At a Tuesday press event, Sonos made its biggest swing yet under CEO Tom Conrad to be more than a speaker maker. The company introduced new flagship hardware, renamed its operating system Sonos 27, and said it will let a variety of well known AI assistants connect to its products. The pitch is straightforward. Sonos is selling a whole-home audio system, not just another box on your shelf.
Ace Ultra is the second generation of Sonos headphones, featuring redesigned audio components and stronger noise cancellation than the first Ace. Battery life now reaches a rated 35 hours, up from 30, and the battery is user replaceable. The magnetic ear pads remain easy to swap if they get worn out.
The bigger shift is how they talk to the rest of your setup. Unlike the original Ace, the new model includes Wi Fi so it plugs right into the Sonos platform. Press a button and whatever is playing on your Sonos system hops to the headphones. Press again and it moves back to your speakers. If a turntable is wired into a Sonos system, you can listen to your records on Ace Ultra anywhere in the house. As Sonos' vice president of software, Sidharth Patel put it, "Think of it as like wearing an Era 100 on your ears: There's Wi-Fi on your head."
Beam Ultra answers a common request by adding dedicated up firing speakers for more immersive Dolby Atmos. Sonos says the bar now packs nine drivers and produces richer bass than the second generation Beam. A new AI Speech Enhancement feature offers four levels to sharpen dialogue, and the internal audio design was reworked to make voices easier to hear.
Brandon Holley, interim hardware lead, said the center channel was reengineered "from the ground up," and pointed out that components including the driver, its physical engineering, DSP, and AI were "all working together to provide a really strong dialogue." Beam Ultra is priced at $699, a $200 increase over the second generation Beam at $499. Sonos will keep selling the older Beam, and the original Ace remains at $399.
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Sonos 27 is the new name for the company's platform OS, and its voice control is now called "Sonos 27voice." The assistant now handles music and smart home commands and can also respond to general knowledge questions. Patel said there is a built in filter that lets the company decline certain requests "if someone's asking for something that's not really something that we want to expose."
The platform is opening up to outside AI assistants, with OpenAI's ChatGPT specifically mentioned, and Sonos is expanding its own assistant using a new in house large language model. Sonos expects many people will use Sonos 27voice for audio playback and connect to options such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Amazon.com Inc.'s Alexa+ to handle other tasks. The company says it will not give any of them special treatment, similar to its approach with music services. In the coming months, Sonos plans to allow users to build custom AI agents, each running its own model and voice.
Home theater gets new software tricks too. A capability called Sonos Fabric lets a pair of Move 2 or Play wireless speakers function as rear surrounds when they share a room with a soundbar. The system uses high frequency sound to figure out each speaker's location and automatically assign roles. Move a Play to another room and it drops out of home theater mode and behaves like a normal speaker again.
Older hardware on the S2 platform remains in the mix. Sonos 27 will reach a wide range of past products, and Holley noted, "Our first voice speaker we ever shipped will support this." Patel said engineers have revisited code on older devices to reduce memory use. There are limits. The first generation Sonos Move isn't usable as a portable surround because its connectivity differs from Play and Move 2. And it's still not possible to assign speakers as fixed front left or right surround channels. Patel said the idea is under exploration and third party software can do it today, but "it doesn't meet our bar," adding that "we're building infrastructure to get us there the right way."
Sonos says it will rename the OS annually, so Sonos 27 becomes Sonos 28 next year. An improved navigation experience that has been in public beta for months will begin rolling out to all customers on Sept. 8. Preorders start Tuesday, and the Ace Ultra headphones and Beam Ultra soundbar are slated to ship on Sept. 29.
What does this mean for your money? Sonos is steering toward an open, whole-home platform that folds AI into the experience and keeps older gear relevant. For existing owners, Sept. 8 marks the start of a broader app refresh, and Sept. 29 is when the new hardware arrives. If you are weighing an upgrade, the pricing and compatibility map show how Sonos is trying to layer new features without stranding long time customers.
