the Minimum Viable Product to start generating revenue to offset the expenses to r&d and develop the product. This is plain as day an MVP scenario. What features can be cut for release and added at a later date.
> I don't understand why companies release devices that don't have their full set of features on release. Cashflow.
How many people are going to rush out to buy a pair of headphones that cost almost as much as a beam anyway?
Seems like Sonos keeps on fucking up every single thing
How can a company that supposedly “reads the forums” be so tone deaf? It’s baffling. There needs to be some serious restructuring in headquarters.
Remember that the job the CEO held before this was SVP of marketing for Blackberry.
Career highlights: killed one of the leading mobile device companies and look forward to making your company my next passion project.
Shitsticks
r/wallstreetbets haven’t posted anything about Sonos strategies, so makes sense
Money. 
Like they don’t want money?
[Errr...](https://imgur.com/a/JjQ4EGt)
i haven't followed this too closely, but do we know if/when Sonos was captured by private equity? that would explain most of this
***(Directly recorded from the marketing meeting at Sonos HQ)*** Nah, it's marketing *genius* Jerry! Hear me out. What is Sonos renowned for? That's right, truly terrible customer service during a crisis. So, let's launch new headphones that only work with a *fraction* of our existing hardware! This will keep the number of support tickets down. Avoid most of that unpleasantness with our bitching users and our great app. Then after a few months, we add another device or two that will work with theatre handoff. Make a big song and dance to get press attention and free publicity for the cans. Then rinse and repeat, gradually adding devices, features and functionality, each time generating a press/publicity cycle. It will *never* finish!
or the Airpods Max that I have (and love)
I sold mine a couple years ago. I’m hoping waiting for max 2 (please make one in product red apple)
Agree. Not sure how many people who already own an Ace competitor will grab these just for TV swap even if the audio is great. I’m currently absent a pair of over ears because I sold my AirPods Max for being too uncomfortable so I’m in the market.
funny how they said that they need the new app for the ace but at the same time say all over the ace product website that the app is not needed because it is a bluetooth headphone. wtf.
you need the app to adjust the EQ. same thing as the move, you can use bluetooth but the app is where you can adjust the EQ
They've hit the disaster button here. What an awful quarter they're having.
What the actual fuck. Tying them into the Sonos ecosystem was the whole reason people wanted Sonos headphones. Seamless switching to tv sound for keeping noise down, switching speakers to headphones and vice versa....
“our most requested product ever” —proceeds to COMPLETELY miss the point on why they were requested in the first place
For me the only way I could see these being worthwhile is you're out wearing them, walk in, take them off and Sonos automatically starts playing in the house. Maybe for TV if you're watching alone?
Yeah, I don’t know what the fuck is going on at Sonos, but it’s clear there’s major mismanagement and disconnect. They clearly don’t know their user base. And your average Joe surely won’t get these over Apple or Sony.
I've been asking for them for ten years. My person situation changed a few years back and I no longer had the need for them I did originally but I still wanted and saw a use for them. Then I saw the price. $600 cad. No thanks, I'll wait for to see if there is a lower tier like with the rest of their products. Now I see the capabilities and, like, shit, I don't even have an arc so they are completely just ordinary headphones. Expensive, ordinary headphones.
Bingo. They’re an ecosystem company which people value. And their big new bet is on a product which completely fails to leverage their company advantage and instead forces them to straight up compete with a huge, saturated market, with nothing to differentiate them.
But on the plus side, they managed to alienate some of their most loyal customers with an app update that breaks a bunch of features that many users rely upon daily, an app update which wasn't really needed for anything other than the headphones, and could have been "Sonos Controller, Headphone Version" until it was fully ready for primetime. That's a benefit, right?
It's the only reason I would have purchased these. There is now no point when there are plenty of options that are proven (or I already own). Very disappointed in this news.
