Skip to main content

Speaker specialist Sonos reportedly plans to launch its own line of headphones

In what would be a major departure from its speaker-oriented product lineup, Sonos may be planning to launch its own headphones, according to a Bloomberg report that cites sources who asked not to be identified.

The sources went on to say that they believe Sonos is targeting an approximate $300 price point, which would put it in direct competition with brands like Apple’s Beats, as well as similar models from Sony, Bose, and others.

Recommended Videos

If true, the move would be consistent with a message Sonos sent to shareholders in its fourth-quarter letter, which outlined the company’s plans for 2019 and specifically referenced Sonos moving outside the home:

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Additionally, we realize that while approximately 50 percent of listening happens in the home, the other 50 percent happens outside the home. So, to be the leading sound experience company, we need to continue to offer differentiated listening experiences in the home while extending our platform and products to all the places and spaces our customers listen to the fantastic breadth of audio content available on demand today. In FY2019, we plan to push our boundaries by investing resources to make the experience of Sonos outside the home a reality.

The real question is how will Sonos enable these rumored cans to access the full Sonos experience when customers aren’t at home? Providing access to subscription streaming services should be easy — our smartphones can already do this effortlessly. Getting access to our private music collections, sitting at home on our PCs, or on NAS drives, would be a little harder, though not impossible. Plex and other media server products can already do this, even if it sometimes takes a bit of port tweaking on the part of the user.

Assuming Sonos figures out how to keep its incredibly intuitive and effective user experience consistent both inside and outside the home, this will be a big deal for its customers. Currently, the only way to listen to Sonos-managed music using headphones is to plug in to the headphone jack on an older, first-generation Play:5 speaker (this was removed on the current model), or use the headphone jack on an A/V or hi-fi amplifier that has access to Sonos via a Sonos Connect. If you want that experience without wires, you need to hook up a Bluetooth stereo gateway to one of those headphone ports — hardly the kind of simple and convenient experience the Sonos brand is known for.

Another unknown is connectivity. Sonos has always said it prefers Wi-Fi over Bluetooth for the greater stability, range, and bandwidth that Wi-Fi provides. But would it use Wi-Fi to connect a pair of headphones? Wi-Fi is much hungrier for power that Bluetooth, and it’s worth noting that no Sonos product so far has been made available with a battery pack option. If Bluetooth is used — which just makes sense — it will need to connect to the Sonos network of devices through some kind of Bluetooth gateway. This could easily be a phone or tablet, but Sonos has so far refused to give its app the ability to actually play the music it controls. Using the app as the source of the headphones’ audio would change this model, and potentially open the platform to any other third-party headphones too.

So for now, there are way more questions than answers. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to think that Sonos is beginning to think outside of the boxes that are our homes — it’s always been a little frustrating that there’s no way to keep using the Sonos app once you step outside your front door. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out more.

Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…
Sony’s ULT Power Sound headphones and speakers go big on powerful bass
Sony ULT Wear and ULT Field 1.

Sony has announced a line of wireless audio products under a new sub-brand called ULT Power Sound (or ULT for short). They look familiar because they are the next-gen versions of three of Sony's existing product lines: Extra Bass headphones, portable Bluetooth speakers, and tower-shaped party speakers.

They'll all be available this spring, but Sony hasn't given exact timing for release dates.

Read more
Sonos’ $449 Wi-Fi headphones delayed by software bug
Close up of Sonos logo on a Sonos Arc soundbar.

Sonos' widely expected Wi-Fi-enabled headphones are facing a delayed release due to a software bug according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," Gurman said that the new product, which goes by the internal code name Duke, won't be available until at least the first half of June, a month later than the company had reportedly planned.

At the core of the delay is a problem with the way the headphones connect to available Wi-Fi networks. The report claims that the bug was discovered during production validation testing, which is often scheduled two weeks in advance of the start of mass production.

Read more
Sonos says new product (probably headphones) coming by fall
Close up of Sonos logo on a Sonos Arc soundbar.

Sonos said today in its earnings call for the first quarter of its 2024 fiscal year that it will announce — and ship — a new product in a new category in the third quarter. While CEO Patrick Spence didn't shed anymore light as to what the new product will be, it's widely expected to be headphones.

Sonos' fiscal third quarter spans April through June. (A previous version of this story said July through September. We regret the error.) The company previously said the new product would land in the second (fiscal) half of the year, and today's announcement tightens that window to late summer.

Read more