Sonos Finally Extends Its TV Audio Swap Feature to Cheaper Soundbars

When Sonos released its Ace headphones earlier this year, the institution promised it would soon bring extended compatibility for it. At launch, the headphones could lone brace to the Sonos’ astir costly soundbar, the Arc, but present you tin brace them with both generations of the Sonos Beam arsenic good arsenic the entry-level Sonos Ray. This means you don’t person to put successful the $900 Arc to instrumentality vantage of 1 of the main selling points of the Ace which is its TV Audio Swap feature.

Sonos seemed beauteous assured astir its caller headset erstwhile it released them backmost successful May, and ambitiously priced the Ace headphones astatine a whopping $450. While we praised the Ace for its eye-catching plan and airy sound, we critiqued it for being an incomplete product. It featured a TV Audio Swap diagnostic that lone worked with 1 of the company’s soundbars, the Sonos Arc. With the feature, you could property and clasp the Control Key to seamlessly swap audio betwixt the Ace and the Arc.

We weren’t fans of the institution limiting its vertical integration to a $900 soundbar. It’s 1 happening to marque a walled plot astir your services; Apple ever does that with its products. But it’s important to beryllium astute astir it. The integration simply didn’t supply capable worth to beryllium the product, particularly for that price. Though the institution said it would widen enactment for different dependable bars “soon,” that wasn’t a convincing capable crushed for maine to put fractional a expansive backmost then.

The hold of the compatibility to cheaper soundbars yet makes the $450 headphones a spot much usable, due to the fact that it means I tin bask the diagnostic connected the $270 Ray oregon the $500 Beam 2. Sonos is besides working connected its highly problematic app to marque it much businesslike and functional, and I’m looking guardant to seeing however that plays out.