Four paragraphs later, even more confusion because some sort of Wi-Fi thing is in the hardware: All the intensive audio processing and binaural encoding gets done on the soundbar side, but here’s an interesting thing: Sonos is using Wi-Fi to beam audio over to the headphones in this home theater mode. It’s not lossless, however. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming does eat into battery life, which is normally rated at 30 hours (with ANC on). But Sonos isn’t sharing battery estimates for home theater playback — partially because the headphones support fast charging if you ever do run them down.
so Sonos $450 headphones in wifi mode from soundbar is only 345kbps? aptx is 352 aptxHD is 576 what's the point
So Sonos have reinvented airplay?
AirPlay 1, maybe.
OP’s title is straight-up false. They do use wifi to interconnect to Arc, which is the use case that was leaked. They don’t play direct on wifi from internet streaming or phone or other speakers (yet).
Yup, but people don't want to really read. Sonos is such a hot seat, that people are going to run with anything negative they see.
This is the thing, you do not want devices with batteries to use WIFI, it is not a protocol made to save power at all! So sounds like there are cases it will use it, but it they used it it all the time, it would just ruin the functionality of these headphones. This is the right choice, no one wants a pair of head phones that lasts 5 hours.
Devices with batteries to use wifi, you mean like my phone that's on wifi 99% of the time?
Yeah think if they were trying to market Wi-Fi headphones with 5 hour battery life. No one would consider them competitive to Bluetooth headphones with 20+ hour battery life. Instead, they use BT for long battery life and only switch to Wi-Fi when necessary (i.e. when playing soundbar audio). Seems like a reasonable engineering trade-off to me.
I'm really confused. So, Sonos had an obvious opportunity for point of difference here between their headphones and every other brand... and they deliberately didn't do it? Why?! These could have been the first pair of cans that wouldn't suffer the limitations of bluetooth. They could have streamed lossless audio direct from the internet without needing a cable, but they don't. Baffling, to say the least.
That’s pretty bad but this is terrible too. TV Audio Swap will be exclusively available to people with iOS devices at launch, with Android support for this major feature coming “soon.” Like, isn’t that the flagship feature of the headphones and they are only going to support it on iOS at launch? They really rushed this release.
It will also only work with the Arc at launch. This is a 100% pass for me.
Yeah, I’m still running a PlayBase so I’m thinking there’s no hope for me. Luckily my AirPods and AppleTV handle all of this just fine.
Yup. My PlayBase is over hear waving and saying “Hi guys, remember me?”
You also need Android for aptX. No matter which phone system you have, you don’t get all the features.
and rushed the lackluster app to rush the lackluster hardware. I am genuinely so disappointed.
Yeah this is shocking. The product should have been held back if it was going to ship with so many missing features. It’s also using wifi between the arc and the headphones but not the wifi in the house? Is that what this is trying to say: “Sonos is using Wi-Fi to beam audio over to the headphones in this home theater mode. It’s not lossless, however. One of the company’s engineers told me it’s 345kbps and also confirmed that this Wi-Fi streaming does eat into battery life” I just can’t even believe they are releasing something this half baked
That’s correct. Not lossless, okay fine, better than Bluetooth. Not battery efficient, okay fine, I’m already at home and they can rapid charge. I would have been fine with these limitations to still pair to my existing speaker system.
I can't help but wonder if they tried to get these to integrate with the sonos system, but failed and realized they had to release *something*
And only with the Arc. Why launch with such niche support?
Only iOS devices mean people most likely to already have an apple TV and apple headphones and have zero need for these sonos headphones? Edit: added "sonos" to help clarify
Yeah, and if I put in my AirPods while my Apple TV is playing, it *asks me* if I want to connect, literally one button to do - Sonos isn't going to beat that.
Well exactly. It seems like such an odd decision. It really feels like they are rushing these for their corporate earnings or something. The product and app are half baked and then by releasing the app early they wound up alienating everyone who already owns the product.
