Sonos announced the Ace Ultra this week at $449, and the headline everyone reached for was the obvious one: it undercuts the AirPods Max by $100. True, and worth saying. But the price is the least interesting thing about these headphones.
The interesting thing is that you can take them apart. The battery comes out. So do the ear cups. In a category where the default assumption is that a dead cell means a dead $500 product, Sonos has quietly shipped the thing people have been asking for since wireless headphones became expensive.
Preorders opened this week. Shipping starts September 29, in black, soft white, agave and sand.
The short version
- Price: $449 in the US, £399 in the UK, €449 in Europe. Identical to what the original Ace launched at, which is genuinely unusual in 2026
- Battery: 35 hours, up from 30 on the Ace and well past the 20 hours AirPods Max manages
- Weight: 318g against 385g for the AirPods Max, so roughly 17 percent lighter on your neck
- Audio: uncompressed USB-C wired lossless plus Bluetooth aptX Lossless. AirPods Max tops out at AAC wirelessly
- Repairability: user replaceable battery and ear cups, which the AirPods Max does not offer
- New hardware: redesigned 40mm drivers, ten microphones, Adaptive ANC, Adaptive EQ, Bluetooth 6.0
- The Sonos trick: Headphone Linking moves audio between compatible Sonos speakers and the Ace Ultra over Wi-Fi
The spec sheet, honestly compared
Spec tables are usually where marketing goes to hide, so here is the version with the caveats attached rather than removed.
| Sonos Ace Ultra | AirPods Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $449 | $549 |
| Battery, ANC on | 35 hours, plus a power saver mode that doubles what is left | 20 hours |
| Fast charge | 3 hours from a 3 minute charge | Around 1.5 hours from 5 minutes |
| Weight | 318g | 385g, among the heaviest on the market |
| Wireless codecs | SBC, AAC, aptX Lossless, Bluetooth 6.0 | SBC and AAC only |
| Wired lossless | Yes, native uncompressed over USB-C | Yes, over USB-C on the current model |
| Replaceable battery | Yes, by the owner | No |
| Replaceable ear cups | Yes | Ear cushions only, magnetically attached |
| Case | Full zip around hard case, about 80 percent recycled content | Smart Case, covers the ear cups only |
| Ecosystem trick | Headphone Linking with Sonos speakers over Wi-Fi | Instant pairing, handoff and sharing across Apple devices |
The battery gap is bigger than the numbers suggest
Fifteen extra hours does not sound like a category difference until you translate it into how people actually use over-ear headphones.
At 20 hours, the AirPods Max is a device you charge every few days and think about before a long flight. At 35, the Ace Ultra becomes something you charge when you notice, which is a different relationship entirely. The power saver mode, which Sonos says doubles whatever charge is left by switching off certain features, is aimed squarely at the moment you realize at the gate that you forgot.
The fast charge figure is the sleeper spec. Three minutes on the cable buys three hours of playback. That is not a headline number, it is a rescue number, and it is the one you will actually use.
What lossless does and does not buy you
Sonos is leaning on lossless as a differentiator, and it is a legitimate one, but it deserves an honest framing rather than an audiophile sales pitch.
The AirPods Max transmits over Bluetooth using AAC, a lossy codec. It is a good lossy codec, and for most listening on most tracks in most environments you will not identify it in a blind test. Apple’s own high resolution catalog cannot reach your ears over that link at full fidelity, which has been the standing complaint about the product since launch.
The Ace Ultra supports aptX Lossless over Bluetooth, which carries CD quality audio intact, and native uncompressed playback over USB-C. Whether you hear the difference depends on your source material, your ears, and your listening environment, in roughly that order. On a train, with a streaming service running at its default quality, the answer is probably no.
Where it stops being academic is at home, with a good source, on quiet passages of well recorded music. It is the same argument that plays out around video compression, where the gap between a stream and a disc is invisible most of the time and then suddenly is not, which is more or less the case Christopher Nolan has been making about streaming bitrates. Worth having, not worth pretending is transformative.
One caveat that matters: aptX Lossless needs support on the sending device too. Plenty of Android phones with the right Qualcomm silicon have it. iPhones do not. If you own an iPhone, that column of the spec sheet is decorative.
The repairability story is the one that will age well
A user replaceable battery in a premium pair of headphones is a bigger deal than the spec sheet position suggests, because it changes what the product is.
Lithium cells in wireless headphones typically hold usable capacity for something like two to four years of daily use before the runtime starts to visibly sag. At that point, a sealed pair becomes a decision: pay for an out of warranty service, or replace a working set of drivers and a working headband because one component wore out as designed.
Sonos putting the battery behind a user serviceable panel, and making the ear cups swappable, means a five year old Ace Ultra is a maintenance job rather than a purchase. That also quietly improves the resale value, which is the part nobody mentions and everybody benefits from.
The sustainability numbers, since Sonos is making a point of them
- The case is built from roughly 80 percent recycled content, up from about 46 percent recycled and renewable material on the original Ace
- It is Sonos’ first use of bio-based plastics in a product of this kind
- Combined with the replaceable battery and ear cups, it is a coherent position rather than a marketing line, which is rarer than it should be
Where Apple still wins
None of this makes the AirPods Max a bad product, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Apple’s advantage was never the spec sheet. It is that the headphones appear on your iPhone the instant you open the case, move to your Mac when you start a call, follow you to the iPad, share audio with a second pair of AirPods in one tap, and handle spatial audio with head tracking better than anyone else. If you live entirely inside Apple’s world, those small frictions removed add up to something the Ace Ultra cannot match with battery hours.
Build quality is a real point too. The AirPods Max is heavy partly because it is made of metal, and it feels it. Whether that is worth 67 extra grams on your head for six hours is a personal question with no correct answer.
There is also a fairness issue with the comparison itself. The AirPods Max is not a new product, and Apple has refreshed it lightly rather than rebuilt it. Comparing a 2026 launch against a design that has been on sale for years and finding the newer one ahead on battery and codecs is not exactly a shock. The relevant question is what you can buy today at these two prices, and today the answer favors Sonos on paper.
Who should actually buy this
| If you are… | The call |
|---|---|
| Already running Sonos speakers at home | Straightforward yes. Headphone Linking is the feature Ace owners have been asking for since 2024 |
| On Android with a recent Snapdragon phone | Yes. You get the lossless codec support that iPhone owners cannot use |
| Deep in the Apple ecosystem with no Sonos gear | Harder. You pay $100 more for AirPods Max and get back the seamlessness. That is a real trade, not a bad one |
| Holding a perfectly good original Sonos Ace | Wait. Thirty hours is still plenty, and the Ace has been discounted hard before. It hit 25 percent off during a previous sale season |
| Mainly buying for noise cancelling on flights | Compare against Bose before committing. The QuietComfort Ultra remains the benchmark for pure ANC |
One last note from the early reaction, because it is a fair complaint. Some original Ace buyers are irritated, and the irritation is not really about the Ultra existing. It is that Headphone Linking, the feature that makes these headphones behave like part of a Sonos system rather than a pair of Bluetooth cans with a logo, arrived on the second generation. People who bought the first one expecting exactly that behavior have a point.
Which is a reminder about buying into an ecosystem product on the promise of what it will become. Buy what is in the box on the day you pay. The Ace Ultra, on September 29, has a good deal in it.
