We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Sonos has long built a reputation for high-quality networked speakers, all built around its custom music playback ecosystem controlled through its mobile app . At first, Sonos was limited to dedicated music-playback systems, but more recently, the company's product line has expanded to include amps, soundbars, and portable speakers.
There seemed only one major audio frontier was left for Sonos to conquer, and that was headphones. Sure enough, in May 2024, the $449 Sonos Ace headphones were unveiled . A couple weeks later, we got our hands on them for our official Sonos Ace review , giving the cans a nine out of 10 rating and a SlashGear Editor's Choice recommendation badge.
However, for a lot of people, $449 is a bit steep for a pair of headphones, even high-quality ones like the Ace. There are a lot of different headphones at just as many different price points, many of which offer surprisingly good sound at prices a lot lower than $449. So if the release of the Sonos Ace got you interested in buying a new pair of over-ear headphones but don't want to break the bank, let's go over some less expensive alternatives with similar, but not the same, feature sets.
Before we start down our list of competing headphones, it's important to understand that none of them can fully compete with the Sonos Ace. The Sonos headphones have a unique feature that you may not have heard about. Until now, if something was in the Sonos ecosy.