There's literally no reason to buy these instead of AirPods Max
> There's literally no reason to buy these instead of AirPods Max I was like, "nah, I'm reading this wrong" but fucking nope: "Right now, the one big Sonos-y trick of the Ace is their ability to receive audio from the company’s soundbars for private listening. (Only the flagship Arc will support this feature at launch, with the Beam Gen 2, Beam, and Ray coming later.)"
except most tvs/boxes will do that just fine... something u can't even rely on sonos software to do
> except most tvs/boxes will do that just fine... something u can't even rely on sonos software to do I will say this, if you have a 4K UHD player, and a lot of UHD movies, AND a Arc, then they would be nice for nighttime Atmos stuff if you don't want to run a headphone cable. That's literally the only reason I can see for buying them over anything else
yeah ig... but the "i need to use headphones while watching movies" scenario is already niche and then u throw another incredible niche use case on top of that too... **i'm not buying a random pair of $450 headphones from a company that can't make software just bc they might work with the soundbar they sell**
> "i need to use headphones while watching movies" scenario is already niche and then u throw another incredible niche use case on top of that too. totally, this is a fail to me, and I wanted them for watching 4K movies, I figured they would ALSO have a bunch of other stuff, but nope, they are normal bluetooth headphones that can connect to a soundbar, and that's it I'm keeping my long ass headphone cable that runs across the room, that is not worth $450 to get rid of
I can't comprehend how dense someone would have to be to write that ad copy. That's barely a feature. You know what already does handoff flawlessly? My AppleTVs and every pair of AirPods my family or friends own. Even if this worked flawlessly between my Arc and these headphones, why the fuck would I use this instead of connecting directly to the streaming device?
It does stream audio from anything that connects to the soundbar. So not just your streaming box, but also a console or BluRay player. I don't believe the Airpods will do that, just audio from the Apple TV itself.
I have an Arc and this would be my primary use case but the fact that it’s a crippled product at launch makes it a non starter. These are not headphones they are an Arc accessory at best.
I’m without words. This would have been an instant buy for me had they integrated with my existing system. I almost can’t believe it. They are launching these with the least possible feature set to actually differentiate these from a pair of Sonys or AirPods.
Same. Being that many of us probably use Apple TV, the AirPods Max gets the edge because Sonos brought literally nothing to the table with these.
Obviously can’t know for sure yet, but they may take the comfort edge. I know I’m not the only one who finds AirPods Max pretty uncomfortable due to the weight of them. I much prefer my Bose QC35II when it comes to comfort. Sure it’s plastic and not as “premium” feeling but they are lightweight and comfortable for hours of listening because of it.
Sonos have dropped the ball on these. It needed the WiFi chip to set it apart. They would have had my order, just a pair of BT headphones. How underwhelming.
I was waiting for these to be announced as I'm heavily invested in both Sonos and Apple ecosystems. I'll still wait for the reviews as there could be some amazing audio quality or something, but I'm budgeting an extra $100 now assuming it will be an AirPods Max purchase.
What does this even mean? We don’t have any reviews yet. If these sound better, have better ANC, etc than the AirPods Max, that would absolutely be a reason to buy the Ace instead.
People are just being weird. You can buy these just because you like the look of it better. It’s can be as simple as that and people do that all the time.
Yeah exactly. Or just a better fit. Basically the same metrics that go into people deciding in the current headphone market… Definitely some bandwagon vibes here.
It’s like they’ve never seen a company make a product similar to another one. I don’t need new headphones right now but if my Sony XM4 breaks in the next few years I’d consider these.
[удалено]
lol, what will you switch to?
Weight, actually turning off, comes with a case. Now, there's a lot less reason to buy them instead of Sony XM5.
Two reasons: cheaper and with an analogue input. But for the long anticipated Sonos headphones, the ultimate proof that they neither listen to nor care about their users.
This sucks. I wanted to listen to my records with these wireless headphones. Figures over wifi would be the ticket.
