the Comfiest Noise-Canceling Headphones We’ve Tested

The Sonos Ace are the popular audio brand’s first pair of wireless headphones. They offer impressive performance with features that go toe-to-toe with some of the best over-ear headphones from Bose and Sony.

But while the Ace stack up well against the competition, they don’t do a whole lot to truly stand out from the pack. Many fans of Sonos’ wireless speakers were hoping that the Ace would distinguish themselves by supporting WiFi music streaming, but this ended up being wishful thinking. These headphones are limited to Bluetooth, just like their main rivals.

Ultimately, the Ace’s biggest selling point might actually be their comfy design, which wowed us during our testing. Their soft earpads and flexible band offer a balanced fit that makes it easy to forgot you’re wearing them at all. The Ace are also an especially good option for people who happen to own a Sonos soundbar since they support a cool feature that lets you seamlessly transition TV audio from a compatible bar to the headphones. This is a handy option when you don’t want to disturb others, but it doesn’t apply to all users.

Though there’s still a sense that Sonos could have done something a bit more unique in this space, the Ace are certainly a worthy entry in the noise-canceling headphones market and a promising start for a first-gen model.

Editor’s note: This review was revised in June 2025 after further testing with several firmware updates, which added new features and fixed some glitches we initially encountered. Updated by Steven Cohen.

The Ace headphones are well-designed and easy to use

The Ace come packaged inside a fuzzy carrying case made from 75% recycled plastic bottles. Unzip it, and you’ll find a minimalist pair of matte headphones in black or Soft White wrapped around a bean-shaped pouch. Designed to harbor the Ace’s dual USB-C cables for wired playback and charging, the pouch attaches via a strong magnet at the case’s center, efficiently utilizing the space. The whole layout feels equally aimed at style and substance.

The headphones themselves borrow aesthetic touches from rivals like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Apple AirPods Max, but with a Sonos twist, bearing the same elegantly stripped-down design cues found across all Sonos products. From the Ace’s sleek rounded ear cups and laser-etched logo to their steel arms and cushy, vegan-leather pads, this is a familiar package that still manages to strike its own chord.

On the right ear cup are dual control buttons, including a multi-function “content key” for playback and volume via a mix of taps and slides. There’s also an adjacent key to swap between noise canceling and transparency modes. The two keys are easily distinguishable by touch for error-free control in nearly any setting. On the left cup is the power/pairing key and a USB-C input for charging and wired playback. 

The Sonos app lets you pair the headphones to your mobile device and add them to your list of Sonos devices, where you can monitor status and battery life. Tapping the Settings icon lets you adjust features like bass and treble, head tracking for spatial audio effects, and multi-point audio to pair the headphones to a second device like a laptop or tablet.

The flexible band and fluffy pads give the Ace an edge in comfort

Comfort is always subjective, but we can say without hesitation that the Ace are the most comfortable noise-canceling headphones we’ve encountered, beating out favorites like Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra and the Sony WH-1000XM5. After a week of wearing the Ace nearly all day, every day, we rarely experienced an inkling of discomfort.

Frankly, we’re not sure how Sonos did it. At 313 grams, the Ace are lighter than Apple’s AirPods Max, but still outweigh both Bose and Sony’s top models by a good 60 grams. You can definitely feel the heft as you swing your head around, but somehow between their ultra-soft pads and taut yet judicious clamping force, they manage to pull off the coveted trick of nearly disappearing on your head over time.

The fit is also quite stable, staying put even on light hikes and other semi-rigorous activities. Without an IP certification for water resistance, we don’t recommend the Ace for sweaty runs or gym regimens, but they’re excellent companions for nearly any other task.

The sound is rich, smooth, and detailed

The Ace offer a smooth and mellow sound signature. They have a penchant for digging up lush and vivid instrumental timbres, all spread across a deep and expansive soundstage. The overall performance stacks up well with some of the best-sounding headphones in their class.

The Ace do exhibit a darker tonal color than you’ll find in rivals like the spritely Bose QuietComfort Ultra. But this doesn’t affect the Ace’s talent for exposing fine details. Horns are breathy and full. Strings are smooth and lush. Acoustic guitars ring with a golden sheen. The ability to precisely place all these instruments in the mix may be the Ace’s most impressive sonic feature, allowing you to explore each instrument independently or simply sit back and let them wash over you.

There’s some sparkle in the treble for pristine clarity in high-flying percussion and loads of definition in instruments like buzzy synths and distorted electric guitars. At the other end, bass is full and punchy without being overwhelming. Unlike many headphones we test, the bass is fairly balanced by default, though we still dropped it down a notch or two in the EQ settings to clear up space in the soundstage. We also turned off the Loudness setting, which tended to make things sound a bit boomy.

On occasion, we wished for a bit more presence and clarity in vocals and dialogue, particularly when listening to podcasts, but we never struggled to hear minute details like vocal fry or room echoes, allowing us to notice sounds we’d missed in previous listens. Hardwiring the Ace via a USB-C-to-3.5mm cable offers even better definition, including support for lossless audio at up to 16-bit/48Hz resolution. 

The Ace also have a head-tracking feature, which keeps the sound anchored when you turn your head to mimic the effect of listening to speakers positioned in a fixed location. This is also supported with Dolby Atmos movies when synced with an Arc, Beam, or Ray soundbar. Head tracking works similarly to rivals, effectively simulating a home theater environment.

