Sonos readies Ultra headphones and a voice assistant to become a home remote

Sonos is preparing for a busy fall and is gearing up for the Ultra headphones and a proprietary voice assistant that could turn the devices into a home remote, Bloomberg reported. The Ultra is a potential heir to the Home (Gen 2) and will receive a comprehensive AI upgrade to its proprietary voice assistant. CEO Tom Konrad told analysts that AI will be the company’s comeback focus after a year that included hardware launches such as Play and Amp Multi and tiered app updates. The aim is to narrow the gap with Google’s Gemini and the upgraded Siri that Apple is expected to embed in the next HomePod.

The current version of the Ultra, launched in 2024, drew criticism for limited integration with the broader Sonos ecosystem: it lacks access to Sonos Voice Control and can stream audio only to selected soundbars. If the Ultra resolves those issues, it could serve as a portable voice remote, turning on a Philips Hue light on the lower floor while the user works at a home office, or routing music from the headphones to speakers in the living room and kitchen with a command such as “I’m going to cook.” The concept is to make the headphones an inseparable part of the home system so users would not need a different brand’s headphones even if they own a single Sonos speaker.

In its present form, Sonos Voice Control is limited to playback, volume and room selection, basic queries such as weather and timers, and music searches by artist, saved playlist or genre. Reliability drops as requests become more specific. Compared with assistants that understand context, maintain multi-turn conversations and retrieve general information, the gap is stark. Sonos must close that gap for its speakers and soundbars to stay relevant in a market saturated with devices that run large language models locally or in the cloud.

FCC filings confirm the existence of the Ultra and another soundbar-class device, but no official launch date, technical specifications or performance metrics for the upgraded voice assistant have been disclosed. It is also unclear whether the upgrade will arrive as a software update for existing units or require new hardware with a more powerful NPU. Until Sonos provides concrete details, the vision of controlling the home through the headphones remains a concept rather than a signed roadmap.