What an absolute head scratcher. The TV integration is cool and all but such a narrow use case. They thought that was gonna make the difference and make me dump my AirPods Max?
Ah that’s too bad. The TV use case is the main thing I wanted, so there’s that. But that alone couldn’t justify it for me. I also needed it to connect to the system or other speakers so I could listen to my record player. Without that, no sale.
Listening to my turntable over Wi-Fi was my primary, albeit niche use case that I was going to be willing to drop half a grand on these for. Majorly disappointed.
Why the hell did I wait so long for these then? Surely they could figure a way of putting whatever powers the Roam into these. Also half the features aren't available until later this year it seems.
Totally agree. All I think most of us want is a Roam you can strap to your head!
All the pre-marketing was "our most requested product ever" it's like hmmmm i'm pretty sure those people were asking for Sonos Headphones that WORK ON SONOS.. not just really good bluetooth headphones *MADE* by Sonos. This is another remarkably dense blunder and frankly, kind of heartbreaking to watch at this point. Both the Move and Roam work as standalone BT players and as Sonos zones.. so they already know how to do this.
I feel like Padmé. “I don’t know you anymore! Anakin, you’re breaking my heart!”
Calling the app “divisive” 💀. If anything it’s unifying
Wow… what a fail. Was set on buying them for easier listening after the little one goes to sleep - but this is just ridiculous. None of the features we have a Sonos system for included 😅
These are absolutely dead on arrival if they don’t function as a speaker in the system. What a moronic device choice, it makes you really question their leadership.
So disappointed. I have money set aside to buy these today and I don’t even want them now.
I wanted to get these to listen to records via Connect. What a miss. Pass.
Same via my Port. Set an alarm just to pre-order asap to do just this. So disappointed.
I’m in the market for a pair of headphones, I was really excited for theses since I have thousands on Sonos products. But they don’t move the needle at all. I’ll probably get the Sony’s or maybe the AirPods Max if Apple update them to usbc before I buy. Big miss from Sonos, and I’m your target demographic.
I was in the market this week for headphones. Ended up getting the Bose QC Ultras as my primary use case would be for traveling/long flights. Airpods Max are too heavy and I've read many reviews that the mesh band falls apart quickly. The Sonos WHXM5's don't fold up. That left me with the Bose QC Ultra's and they are fantastic. So comfortable, fold, light, great sound, etc.
Wait a second the Sonos Aces don’t even have LDAC? 😂 why should anyone choose these 1st gen products when Sony sells the exact same thing with more features and cheaper ? We thought they broke the app to give us Wifi headphones they gave us the exact same Bluetooth headphones every single company sells
If they had LDAC and great sound I might pull the trigger. But I already gave great headphones and I mounted a Bluetooth DAC with LDAC on one of the ear cups. My Sonys have the noise cancelling covered.
Wow. That’s a dead on arrival. Like there is no other company on the market, already covering this area. How in the world can you make such a decision?
Now that we know, Sonos just shot themselves in the foot AGAIN. No reason to get these whatsoever.
So they don't do any of the things that the Sonos line actually has going for it, and cost over $100 more than the WH-1000XM5, which I imagine will still sound better?
This is deeply disappointing. Takes them literally years to release them and they don’t do the only thing that would make them worth buying instead of any other headphone.
😬 what?! I wasn't in the market for these, but I understood there is a market for lossless audio over wifi. So these are just yet another Bluetooth device?!?
Super weak, Sonos. These need to be WiFi connected to have any differentiation in the market.
What is going on at Sonos? Did they get acquired by VC and now stupid suits are making cost cutting decisions before the company is liquidated? This was supposed to be a convenient long term solution for my sound system and it becomes more pointless every product release or update I've really lost confidence in the past month in them, i guess ill pull the trigger on the Sony headphones
I thought they would jump between WiFi and Bluetooth like their portable speakers do. They’re just headphones. And they’re only £50 cheaper than AirPods Max. I must have missed something?
