This could be our first look at the premium Sonos Ace Ultra headphones

Premium wireless headphones are already a pretty crowded club. Sony has spent years making its WH-1000X series an easy recommendation, JBL has plenty of premium options of its own, and Apple has the AirPods Max for anyone firmly planted in its ecosystem. Sonos only joined that fight with the Ace a couple of years ago, but it apparently isn’t content with stopping there. A new leak (via WinFuture) suggests the company is already preparing an even more premium pair of headphones called the Sonos Ace Ultra, and we may have just gotten our first proper look at them.

For now, there aren’t any juicy specifications to dig into just yet, but the pictures reveal enough changes to suggest this isn’t simply the existing Ace with an “Ultra” slapped onto its name. At first glance, though, you’d be forgiven for thinking exactly that. The Ace Ultra looks a lot like the Sonos Ace, with the same clean and understated design. Look a little closer, however, and the new headphones appear noticeably chunkier. The earcups seem deeper, making the entire pair look a little more substantial than the current model.

Making headphones bigger isn’t exactly the kind of upgrade that gets me excited on its own, but I’m curious about why Sonos needs that extra room. A larger battery would be an obvious possibility, as would changes to the drivers or other audio hardware. Maybe Sonos has simply added more padding for comfort. We don’t know yet, so that’s all speculation, but I’d certainly hope there’s something useful hiding inside those beefier headphones.

The differences don’t stop at the size. The microphone grilles appear considerably shorter, and Sonos seems to have shuffled around some of the controls and openings on the earcups. There’s also one particularly interesting addition on the right side: what looks like a new sliding switch. We don’t know what it does yet, but a physical switch could be useful. Imagine quickly flicking between noise cancelation and transparency modes without hunting for the right button. Whether Sonos has something like that in mind remains to be seen, but the new control at least gives us something to keep an eye on when the full feature set is revealed.

Sonos doesn’t appear to be getting particularly adventurous with colors, either. Based on the leaked marketing images, black and white seem to be the options for now. The much bigger mystery is what actually makes the Ace Ultra worthy of that name. The Sonos Ace launched at $449, so we’re already talking about an expensive pair of headphones. If Ultra also means an Ultra-sized price tag, Sonos is going to have to offer considerably more than a chunkier design and a new switch.

That’s especially true when buyers at this price have excellent options from Sony, JBL, and Apple. Better ANC, longer battery life, improved microphones for calls, smarter device switching, or a noticeable jump in sound quality could all make the Ace Ultra considerably more tempting. For now, the leaked images leave the most important questions unanswered. The Ace Ultra looks familiar, only a little bigger and with a few intriguing changes around the earcups. What Sonos has managed to squeeze inside that extra space will ultimately decide whether the Ultra badge actually means something, or whether it simply gives Sonos an excuse to charge more.