2 minute read
Images of the much-anticipated Sonos Ace wireless headphones have started circulating online following a German reseller prematurely posting a listing.
To be honest, we're sometimes surprised that more products don't leak online more often. Given the amount of different companies in the chain that have to prep sites and wrestle with sometimes opaque CMSes to set pre-publication dates, the likelihood of accidents happening for high-profile products seems high. And that's without factoring in people deliberately leaking material or actively trying to uncover information ahead of time.
The pre-release publication of the new Sonos Ace wireless headphones by German authorized Sonos parts dealer Schuurman looks to have been a genuine mistake. They appeared online overnight, and the pages relating to them have been unpublished pretty rapidly since, but by then the damage was done, the screengrabs taken, and, courtesy of The Verge and elsewhere, the cat was well and truly out of the bag.
Partly that's because there's a lot of interest in them. Sonos has been teasing these since the end of last year, and its website is currently dominated by the following image.
And it's not just users that are looking forward to their release. The company has been in the doldrums recently as demand for its admittedly lovely but pricey speakers has weakened. There is an earnings call scheduled for later today at 21.00 UTC, and presumably the Sonos Aces were going to be unveiled as part of that.
Sonos Ace: what we know so far
So, what do we know from the Schuurman leak (which, by the way, was corroborated in several ways, all now silenced)?
First, there's the price. The website listed them at a little over €400, or $430 at current exchange rates, which seems to be largely in line with expectations. Schuurman also listed some ear cushion replacements (€35), which is always a useful thing to know might be available in the future.
Second, availability looks like being next month.
And third, the 'phones ship with a decent looking travel case, two cables (a USB-C and a headphone cable for charging and tethered listening), and a mysterious black box that's already the subject of much speculation. It could be as simple as cable storage, or as interesting as a wireless transmitter that will connect to old legacy equipment. At least we're going to find out something in that earnings call later on...
What's in the box, eh? Pic: Schuurman/Sonos
Schuurman also managed to spill the beans on the new Sonos Roam 2, an updated version of the company's original Roam portable speaker. It looks identical, but presumably will have a better battery life, which was long a bête noire of the first units.
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