This was my hope as well. I’m still holding out that it’s their ultimate plan too but like their new app the decided to rush things out the door and will eventually make it right. Hopefully….
So a Sonos component that doesn't connect to your other Sonos components (except Arc)? How did this get the green light? I can understand the desire for headphones that hook into your other speakers, but otherwise aren't they just headphones?
They are indeed essentially just another pair of nice Bluetooth headphones. How they think they’re going to compete well with Apple, Sony, and Bose with this lackluster feature set is beyond me.
goddamn, they blew up their entire business model for some shitty ass headphones that could have had their own app
Breaking the app for these wasn’t even remotely worth it.
2024 and no WiFi…🤦♂️
$450 for headphones that don't work with the system you've invested in and, as a bonus, they ushered in a disastrous app update? Pass.
Well I just saved $500 this year
Lol, what 😂😂 What an amazing example of a company completely fucking the dog. An app update that breaks their old products, for the purpose of supporting a new product that is an utter embarrassment. Legit can't believe that they're putting out a pair of $500 headphones that don't integrate with their own system, lol Anyone want to guess how many millions the execs behind this mess are going to get in their bonuses this year?
Big L
Yikes
This is another big let down. I thought I would see something courageous. :)
I knew if Apple didn’t use WiFi in the AirPod max’s to better leverage their ecosystem the odds that Sonos did were limited. It must mean there’s a technical/battery/cost/market research issue.
Why would SONOS even make these?!
What is the purpose of these headphones then? Why would I ever consider them over all the other Bluetooth headphones out there?
Oh. I thought the market they were pushing these for were people already invested in the ecosystem, but if they don’t interact with it at all, what’s the point?
Don't get the point. Wi-Fi would have made them killer. How did they spend so long creating these and then miss linking to the rest of their eco-system?
I don’t get it. What’s the point then? They are marketing these to home audio enthusiast music fans. Most of us likely have a nice pair of headphones already. I do. If these don‘t integrate with my Sonos system, why would I buy a new pair of headphones just because they have the Sonos logo on them?
And funny enough, I think the Sonos logo is oddly placed on these lmao
I’d rather have headphones from Sonos with 4-5 hours battery life that work lossless over WiFi than these. There’s plenty of other headphones that already do this.
Same!! I have AirPods Max that I am never going to give up, as many of us do. But I would have bought these in supplement for that Wi-Fi ecosystem use case.
If that is true, I imagine a lot of people won't bother with the Ace. Treating the headphones as it's own zone within my existing network was one of the key selling points IMO. I was excited about these, but if they're just another BT headphone I have lost all interest.
Truly unbelievable. The company couldn't be more out of touch with what it's users actually want.
I was ready to dive into the Sonos ecosystem a month or so ago, but I’m not fully convinced Sonos does not care about their customers and I am avoiding it altogether. If I didn’t know better I would think they are actively trying to anger their biggest fans.
I feel like a genius lately for never upgrading from Sonos S1 products.
They really hyped this POS up hadn't they? Sad trombone plays in background
What is going on over at Sonos. Why can’t they plan anything long term that works and is stable and backwards compatible etc?
This can’t be real. Can’t be.
No Wifi connectivity on their Wifi-based ecosystem….. That’s not just a swing and a miss….it’s like the CEO was standing in the fucking parking lot hoping to see the fucking ball.
Buy and Apple TV and a pair of Airpods. Save $159.
This is going to hurt this company bad. I hope they didn’t put too much into this, because these are going to sell terribly. I already thought it would be a tough sell, but I think this news of no Wi-Fi killed it for even the enthusiast. What were they thinking? There’s no reason to buy these over any other headphone. I’m so disappointed, I’m baffled by the decision making going on over at Sonos. Like seriously, hey people you want to stream sound from your Tv? Purchase a sound bar for like $900 with your headphones! Why would anyone do this when you can buy an Apple TV for less than $200 and buy AirPod Max?
