Sonos Ace Ultra: voice control and five new colors confirmed by FCC filing

Sonos is gearing up to launch a new pair of over-ear headphones called the Ace Ultra, and an FCC filing has revealed the key details ahead of any official announcement. The company has already said new products are coming in September 2026, and the Ace Ultra fits that timeline exactly. For anyone who looked at the original Ace and held off, this upgrade adds the one thing the first model never had: voice control.

The hardware

According to the FCC documents, per Ecoustics FCC analysis, the Ace Ultra keeps the same over-ear design as the 2024 Ace but arrives in five colors — Greige, Shadow Black, Agave, Blush, and Sand. That's a significant step up from the original's two-option palette of Black and Soft White.

The bigger addition is Sonos Voice Control support. The filing indicates the headphones will work with Sonos' own voice assistant and connect to third-party AI services. CEO Tom Conrad has made AI a centerpiece of Sonos' 2026 strategy, describing a push toward "conversational computing and predictive intelligence," according to Yahoo Tech. Sonos Voice Control processes commands locally on the device and does not send audio transcripts to the cloud — a meaningful distinction at a time when smart home privacy is under increasing scrutiny.

The context

The original Ace launched in June 2024 at $449/£449, putting it directly against the AirPods Max ($549) and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra. It wasn't a bad pair of headphones, but the launch was overshadowed by a troubled app redesign that broke features and frustrated existing Sonos customers. TrueCinema — a spatial audio mode that uses room data from a Sonos soundbar — was promised at launch but didn't actually arrive until June 2025, a full year late, as documented by Ecoustics.

The Ace Ultra is, in part, Sonos trying to reset that narrative. Voice control fills the most obvious gap in the original's feature set, and the expanded color range gives it broader retail appeal.

What's still unknown

No price, no confirmed release date, and no detailed specs have been announced. The Ultra will likely land at or above the original's $449/£449 price point. A formal reveal is expected in September — at which point Sonos will need to deliver on its promises more cleanly than it did two years ago. The Sonos official press release for the first Ace set expectations that took a year to fully meet; the Ultra doesn't have the same goodwill buffer to spend.