Sonos Ace vs Sony WH-1000XM6

Which should you buy?

This one is not close, and it is not close in an unusual way: five of the six rows either tie or go to the Sonos, and the row the Sony wins outweighs all of them for most people. That row is weight. 312 grams against 254 is 58 grams of difference, and it sits on your head for as long as you wear it.

The battery row reads as a tie and behaves like one. Both quote thirty hours with cancellation on. Sony’s figure drops to twenty-six on LDAC; Sonos publishes thirty for listening and twenty-four for calls. Whichever you pick, you are choosing between a long day and a long day.

The codec row is a tie for a reason worth stating plainly: both headphones need an Android phone to reach their best format. aptX Lossless on the Ace needs a Snapdragon Sound device; LDAC on the Sony needs an Android device that supports it. On an iPhone both drop to AAC, and the entire row stops mattering.

What remains is the one thing the Sony cannot do: a button moves television audio from a Sonos soundbar to the headphone and back, mid-episode. If you own an Arc, a Beam or a Ray, that is not a specification, it is the reason the headphone exists, and no amount of grams argues it away. If you do not own one, you are paying for a feature you cannot switch on, and you are carrying 58 extra grams while you do it.

One practical note that is not in the table: setting the Ace up requires a Sonos account and the Sonos app. In a house that already runs Sonos that is a non-event. Anywhere else it is a login you did not want for a pair of headphones.