The Sonos Ace could be in for a price cut, with a higher-end model reportedly in the pipeline. Bloomberg reports that Sonos is considering dropping the Ace price by $50 to $400, with a higher-specced model of the Ace to launch at the same price as the original.
The report says that the firm hasn’t yet decided whether to move forward with this plan.
The plan is reportedly codenamed Roundhouse. There’s no mention of what specs a higher-end Ace would entail.
The Ace launched earlier this year, but sales have reportedly been disappointing, with Sonos slashing its production run to just 10 per cent of its original projection of 1 million units.
Not helping the Ace was the redesigned Sonos app, which launched at the same time. This was full of bugs and missing some key features, causing a huge backlash against the company. Sonos is still cleaning up the mess now, months later – though according to a recent blog post by CEO Patrick Spence, 90 per cent of the missing features have now been restored.
Regardless of the app, the Ace were a disappointment, scoring three stars in our review. Their sound quality is inferior to that of cheaper rivals like the Sony WH-1000XM5, and they launched missing some key features (though these have started to arrive via software updates).
Sonos recently announced the Arc Ultra soundbar as a follow-up to its multi-Award-winning Arc. It goes on sale next week – Sonos will be hoping it can start turning around what has been a bad year for the company in terms of reputational damage. It has already reportedly delayed the launch of two of its products, one of which is its first ever streaming box.
Would a $50 discount be enough to help the Ace sell? Or is the competition too fierce in the wireless headphones space? Let us know in the comments.
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