Sonos Announces Sonos 27 OS, Sonos Beam Ultra, and Sonos Ace Ultra

It’s a big day for Sonos and its fans after two years of the company playing it safe in the wake of the Sonosgate scandal: The smart speaker announced a next-generation OS for its products called Sonos 27 that lets customers control their systems with the AI of their choice and two major new hardware products, the Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and the Sonos Ace Ultra headphones.

“Twenty years ago, we made a bet that the rest of the industry is only now arriving at, [that] a home deserves an audio operating system made just for it,” Sonos CEO Tom Conrad said. “We built our system around a shared love of music and the belief that nothing sets the mood like great sound. Sonos 27 takes that further, bringing acoustic engineering, adaptable software, intelligence and design together in a way only Sonos can. This is just the start of what our audio operating system can do.”

Sonos 27 will be made available as a free software update for all Sonos products compatible with the S2 platform. It provides AI control through multiple AI assistants and agents, new ways to move sound around a home, and a more intuitive app. Sonos is also introducing its new music and mood assistant, called Sonos 27voice, and the Sonos 27mcp, which lets customers connect to any outside AI assistant or agent. In the near future, it will also add support for Sonos Custom Agents, which will let customers create their own agents through the system, each with its own model, persona, and voice.

There’s more: A new service called Sonos Fabric will enable Sonos products to sense each other and adapt accordingly. There will be two features initially, Headphone linking that enables the new Sonos Ace Ultra headphones to connect to home Sonos systems, and Sonos Positioning Technology for sensing speaker locations using high-frequency sounds and then changing its role within a system based on that location; among other things, this will help Sonos automatically configure Move 2 or Sonos Play speakers as rear surrounds in a home theater setup when they’re moved into position.

As for the new hardware, both are flagship products. The Sonos Beam Ultra retains the compact form factor of previous Beam soundbars while adding true 7.1.2 channel Dolby Atmos support, warmer bass, and clearer dialogue thanks to a redesigned center channel and four levels of AI speech enhancement. Sonos Ace Ultra is a premium pair of over-the-ear headphones with an internally designed 40 mm driver, adaptive active noise cancellation (ANC) powered by ten microphones, and up to 35 hours of battery life, and it’s the first Sonos headphone that can connect directly into the Sonos system.

“Sonos Beam Ultra and Sonos Ace Ultra are physical manifestations of what we mean when we say ‘sounds like Sonos’,” Mr. Conrad said. “They combine next-gen innovation, acoustic design, and audio engineering into something only decades of learning in real homes can create. But the real magic happens when they take advantage of the system around them to fit your mood, whether that’s the awe of movie night, or the joy of carrying its soundtrack into your headphones the next morning.”

Sonos Beam Ultra costs $699, while the Sonos Ace Ultra is $449. Both are available for preorder today and both will be available on September 29. Sonos 27 will roll out with new app navigation on September 8 alongside Sonos 27mcp in early access and portable surrounds for Move 2 and Sonos Play. Sonos says it will provide full details about all the software features soon.