The one (small) thing I’d change about the Sonos Ace headphones

By Phil Nickinson Published July 22, 2024

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.