The Sonos Ace is a lovely pair of headphones attached to a brand that spent two years teaching its own customers not to trust it, and that tension is the whole story of Sonos in 2026. I have not had these on my head for a month, so I am not going to pretend otherwise, but the spec sheet, the price, and a year of owner threads tell a clear enough tale: the hardware was never the problem. The question for a UK buyer eyeing the Ace at around £269 is not whether it sounds good, it does, but whether the company behind it has done enough to deserve your money again after the software meltdown of 2024.
- Sonos Ace went on sale 5 June 2024 at £449 RRP; it now frequently sells around £269 in the UK.
- A botched 2024 app rewrite broke core features and overshadowed the Ace launch.
- CEO Patrick Spence resigned in January 2025; Tom Conrad became permanent CEO from July 2025.
- Sonos reported 8% revenue growth in its Q2 FY2026 results and its first positive Q2 adjusted EBITDA in four years.
How a good headphone got buried by bad software
Rewind to the Ace launch. Sonos shipped its first headphones on 5 June 2024 at £449, right as it pushed out a rebuilt app that stripped out features owners relied on, broke alarms and queue management, and turned a premium ecosystem into a daily irritation. The timing could not have been worse: the product that was meant to widen the brand arrived just as long-time customers were furious. I have watched plenty of tech launches go sideways, but few where the company’s own software actively sabotaged the new hardware on the shelf next to it. If you want a sense of how far the wider Sonos range had drifted by then, my take on whether the Sonos Play is worth it covers the same trust problem from the speaker side.
The fallout was not just noise on a forum. Patrick Spence, the chief executive who oversaw the app, resigned in January 2025. Tom Conrad, a board member with a product pedigree, stepped in and was made permanent CEO from July 2025. That is the kind of change a company makes when the problem is existential, not cosmetic.
What the recovery actually looks like
Here is where I will give Sonos credit, carefully. The financials have turned: in its Q2 FY2026 results the company reported 8% revenue growth and its first positive second-quarter adjusted EBITDA in four years, which is the clearest evidence that buyers have started coming back. Sonos also publicly pledged to ship no new hardware in the first half of 2026 and to focus engineering on fixing the app instead, which is exactly the unglamorous decision a company rebuilding trust should make. You do not earn customers back by launching more boxes; you earn them back by making the boxes they already own work. The recent Sonos Amp Multi for installers shows the company is still shipping where it counts, just not chasing consumer headlines while the software is mid-repair.
I want to be fair to the doubters, though. Sonos itself has been careful not to declare the app “fixed”, and owner threads through early 2026 still flag occasional sync and connection gripes. Progress is real; perfection is not the claim. Anyone telling you the saga is fully behind the brand is overselling it.
The Sonos Ace itself, on its merits
Strip away the corporate drama and the Ace is a strong product that has quietly become better value. At a £449 RRP it was a hard sell against a discounted Sony or Bose; at the roughly £269 it now sells for, it is genuinely tempting. Its best trick remains TV Audio Swap, which moves the sound from a compatible Sonos soundbar to your ears with a tap, the sort of feature that only makes sense if you already own Sonos gear, and a real reason to buy if you do. Its noise cancelling sits a notch below the class leaders, which is the honest trade-off. If you are cross-shopping the flagships, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra against the Sony WH-1000XM6 is the comparison that matters most, and the Ace’s pitch is ecosystem, not raw quiet.
There is one more thing to factor in before you buy: a successor. An Ace 2 has been rumoured for late 2026 or 2027, but that is leak chatter, not a Sonos announcement, and I would not hold a purchase for a product the company has not confirmed exists. If a Prime Day deal pushes the current Ace lower, the right move is to check the price history rather than the headline discount, exactly the approach in my Prime Day fake-discount guide.
Would I trust Sonos with my money again?
Cautiously, yes, and that is a sentence I could not have written eighteen months ago. The Ace is a good headphone that is now priced sensibly, the leadership change was the right call, and the Q2 FY2026 numbers say buyers are returning. If you already own a Sonos system, the Ace at around £269 is an easy recommendation and the TV Audio Swap alone can justify it. If you do not own any Sonos kit, I would still steer you to a Sony or Bose for pure headphone value, because you would be paying for an ecosystem feature you cannot use. The one thing that would harden my recommendation into an enthusiastic one is a few more months of a stable app with no fresh outages, because in this brand’s recent history the software, not the sound, is the part that has let people down. For the wider state of premium home audio right now, my look at Cambridge Audio’s challenger speakers is a useful companion read.
Related reading on MTW
- Sonos Arc Ultra UK review: price, specs and Atmos verdict
- Sonos Amp Multi explained for UK homes
- Nothing Headphone (1): price, specs and whether to buy
MMTW Editorial
Buyer action
Where to buy or check next
Use this as the final check before ordering a phone, changing network or trusting a headline monthly price.
Reader discussion
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated. Keep it useful, accurate, and on topic.