Remember when the rumour mill for Sonos's first wireless headphones was churning, and the one thing that dedicated fans were all hoping for – a feature that experts all thought was pretty much guaranteed – was a seamless way to play music between the new Sonos headphones and existing Sonos wireless speakers in your home?
After all, Sonos was famed for its seamless multi-room ecosystem spanning various-sized wireless speakers and soundbars that could all be interconnected to stream music. Well, the Sonos Ace arrived and, to the disappointment of nearly everyone, the headphones didn't feature wi-fi or a way to hand music off to and from any of its many wireless speakers such as the Sonos One or Era 300; they are only compatible with specific Sonos soundbars for a similar TV Audio Swap feature. It felt rather limiting considering the scope of Sonos's wireless ecosystem and ambitions.
Sony, however, has surprised us with exactly the feature we all wanted Sonos to have. During the launch of its new LinkBuds Fit and LinkBuds Open wireless earbuds earlier this week, Sony also revealed a new LinkBuds Speaker. It's a small Bluetooth speaker that sits on a charging dock, but its party trick is an 'Auto Switch' feature that offers "seamless playback" between the speaker and earbuds.
How does it work? We haven't tested this out for ourselves yet – review samples are incoming – but Sony says it is designed to be genuinely seamless and doesn't involve any tapping, selecting an option in the app or changing modes. The Sony website states: In wireless range, the LinkBuds Speaker can pick playback up instantly once LinkBuds earbuds are replaced in their charging case. Heading out? Playback switches back to the earbuds when they're removed again from their case.
It sounds like it's simply a case of putting the earbuds in their charging case or popping them out, and the music switches between the buds and the speaker accordingly. If it really works that easily without any glitches and as seamlessly as, say, when you hand off playing Apple Music tracks from an iPhone to a HomePod, then Sony is on to a big crowd-pleasing win.
The fact Sony has been able to do this without any fancy implementation of wi-fi or other tech, and stuck with Bluetooth is interesting. (And makes us wonder why, considering Sonos's Era speakers have Bluetooth, a similar effort wasn't possible with the Sonos Ace Bluetooth headphones?) We imagine the buds and speaker will have to be within Bluetooth range of each other (no proximity sensor was mentioned in our press briefing), with the hand-off happening as snappily as Multipoint Bluetooth works, for instance. You'll need to set up the speaker and buds in the app/smartphone to start with – as you would when pairing any new Bluetooth earbuds or speaker to your smart device – but after that, it should be plain sailing.
Of course, this is just one new Sony speaker that has this feature (rather than a full ecosystem like Sonos or even Apple), but the earbuds compatible with it aren't restricted to the new LinkBuds. Sony has confirmed that the first-gen LinkBuds S, the WF-1000XM5 premium earbuds and WH-1000XM5 over-ear headphones can all be used with this speaker to take advantage of this auto-switching feature, which is great news. The over-ear headphones have an "alternative way of switching" as there isn't a charging case to shut them in or take them out of; we will have to find out for ourselves what this other way is.
It's not a pricey feature to get, either. The Sony LinkBuds speaker costs just £140 / $180 – that's cheaper than any Sonos speaker on the market now – while the new LinkBuds Fit/Open buds are yours for £179 / $200. The Sonos Ace are £449 / $449. We can't comment on the new Sony speaker's sound quality until we test the unit for ourselves, but even if it sounds half-decent, and if this auto-switching works like a dream... we're in.
Is this a feature that people really want? Sony states a survey was done where the 'young generation' said they wanted the ability to listen to music all the time, across devices, without having to faff about with changing devices on their phone every time. While I no longer fall under Sony's 'young generation' target audience, I similarly use wireless headphones on the move and Bluetooth speakers (and radio) at home. And more often than not, I continue listening to the same playlist or podcast on my headphones when I leave the house as I was listening to at home. Making that process even easier is a good thing in my books.
I didn't have Sony cracking this particular nut before Sonos, but if Sony can make it work as seamlessly as it is suggesting with its new LinkBuds range, then it's a simple, user-friendly feature that I can get behind – and I hope that it could be implemented in many future products too.
MORE:
I think Sony’s latest launch raises some big questions about the WF-1000XM6 wireless earbuds
Sony’s new LinkBuds range features two pairs of wireless earbuds and a surprise addition
Read our Sonos Ace review