Noise-canceling and transparency modes are phenomenal

The Ace’s incredible noise canceling is a triumph worth celebrating. This is top-tier cancellation that stacks up with some of the best pairs available, seeming to suck the air out of the world and plant you in an isolation chamber of solace.

We tested the feature indoors with studio speakers playing sound effects and outdoors on hikes and dog walks, where it was most impressive. Tapping the button can almost extinguish the world, from city din to chirping birds. Even traffic-laden streets glide into a soft whisper.

In head-to-head tests, only Bose’s mighty QuietComfort Ultra and the new Sony WH-1000XM6 outpowered them, reducing sounds like keystrokes and drone effects to an even lower murmur. Even so, the Ace’s ability to offer such stark silence without a modicum of added white noise makes them a contender for one of the best noise-canceling headphones you can buy.

Since their release in 2024, Sonos has updated the Ace to add a new adaptive ANC feature. This option adjusts the noise cancellation to better match the headphones’ fit on your head in order to account for sound leaks. When switching this new mode on and off outside, we did indeed hear a slightly more pronounced dulling of general ambience.

The Ace also have an excellent transparency mode that’s designed to let in environmental sounds to keep you aware. This mode is vividly clear and natural. It’s so good that we were able to wear them virtually all day without skipping a beat. Though we initially encountered static noise in the right earcup when using transparency mode, a firmware update has since corrected this problem. We’re confident you won’t find a more natural-sounding transparency mode on the market.

The Ace’s lack of WiFi support is disappointing, but they have some cool home theater features

The Ace have many top features you’d expect from flagship noise-canceling headphones, like multi-point pairing, sensors to pause audio when you take them off, and various other settings from within the Sonos app. Their battery life of up to 30 hours per charge is highly competitive, and we could use them all day for multiple days without the need to charge.

However, the Ace’s inability to group with other Sonos speakers to stream music over WiFi is something of a letdown, even if it would have been unique among their peers. It’s not particularly surprising at this price — we would have expected another $100 or so added to get seamless support for both WiFi and Bluetooth — but it does put the Ace in a somewhat siloed position within the Sonos ecosystem.

The consolation prize for the Sonos faithful is the ability to wirelessly switch audio between the Ace headphones and a Sonos Arc, Sonos Arc Ultra, Beam, or Ray soundbar. This is handled via a TV Swap function that you can set up in the Sonos app for iOS and Android. This means you can watch movies and TV shows with audio through the headphones so you don’t disturb others. And this mode supports Dolby Atmos, so you can get a surround sound effect with head tracking.

We were able to test this with a Sonos Beam soundbar. After setting up TV Swap in the app, audio seamlessly transitioned from the Beam to the headphones with the press of a button. TV Swap is a handy option for watching movies at night when you might not want a full home theater experience booming around your room. Since the headphones’ launch, Sonos has also expanded TV Swap to support two Ace headphones at once, so two people can now hear the same TV audio together.

We tried this dual listening mode, and it worked great, allowing us to hear TV audio from two Ace headphones at the same time. We could also seamlessly turn TV Swap on and off through one pair of Sonos Ace while keeping it activated on the other. The only limitation with using TV Swap and two headphones at the same time is that you can’t use head tracking. This perk only applies to households that happen to have two pairs of Ace headphones, but if you fit that bill, it’s a cool addition.

Another new upgrade for TV Swap is called TrueCinema, a calibration process that uses a Sonos soundbar to help optimize the headphones’ audio quality to match your room’s dynamics. The goal is to mimic the sound of an actual home theater system. We ran into a couple of errors when initially trying to calibrate this, but the tuning process eventually worked.

When toggling TrueCinema on and off while watching Dolby Atmos movies and playing PS5 games, we noticed a slight increase in the Ace’s sense of space and distance with the new mode on. However, the difference was very subtle. With or without TrueCinema on, the Ace are excellent home theater headphones for movies and videogames.

The Sonos app isn’t perfect, but its remaining flaws aren’t a dealbreaker

Sonos overhauled its mobile app last year and many users reported lots of problems with the new software. The company has ironed out a lot of those issues through subsequent updates, but the app still isn’t quite as stable as it was before the overhaul.

The app has lagged at times when trying to update and adjust some functions with the Ace, and we’ve encountered delayed speaker switching and disconnects when using other Sonos devices every now and then.

However, we’ve found the latest version of the app to work well most of the time. As it stands, the app’s lingering flaws aren’t big enough to prevent us from recommending the Ace or other Sonos devices.

Should you buy the Sonos Ace?

The Sonos Ace’s many talents, from their fabulous noise canceling and transparency modes to their comfortable fit and sweet sound, instantly put them in the conversation with the best headphones out there. From that perspective, they’re well worth considering. especially if you own a Sonos soundbar that supports their TV Swap feature.

That said, their lack of full WiFi compatibility with the Sonos ecosystem may disappoint some of the brand’s ardent fans. And while the TV Swap feature is a nice bonus, it’s meaningless if you don’t own a compatible soundbar.

We still recommend putting the Sonos Ace on your shortlist — they’re just too damn comfortable and well-armed not to be — but they fail to distinguish themselves much from competing flagship headphones.