Sonos' headphones are extremely Sonos

Today on the flagship podcast of audio over Wi-Fi: 03:02 - The Verge’s Chris Welch shares his review of Sonos's Ace headphones. Sonos Ace review: was it worth it? Sonos CEO Patrick Spence addresses the company’s divisive app redesign 28:58 - MoviePass, MovieCrash director Muta’Ali and MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes discuss what went wrong with the MoviePass subscription service and how that story was documented in the film. MoviePass, MovieCrash review: a damning account of corporate greed MoviePass is using you to ruin the movies 56:47 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy answers a question from The Vergecast Hotline about smart home gadgets for renters. Home Assistant: Setting up the Aqara FP2 Presence Sensor - Derek Seaman's Tech Blog Yale launches its first retrofit smart lock — the Yale Approach with Wi-Fi The new Yale Keypad Touch brings fingerprint unlocking to August smart locks Aqara kick-starts its first Matter-over-Thread smart lock with a promise of Home Key support The new Yale Keypad Touch brings fingerprint unlocking to August smart locks Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of audio over wifi. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am currently waiting on my breakfast order. That doesn't sound like big news, but as I've mentioned on the show before, whenever I get to a new city, I immediately go looking for like a handful of staples. Really great cup of coffee, really great donut, really great pizza is I think one I forgot to mention the last time, and a really great bacon, egg and cheese. I haven't really found one in this neighborhood, but there's this place that I'm at right now that is on the way to daycare for me, which means I walk by it like 40,000 times a week. And they just got a new name, a new owner, a new chef and a new menu, including a breakfast sandwich. I keep hearing good things. This would be huge for me.

• 0:44David Pierce?

  This is where I'm at in life is a breakfast sandwich would would change things for me. So I ordered it. It was $8, which is a little high, but manageable and we're going to see how we do. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. We're going to do two things. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about Sonos. There's a bunch of new Sonos gear. Chris Welch reviewed it all. I have been wondering about the Sonos Ace headphones forever. And Chris has them. He's used them. He's tested them. He's reviewed them. We're going to talk to him about it and maybe if we're lucky, hear how it went. We're also going to talk about the new documentary about MoviePass. It's called MoviePass: Movie Crashed. And it tells the story of one of the fastest growing tech companies of all time and also one of the fastest dying tech companies of all time.

• 1:25David Pierce?

  It's a really interesting story because it is kind of every tech story, all rolled into one bundle of total chaos. We're going to talk to the director and the CEO, get the whole story. Super fun episode. We're also going to do a hotline question. Lots to do. All that is coming up in just a sec, but first I hear my sandwich coming. I can smell my sandwich coming. I'm very excited. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

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• 2:51David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, small bacon, egg and cheese update. It was good, and it was on a biscuit, which I liked very much. But this still isn't the one. To be clear, it is, again, on my route to daycare, so I will be going there between, you know, six and 15 times a week. But I don't feel like I've solved this problem yet. So, the hunt continues. And to everyone who absolutely does not care about my quest for the perfect bacon, egg and cheese, I'm very sorry. Anyway, let's get to the show. So, Sonos has been rumored to be making headphones for years. And I think for obvious reasons, this seemed like an exciting idea, right? Sonos is one of the companies that cares the most about audio. And you kind of figure that if any company was going to figure out how to do really good design, really high-quality audio,

• 3:35David Pierce?

  really usable product, though that's kind of iffy for app-based reasons we've talked about on this show. But it feels like Sonos should be able to do a good job at this. Well, now we get to find out. So, the new Sonos Ace headphones are out. They're $450. Chris Welch has been using them. There's also the Rome Bluetooth speaker, which I want to talk about. But I'm particularly curious about the Ace, because there's just something really hard about doing a pair of headphones like this correctly. You look at something like the AirPods Max or the Bose QuietComfort headphones. And what you see over and over is that the combination of weight, battery life, overall comfort, sound quality, noise cancellation, easy connectivity, it's really hard to do all of those things simultaneously correctly at any price.

• 4:20David Pierce?