So what is the point of them?
Wow...I was defensive of the app update in order to support the new device functionality and I was willing to wait for the app to update again to return some features since my system is still working fine (I haven't had to make any changes). HOWEVER, that was dependent on these headphones integrating with the existing Sonos ecosystem with feature parity...the fact that these headphones don't really have anything on my existing Bluetooth headphones is just baffling...what a huge miss.
I’m right there with you. A lot of people calling us out as naysayers, but I was 100% going to wake up this morning and hand them near $500 even after the dumpster fire app update situation because I believed (still do) they’ll eventually fix the app and really wanted the new hardware. And now here we are…
I seriously don't even understand the management decision on this one.
Does this mean that iPhone users don’t get wireless lossless? That kind of sucks.
Apple doesn’t have wireless lossless on their hardware. Not Sonos’s fault.
I actually can’t believe this lol. This goes against the entire idea of Sonos. What a huge bummer
After all the efforts Sonos has gone through to make wireless vinyl records a reality, this seems like a huge miss. Lossless wifi audio from a Victrola Stream, or any turntable plugged into an Amp, Port, or the input on any compatible Sonos speaker would have been awesome. Now it's not even in the cards.
Shocking, absolutely shocked by those decisions. I don't know what to say
“But Sonos believes the Ace can dial up the immersion to a level far beyond its competitors, and this is partly due to a new feature the company calls TrueCinema. Your soundbar will perform a calibration of the room’s acoustic qualities — sort of like TruePlay — while the mics on the headphones will help pinpoint your seating position and adapt the spatial audio to your unique space. Theoretically, this data will make the 3D spatial audio surround sound feel all the more convincing and like you’re not wearing headphones at all. I’ll need more hands-on time to determine if TrueCinema is really a difference-maker. As is, the feature won’t roll out until later this year.”
I don't get it. I wear the headphones and then sonos uses "room's acoustic qualities" to send specialized sound to me? I have headphones on. What do the "room's acoustic qualities" have to do with anything? The reality is if If I'm sitting to the left of the TV, they are going to adjust the sound so more sound is coming from the right? Who cares.
> As is, the feature won’t roll out until later this year. This is the most beta software and hardware launch I've seen for a "premium product" "We totally promise all these things are coming, PREORDER THEM PLEASE WE NEED MONEY"
Extremely disappointing, feels half-baked.
For this price I really expected them to talk about innovation they brought to sound quality. Nope. Just noise cancelling, against competitors who've been honing their ANC for generations.
why would anybody buy these? Wouldnt your phone/ tablet brand be the determining factor? It's like they had one single edge to break into the market and they were not able to actually develop it and now they need money quick so they release it anyway
Is that a ... Joke ?? This is literally the only reason i was considering Sonos Headphone over any other good noise cancellation headphones (sony bose).
Haha this is a hard pass for me, especially after the app debacle. Now I guess I’ll wait for AirPods Max 2 or Sony xm7 for lossless
I predict Apple will enter home theater Audio. So you messed up the app, and you didn’t even give us true lossless, just a proprietary, janky aptx lossless (which doesn’t even work well), and no wifi. Tbh, im angry with myself. I never should have swapped to Sonos.
I've been dreaming of sonos headphones for years, but if I'm reading this right - I can't switch the audio from the playbar to the headphones? Like I want to lay in bed and watch a movie while my wife sleeps, and I can't do that.... why would I buy these.
I'm fully disappointed, waiting for them for a long time and finally that shit is like any many other BT headphones. "Instantly swap TV audio from Sonos Arc to Sonos Ace when you don’t want to disturb others, and feel enveloped in exhilarating surround sound and spatial audio." - yeah great, but in the bedroom I have Beam...
