At an event in New York City, Sonos announced two new audio products — the Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and Sonos Ace Ultra headphones, details of which were found in an FCC filing in early August — and a major update to its audio operating system dubbed Sonos 27. It’s the biggest single Sonos announcement since 2024, when a new app rollout upset its customers and sent it into damage control mode.
Software changes are core to Sonos’ announcements, with the company leaning heavily into AI integration with Sonos 27. This includes the company’s own Sonos 27voice assistant that it built in-house for music and system control. It’s coming as an early access, opt-in feature this fall. There’s also Sonos 27mcp, which gives the ability to connect any existing AI models such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini — although for some reason Google Assistant is still not natively supported. Sonos 27mcp launches in early access on September 8th.
In addition, users will be able to create up to 10 of their own agents through Sonos 27 to run, with whichever model they choose. These custom agents can be given different voices and roles. Brandon Holley, senior director of product development, gave examples of having a moody detective give you the morning news or a motivational coach whisper motivational aspirations when you wake up. Custom agents won’t be available until sometime in 2027.
Both Sonos 27mcp and the custom agents seem to expand the customization and control of a Sonos system beyond what the app and Sonos 27voice is capable of.
All products compatible with the current Sonos app can be controlled with Sonos 27mcp, and everything with a microphone works with Sonos 27voice. When the Sonos custom agents are available, they’ll work everywhere Sonos 27voice is enabled.
There are two new features being added to Sonos Fabric, which is the name given to its whole-home connected system. The wireless Play and Move 2 portable speakers can be used as surround sound speakers in a home theater system. Once in place, the speakers will automatically configure to their new positions and roles as surround speakers without needing to initiate setup in the Sonos app. It’s not possible to use this feature with a single Play or Move 2.
Compatible Sonos headphones will now be included in a Sonos home system and support moving sound between speakers and headphones — the system senses the closest speaker and will pass the audio from it to the headphones. Headphone linking, as Sonos calls it, will roll out as an early access feature on September 29th. Sonos hints that this is just the beginning of added features, but no further details about possible future options were given.
Improvements continue to come to the app, as well, again with feedback from the community, including the Sonos subreddit. Home, system, and search tabs will be added across the bottom of the screen, and a room sort option can be pinned to the top for easier access to a customizable list. There’s a cool feature that calls back to physical audio components: a virtual volume knob, you control with two fingers like you would in the real world. It’s not a major quality of life improvement, but it’s something that adds character and fun, and something I’ll probably use regularly. The new navigation, room sorts, and virtual volume knob starts rolling out on September 8 (although the volume knob will only launch on iOS at that time).
Lockscreen controls for volume and play/pause are also returning to the app, and started rolling out on August 17th. System health views to help troubleshoot issues and presets will roll out at some point later this fall.
It’s not just software announcements, though, as Sonos has two new products coming — the long-rumored Ace Ultra headphones and Beam Ultra soundbar.
The Sonos Ace Ultra are what the original Sonos Ace should have been from the beginning — an integrated part of the Sonos ecosystem. They are built upon Sonos’ Headphone Engine 2, which allows them to use the headphone linking feature rolling out at the same time as the headphones release on September 29th. A button on the headphones allows audio to be passed between a speaker and the headphones. No phone is necessary if it’s out of reach.
They look very similar to the Ace, with what appears to be slightly different button placement on the left ear cup. The Ace Ultra are also a little bigger, with a little more space in the ear cup, and 10 grams heavier. They have newly custom-designed 40mm drivers and 10 microphones for noise control (two more than the Ace) which Sonos claims makes their ANC twice as effective at noise cancellation than the Ace with “the frequencies that really matter,” as Brandon Holley told me. Those frequencies happen to be 65Hz (the general frequency of an HVAC) where the Sonos Ace Ultra are 2.2 times more effective, and 120Hz — the airplane drone range — where they’re 1.8 times better. No information is provided for performance with the chatter you might encounter at the coffee shop, for example.
An adaptive EQ adjusts the sound, compensating for any air leaks in the headphones’ fit due to glasses, jewelry, or hair. It includes both a 3-band and 8-band EQ to customize the sound for your taste. In addition to SBC and AAC codecs, the Ace Ultra supports aptX Adaptive Lossless over Bluetooth, and 16-bit/48kHz high resolution when connected with USB-C.
Battery life has improved by five hours, with the Sonos Ace Ultra offering up to 35 hours of listening with ANC on. A fast charge of three minutes gets an additional three hours of listening time.
Instead of just black and white, the Ace Ultra are also available in a muted blue agave and beige sand color. The headphones release on September 29th for $449.
The Beam Ultra is a completely redesigned 7.1.2 compact soundbar (as opposed to the 5.0 configuration of its predecessor), including two up-firing drivers to support Dolby Atmos spatial audio. The center channel mid-tweeter features a new waveguide, mechanic and acoustic design, and DSP, which includes four levels of AI speech enhancement for clarity.
While the Beam Ultra still has a compact design, to accommodate the additional speakers it is just under four inches longer than the Beam Gen 2. It comes in a black or white matte finish, and will be available for purchase on September 29th for $699.
With the headphones’ deeper integration into the Sonos ecosystem and the addition of up-firing drivers to the Beam Ultra, it looks like Sonos has made some great improvements to already solid products. But I won’t know for sure until I can dig into them for reviews. The app updates — particularly the AI integration — I’m a bit more cautious about. But Sonos is making the right move by rolling out the updates over time, allowing its users to opt in to early access instead of dumping it on everyone at once. This more measured approach could be what wins back the masses.
