Nothing Ear (3) vs Sonos Ace: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change?
Nothing Ear (3) or Sonos Ace? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Aisha Bello
The short answer
Nothing Ear (3) at IP54 against Sonos Ace at 312g. Where they part company is who they suit: the Nothing Ear (3) is the one to get if you are buyers who want most of the flagship experience for a third of the price, the Sonos Ace if you are listeners who care about sound quality above features.
Price difference: The Nothing Ear (3) undercuts the Sonos Ace by £320. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | Nothing Ear (3) | Sonos Ace |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £129 | £449 |
| Our score | 4 / 5 | 3 / 5 |
| Type | In-ear, closed | Over-ear, closed |
| Codecs | SBC, AAC, LDAC | SBC, AAC, aptX Lossless |
| Battery | 5h 40m with ANC | 27h with ANC |
| Rating | IP54 | — |
| Weight | — | 312g |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks of daily listening, including commutes, calls and at least one flight. A blind A/B panel of four listeners, level-matched to within 0.5dB, using the same eleven-track reference playlist across every pair.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | Continuous playback at a metered 75dB with noise cancelling on, run to cut-off. |
| Noise cancelling | Attenuation measured against a recorded cabin-noise loop, reported by frequency band rather than as one number. |
| Call quality | Recordings made on a busy street and in a quiet room, judged by the same panel blind. |
| Comfort | Clamping force measured, then a three-hour wear session logged for hot spots. |
| Latency | Audio-to-video offset measured on a fixed test clip over each supported codec. |
We deliberately do not report frequency-response graphs presented without listening notes — they describe a tone, not an experience.
The honest caveat: Fit dominates both isolation and bass response. Our panel has four head shapes; yours is not one of them.
Where the Nothing Ear (3) wins
- LDAC support at a budget price
- A genuinely good companion app EQ
- A properly pocketable case
It also has the edge on the intangibles: in flat EQ they are surprisingly balanced.
Where the Sonos Ace wins
- The best raw sound quality in the category
- AptX Lossless support
- Stainless steel construction
And in day-to-day use, grouping with Sonos speakers does not work at all yet.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The Nothing Ear (3) has one clear weak point — cancellation behind premium sets — and the Sonos Ace has its own: minimal integration with a Sonos system. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The Sonos Ace costs £320 more and scores 1 point higher — roughly £320 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you the best raw sound quality in the category, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the Sony WH-1000XM6 at £399 — it scored 5 out of 5 and suits frequent flyers and commuters. If the budget will not stretch, the AirPods Pro 3 at £229 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the Nothing Ear (3) the thing you adjust to is cancellation behind premium sets, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its type (In-ear, closed) is the part you stop thinking about. The Sonos Ace asks for a different accommodation: minimal integration with a Sonos system, against a type of Over-ear, closed that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
The Nothing Ear (3) is 1 year newer, which usually means 1 more year of security updates at the far end of ownership — the part of the decision nobody weighs at the till and everybody feels at year four. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: cancellation behind premium sets on one side, minimal integration with a Sonos system on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the Nothing Ear (3), which scored 4 out of 5 in our testing against 3 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the Nothing Ear (3) for lDAC support at a budget price. Buy the Sonos Ace for the best raw sound quality in the category.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the audio we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Nothing Ear (3): Battery Draining Faster Than It Should and Nothing Ear (3): Bluetooth Keeps Disconnecting.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
