New Sonos Ace Ultra headphones have a genius linking feature I can’t live without

A decade ago, when my daughter was still very little, I had a genius idea: I was going to watch content on my TV, but I’d use my headphones instead of speakers so I wouldn’t wake the baby. The key, or so I thought, would be the ability to quickly switch from one to the other as needed, as watching an entire movie with headphones can be a little tiresome. 

As simple as that sounds, it didn’t really work. My TV didn’t support Bluetooth, and a wired connection required a very long cable that constantly got in the way. Later, TVs started getting Bluetooth, but connecting headphones always required an extra step, took a little too long, and the sound often lagged behind what was happening on screen. 

A few days ago, Sonos came up with a solution: The new Sonos Ace Ultra headphones can take over the audio from a compatible Sonos soundbar or speaker connected to the TV (in my case, Sonos provided a Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar). It's called headphone linking.

For the intricacies of that setup, and the performance of the headphones, I’ll point you to our detailed review of the Sonos Ace Ultra.

How Sonos headphone linking works

Clicking and holding the volume button on the Sonos Ace Ultra headphones magically switches the audio from the soundbar to the headphones. And it wasn't just regular stereo; I immediately got the whole, immersive surround experience in the headphones, complete with head tracking so the sounds always came from the right spot.

Mashable Light Speed

(Note: The original Sonos Ace had a similar feature called TV Swap, but headphone linking expands this to cover any sound source, be it TV audio or music.)

If I clicked that same button again, the audio would be sent back to the soundbar. I could also control what’s playing through Sonos’s app, but the ability to do it with a click of a button was the key part of the experience. 

Immersing yourself in a game or a movie is nice, but you probably don’t want to be cut off from all sounds in the household, especially if you have a small child. For that purpose, Sonos Ace Ultra’s Aware mode did the trick; I could (quietly!) listen to the sounds coming from my TV, but I also heard when someone called or rang the doorbell. 

All of this sounds amazingly simple, but it's really not. Sonos had to add WiFi support to its headphones, as using Bluetooth alone isn’t enough to fix the occasional lag and connection issues. 

In my testing, Sonos headphone linking didn’t always work perfectly, though sometimes it was my home WiFi to blame. Sometimes, the switching wouldn’t work until I mashed the button a few times. For the feature to work as intended, you need to have your entire system connected to the same WiFi network, and that includes the TV, the soundbar, the headphones, and your phone. That’s fairly typical in a Sonos household, so it wasn’t a big issue for me. And it’s worth noting that Sonos marks this feature as “early access,” and points out that it’s opt-in, provided as is, and subject to changes in the future. 

Still, I’m happy to report that I finally got the feature I wanted all those years ago, and my family is happy that they don’t have to hear, to quote my daughter, “whatever weird stuff dad always listens to.”