Sonos unveiled two new flagship audio products on September 1: the $449 Ace Ultra headphones and the $699 Beam Ultra soundbar, alongside a new version of its operating system, Sonos 27.
Beam Ultra packs nine drivers, including two upward-firing units, into a compact form factor for true 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos sound, plus four levels of AI Speech Enhancement and a Night Sound mode. Ace Ultra gets a new Sonos-designed 40mm driver, adaptive noise cancellation with ten microphones, and up to 35 hours of battery life with ANC on, five more than the original Ace.
The bigger shift is software: Sonos 27 introduces "Sonos 27mcp," which connects the speaker system to external AI assistants including OpenAI's ChatGPT via the Model Context Protocol, alongside an upgraded in-house voice assistant, Sonos 27voice. Preorders for both devices opened September 1, with general availability set for September 29; Sonos 27 begins rolling out to a decade of existing S2-platform hardware on September 8.