There’s a lot to like about the Sonos Ace headphones. No set of cans is perfect, of course. But they sound really good. The fit is wonderful. The weight is … well, not quite weightless, but very close. And the Sonos app is slowly improving. They’re a good gateway drug into the addiction that is Sonos speakers.
But after a handful of flights with the Sonos Ace, one thing has become plenty clear to me: I’d love for the Sonos Ace headphones’ case to have just one extra feature.
The case itself actually is kind of interesting, insofar as a headphone case goes. It’s a proper case, unlike the abomination that comes with the Apple AirPods Max. And the Sonos case is impressively thin. That’s important since the headphones don’t fold onto themselves like, say, the Beats Studio Pro. So while it takes up a good number of square inches in total, at least it’s a pretty svelte design.
And I’m willing to overlook the problem my brain has with the Sonos name and logo being an uppercase palindrome. That is, it reads the same left to right as it does right to left. And so as often as not, I tend to pick up the case the wrong way for a righty and have to flip it around to get things unzipped. (That’s admittedly a very small personal problem.)
This is really what I’d call a frequent flier pro tip. I want to be able to have my headphones out of my bag so that I’m not digging for them at my seat when I should instead be putting my bag overhead (hopefully — I need my legroom) and not holding up the folks behind me waiting to take their seats. And I want to have both hands free as I’m getting on board. (Maybe that’s an old sailor thing. One hand for me, one for the boat. Or plane.)
But the Sonos case doesn’t allow for that. There’s no loop for a D-ring or carabiner. And so I have to have them in hand.
Again — not a deal breaker. Just a small thing that could easily be made a little better.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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