Sonos 27 Launches With Beam Ultra and Ace Ultra: Features, Price

Sonos has released Sonos 27, a major update to the software that runs every Sonos speaker, alongside two new flagship products built to take advantage of it: the Beam Ultra soundbar and the Sonos Ace Ultra headphones. Together they mark Sonos’s clearest push yet toward treating the whole home, not just individual speakers, as one connected audio system.

Sonos CEO Tom Conrad framed the update as the next step in a two-decade bet that a home needed an audio operating system built specifically for it, rather than a collection of separate connected speakers. Sonos 27 is free for existing Sonos S2 products, though several of its headline features are tied to the new hardware specifically.

What’s new in Sonos 27

The update centers on four changes: AI control through multiple assistants, a new system-level capability called Sonos Fabric that lets speakers sense each other and adapt roles automatically, a redesigned mobile app, and the two new hardware launches. Sonos is positioning all four as pieces of the same underlying platform rather than separate updates bundled together.

AI control, including a direct ChatGPT integration

Sonos is introducing two new ways to control a system with AI. Sonos 27voice is the company’s own assistant, built specifically around music and mood rather than general-purpose queries. Sonos 27mcp takes a more open approach: it connects any outside AI assistant or agent to a Sonos system through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for linking AI tools to outside applications, rather than locking control to one partner. OpenAI is the first confirmed integration, letting ChatGPT users play music, adjust volume, or move audio between rooms without leaving their conversation. Sonos hosts a public MCP server at mcp.ws.sonos.com/mcp, and the company says any MCP-capable AI can connect once a user authorizes it — there is no scheduling or autonomous background behavior built in, and Sonos 27mcp itself is free to use, though an active subscription to whatever music service is playing is still required.

Sonos also previewed Sonos Custom Agents, a future feature that will let users build their own agents within the system, each with its own model, persona, and voice. No release date has been given for this specifically.

Sonos Fabric: speakers that sense each other

Sonos Fabric is the underlying system capability that lets Sonos products detect each other and change behavior based on the moment, and it powers two new features this fall. Headphone linking, launching in Early Access, connects the Sonos Ace Ultra directly to a Sonos system, letting a listener push whatever is playing on a speaker to their headphones with one press, and pull it back with another — no phone required to be in range. Sonos Positioning Technology uses high-frequency sound to detect a speaker’s physical location and reassign its role automatically; the first use case is portable surrounds, which lets a compatible portable speaker become a rear surround channel the instant it’s moved into position, available to Sonos Move 2 and Sonos Play owners.

A redesigned app

Sonos 27app reworks navigation around three tabs — Home, System, and Search — with native swipe gestures on both iOS and Android and the option to pin favorite rooms to the top. iPhone owners get a few exclusive additions: full playback control from the lock screen and Dynamic Island without opening the app, and a virtual volume knob controlled by twisting two fingers on the screen. Presets let a user save a specific combination of speakers, content, and volume as a single tap they can return to later, and Siri Shortcuts support lets Sonos actions be triggered by voice or built into iOS automations. Sonos says the new navigation was shaped directly by feedback from the Sonos community, including from Reddit.

Sonos Beam Ultra

Beam Ultra keeps the compact form of the standard Beam but adds genuine 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos surround sound, powered by nine Class-D amplifiers driving five tweeters and four low-profile woofers — four more drivers than the standard Beam. Two upward-firing tweeters handle spatial audio height effects, a forward-firing mid tweeter anchors dialogue, and two side-firing horn-loaded tweeters create stereo separation. AI Speech Enhancement offers four levels of dialogue clarity, and a separate Night Sound mode reduces loud peaks while boosting quiet passages for late-night viewing.

It measures 2.56 inches tall, 29.53 inches wide, and 4.1 inches deep, weighs 6.35 lb, and comes in black or white matte finishes. Connectivity covers WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, HDMI eARC/ARC (cable included), USB-C, and support for Apple AirPlay 2. Sonos is also highlighting the soundbar’s environmental footprint: 24% recycled materials overall, nearly half its plastic replaced with recycled alternatives, 25% lower idle power draw than the standard Beam, and packaging made from 96% renewable, FSC-certified materials. Beam Ultra is priced at $699 / £699 / €699 / A$1099.

Sonos Ace Ultra

Sonos Ace Ultra is the company’s new flagship over-ear headphone, built around a custom 40mm driver per ear cup supporting spatial audio and lossless audio via Qualcomm aptX Lossless over a supported device or USB-C connection, with Dolby Atmos support for compatible content. Active Noise Cancellation is handled by a ten-microphone array that Sonos rates at roughly double the ANC performance of the original Sonos Ace at the frequencies that matter most — 2.2x at 65Hz and 1.8x at 120Hz specifically — with a one-press Aware mode to let outside sound back in. Adaptive EQ measures the seal and fit of each ear cup in real time and adjusts sound accordingly, on top of manual 3-band or 8-band EQ control in the app.

Battery life is rated at up to 35 hours with ANC on, drawing from a 1,060mAh cell, with rapid charging delivering up to three hours of listening from a 3-minute charge. Ace Ultra is the first headphone built on Sonos’s Headphone Engine 2, which adds dedicated WiFi hardware and secure credential storage so the headphones can connect and authenticate directly with a Sonos system — this is what makes headphone linking possible. Bluetooth 6.0 covers wireless streaming from any Bluetooth device with SBC, AAC, and aptX Adaptive Lossless codec support. The headphones weigh 0.71 lb, come in Black, Soft White, Agave, or Sand finishes, and are priced at $449 / £399 / €449 / A$699.

Availability and pricing

Software rolls out first: the new app navigation, Sonos 27mcp in Early Access, and portable surrounds all begin rolling out September 8, 2026. Beam Ultra and Sonos Ace Ultra become available everywhere on September 29, 2026, alongside headphone linking as an Early Access feature exclusive to Ace Ultra. Sonos has published pricing for the US, UK, EU, and Australia; UAE and wider GCC pricing has not yet been confirmed.

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