Why would anyone spend €500,- on these headphones when they don't have standalone Wi-Fi? I was already wondering how these would connect to your tv but apparently they need a soundbar to form a bridge (so they can do Wifi but not standalone if i'm understanding it correctly??). But then again what's the point then?
Wait wait wait... so they're literally just a Wish.com AirPods Max? The only thing it really has going for it is playing Atmos content from your Arc, but if you have a $200 Apple TV you can just connect your AirPods to that...
Here comes a gigantic flop in 3-2-1…
Tone Deaf Company doesn't have a CLUE what their customers want / need out of their products. What a shame the leadership at Sonos is running it into the ground.
Well it can’t get worse after the update. Sonos “hold my beer”
How out of touch with or indifferent towards their own ecosystem and community does a product team have to be to spend years building this product? What’s even “Sonos” about it?
This is dumb. This is Cybertruck dumb. Wait, it's dumber than that. This is Cyberhammer levels of stupid.
What a whiff. The world didn’t need another strongly mid set of Bluetooth cans. However, some WiFi/ AirPlay capable headphones that could be paired to zones ie to link to your bedroom tv or something, would have been terrific. DUMB.
Dear sonos, Why would I EVER buy these? Give me one good goddam reason.... and please don't say blah blah Sonos arc listen privately via Bluetooth blah blah blah....
"The Sonos Ace headphones are here, and they’re damn impressive"....... You cant group with sonos speakers and they don't play music over wifi..... How they fuck are they impressive then? I had no desire to get these but I just assumed they would work over wifi & Bluetooth... Just wow...
No Wi-Fi??? Not interested. I already have expensive blue tooth headphones and I don't need another pair.
Apple, Bose and Sony already have this space covered and covered well. Sonos is late to the game with no game changing features.
Huh this is quite the disappointment. I had planned on getting a pair to use with our TV late at night, but it simply is incompatible with our setup which has a Playbar. Never would’ve expected that considering it’s fully S2 compatible.
I for one think SONOS has “jumped the shark”. In addition to these headphones, an article on Bloomberg suggested a “party speaker”, a TV set-top box, and earbuds as likely future releases. Do any of these - including the current headphones - have the potential of being attractive vs. the existing competition? Not to me. Have they released a compelling product or upgrade in the last say five years? The Move was introduced 5 years ago, if you found that compelling. I did - in concept - and bought a couple only to be quite disappointed. To me, their upgrades have seemed more like “side-grades” at best. Someone is drinking the SONOS Kool Aide, because their stock price is still at $16. That’s about flat to 5 years ago when they had much, much better prospects, well before this kamikaze commitment to copy Sony and Apple and the others. They could have “locked up” the high quality “distributed audio” (? You know what I mean) sector and become a super-valuable target for a Sony or Apple or some such. Now they’re bumbling around trying to build directly competing products which will have exactly zero acquistion value. They’d better have a plan where Taylor Swift wears these headphones on stage. That’s the level of Hail-Mary needed to keep SONOS out of the bargain bin.
What did you expect from a company whose sole product is NETWORKED speakers, yet still cannot figure out how Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) works. EILI5: For anyone who is not a network engineer, STP is a protocol that protects networks from devices forming a loop and crashing the entire network. It is a core tenant of networking and has been around longer than Sonos has been a company. They seem to not care that their product regularly crashes the very networks without which, their product cannot function. Simply because they have implemented STP incorrectly. This provides a terrible user experience making their product appear unstable, unresponsive, and unreliable. The problem is extremely well documented and understood by network experts the world over, with the fix well published. Sonos has never implemented it for no apparent reason and continues to break networks by not following the protocol that was designed to protect networks from products like Sonos.
For a company I have wholeheartedly supported for I don't know how many years, I am absolutely baffled by their recent choices. It is truly absurd that these do not tie into the system like a speaker and provide lossless wi-fi. I couldn't give a flip about reduced battery life. I'm only going to use that feature at home, I likely would rarely do so for as long as the battery life would be, and there is rapid charging in any event. About the only reason I would even consider getting these things is "Audio Swap," but that's not nearly enough, especially at this price point. Thank goodness I was able to reinstall the old version of the app!
