Earlier in the month, Sonos announced the Beam Ultra soundbar and Ace Ultra headphones, alongside its Sonos 27. At the time, the company had already revealed the prices and availability dates of both products. Today, the company had a launch event for those products for members of the media to experience what they can do in person. In case you were wondering, no, the launch dates and prices have not been changed. In the meantime, you can place your pre-order for both at the Sonos Concept Store within The Starhill KL or the website of its official distributor, TC Acoustic.
Sonos Ace Ultra
Going in the same order as before, the Ace Ultra builds upon what made the first Ace good, now featuring 35 hours of use with ANC on, with that feature being handled by 10 microphones in total. Sound is delivered by 40mm drivers, and you can further tune what you hear with the eight-band EQ. As you’d expect from a Sonos product, the Ace Ultra can link to a nearby speaker and have it play what’s currently being played through the headphones.
Seeing them in person, the company shows off that the case that comes with every Sonos Ace Ultra will have its lining match the colour of the headphones themselves. Speaking of which, the four available options are still Black, White, the brownish Sand, and the green-blue Agave. Inside, you also have a small, magnetically attached pouch which holds the USB-C cable, as well as the USB-C to 3.5mm cable. The entire package is priced at RM2,299 and will be available from 29 September onwards.
Sonos Beam Ultra
As we’ve previously reported, the Beam Ultra features nine drivers, including two up-firing ones, for 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos sound. Sonos says that the soundbar delivers warmer bass and clearer dialogue, with four levels of what’s called AI Speech Enhancement. Then there’s also Night Sound, for when you’re ready to wind down for the day.
During the launch, we asked a brand rep if the Speech Enhancement can be used to affect music rather than just movies or TV shows, and we were told that the feature works exclusively for what’s shown on screen. In a roundabout way, you can use this to further customise your music listening experience, provided you have your music streamer or player of choice being displayed on the connected TV.
Unlike the headphones, the Sonos Beam Ultra is only available in Black and White. As before, its pricing and availability have not changed since it was first revealed earlier in the month. This means a price of RM4,199, with availability starting 29 September.
Sonos 27
The software component that ties it all together, Sonos 27 is the brand’s operating system, through which the Sonos 27mcp (Model Context Protocol) runs. As announced previously, this allows users to control Sonos products via AI chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT. During the demo, the company showed that you can not only ask it to play certain music genres, but also set the volume at which they are played, all via natural language prompts. If you tied it to, say, Spotify and don’t have a premium account, ads will still trickle through.