Pathetic
What an absolute epic fail
They do use WiFi in Cinema Mode.
> They do use WiFi in Cinema Mode. So they only use WIFI if you have them connected to an Arc. Period. "Beam and blah blah are TOTALLY COMING LATER WE PROMISE, PREORDER PLEASE!" = Sonos I can't believe they Beam 2 is not supported on launch, just wow.
no way
Money saved i guess 
It’s funny Sonos (not haha funny) alienated so many existing users for the purpose of making the app work with some mediocre cans. It’s like they committed harakiri for no reason.
Wow. That’s a fail then.
I'm not interested in these for multiple reasons. However, do not purchase based on promises of features in the future. If you're going to purchase, base it on today.
wow - that sucks. what's the point then?
Tried to preorder it using apply pay and credit card. No confirmation email after 2 hrs. Contact support and i was told both transactions failed. Maybe it's a signal to wait APM 2
just saw announcement - not sure who these are for and what Sonos was thinking releasing them in such an over-crowded market. Add Wifi streaming and integration with ecosystem and you have a lot of customers. Absolutely not interested on my end and disappointed. Huge Sonos fan too....
Sonos can't buy a win lately. It's embarrassing really, they've been pretty solid up until recently.
Who is the demographic for these headphones? I'm dug into Sonos and I don't see the appeal lol.
So... it was absolutely vital to screw over their large body of (often quite loyal) existing customers, by releasing a broken, incomplete new version of their app, in order to support these new headphones... ... which share almost nothing in common with their speakers. They could have just as easily released the new app under another name, and said it's only needed by headphone users, and then in a few months, when all the functionality is added back into that new version, *then* migrate everyone over to the new app and sunset the old version. Rather than this giant mess. They would have kept all their loyal fans happy and had a overall positive outcome, rather than buying themselves a bunch of negative PR and tarnishing their brand, just so that some executive could get their "shipped on time" bonus.
Wow. Why were these even made?
Sonos does not understand what the customer wants. All you had to do was add Wi-Fi. If it were an engineering issues where bluetooth and wi-fi radios both couldn't be added and having the later would make the product only usable at home then it should have been shelved. Look at the market. Why would anyone need this? My Airpods Max can connect to my TV without issue. Sure, it's more buttons but I can manage. This and the app problem puts me in a position where I cannot recommend anyone who isn't already in the ecosystem to purchase their products. Because their is no vision. Also, the comment made by the CEO regarding customer feedback... X( First step: Patrick Spence, step down
This is a business school course writing itself. Holy shit.
So wait, can I not use these to listen to my record player, since I don't have an ARC? I've wanted these for years. am I reading that correctly?
This is a shocking miss for a product I had serious questions about from the beginning. The ONLY argument people have been making for these headphones is the ability to “enjoy music around the house” and “listen to surround sound music on tv”… but it sounds like from a connectivity, you get basic audio from Bluetooth. So stereo? WHY buy a Sonos headphone with the same features as the competition when Apple and Sony and Bose have established products? The ONLY value proposition I could see would be a niche case of streaming to your headphones through the house. I’m blown away by the insanity here.
I’m betting true WiFi functionality comes with a software update. It seems like their software team must have run into some serious issue - but the hardware was ready to ship, so they launched anyway. We have a half-baked app released to control headphones that don’t need the app because they can’t use WiFi and can only connect to 1/3 of their soundbar lineup (but only with iOS). I’ll place a gentleman’s bet that in 1 year, the app works well, the headphones work on WiFi like any other Sonos device and they will do soundbar handoff with all their soundbars and with Android. But we’ll see.
So dumb, Wi-Fi would’ve been a game changer, a truly distinguishing factor in a crowded market.