  $450 is a lot to spend on a pair of headphones. But a really great pair of headphones that does all of those things well is like the White Whale. And a lot- A lot of companies are getting closer and closer. This space is really exciting, actually. But we haven't quite gotten there. So I've been fascinated to know, are the Sonos Ace the ones? Did they get there? Are they Sonos? And are they just an awesome pair of headphones? Chris Welch has reviewed them. He knows this stuff better than anybody else I know. Time to talk about it. Chris Welch, welcome back.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Hello, hello.

• 4:50David Pierce?

  Sonos just continues to take up your whole life and existence.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:56David Pierce?

  How you feeling?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Good. We just got the review up of the new Ace, as did many other publications. And it seems like it's a fairly positive vibe so far.

• 5:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, people seem to, people seem to like the thing.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:07David Pierce?

  I'm very curious how you review a pair of headphones. I want to get into the Ace in particular, but like, walk me through a day in the life of a Chris Welch headphone review.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I've got my playlist of songs that I know so, so well. And then I just, you know, ride the subway, walk around New York, see how hot they get, yada, yada. It's like very warm in New York City right now. So that's been fun. But, you know, comfort, I try and wear them all day here at the office, once or twice, just to see how they wear over time. You know, like I've got glasses, so I see how those do as far as like comfort goes. But yeah, nothing too crazy.

• 5:39David Pierce?

  What are your favorite test songs? Like what's, what's at the top of that?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm like a big Dave Matthews Band guy, so. Got to go back to those albums.

• 5:48David Pierce?

  Which of the many jammy guitar parts can I hear most clearly here? Yeah, I love it.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Exactly. So that's on there. But you know, there's Beatles, there's all sorts of stuff that I kind of just go through and cycle between. But they are, these sound quite nice. I think they're kind of like in between the Sonos and the AirPods Max. There is some bass to them, but yeah, they sound nice and warm and detailed. And I don't really have any complaints on that front.

• 6:11David Pierce?

  Is there, I'm realizing I've never really known the answer to this question. Is there like a Sono sound in the way that I feel like there is sort of a Beats sound? And to some extent, there's kind of a Bose sound. Is there a Sono sound with the Ace or with just Sono stuff in general?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  I don't know. You know, they always like talk about how they have this like board of like sound experts who they like go to for every speaker and product that like gives them advice on how it should sound and yada yada. So these are pretty clean, crisp. They're not like super bass forward. Yeah, they're fairly balanced. Like, there's no like profile that I can really like tell. So it's just, yeah, they're a good sounding pair of headphones.

• 6:43David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  But they're comfortable as hell. That's like the main thing about these. It's like, so the weight is like in between the AirPods Max and the Sonos. But yeah, they just wear so much lighter than the AirPods Max, you know. There's more plastic, which is fine for headphones, I think. You know, you certainly can't overdo it when it comes to metal. And I think that's what we had for the AirPods Max. But yeah, they feel great on your head over long timeframes. Yeah, I think the AirPods Max, one thing I like about those better is the fabric ear cushions. These were a bit hotter because they're like pleather. So in the summer and the spring, you know, you start to sweat and that makes a difference. But on the whole, they are just way, way more comfortable.

• 7:18David Pierce?

  Yeah, I was surprised actually by how comfortable you found them, given that they are not like wildly heavier than, say, the Bose QuietComforts, but meaningfully heavier. And I think the AirPods Max, for me in particular, feel heavy on my head in a way that like the Bose ones, you never don't know you're wearing headphones, but I don't sort of feel them, like the gravity of them pulling down on my head. With the AirPods Max, I very much do. And I was worried this was gonna skew closer to that. But it sounds like, at least in the way that they wear, they don't feel like that at all.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, not at all. Super comfortable. The battery life is like 30 hours, so they last a long, long, long time. So yeah, like on the hardware front, they got it all right, honestly. So for a first time out, it's pretty impressive. And the software features, you know, half of them work, which is why I gave them a seven. I think some other publications were a bit a bit kinder.

• 8:06David Pierce?

  While we're on the hardware, I want to talk about just the controls for a second, in part because from the way you describe it, it sounds like Sonos got the how you use these headphones while they're on your head thing almost exactly right. Like, this idea of there being one button that does everything, and then I think you you slide the button to change the volume. I love that. That that seems fantastic. Like, is that is that as good as it seems to be in terms of actually like putting your hands up and using the thing? Because for me, it's like, I have the Bose, and it's just a bunch of sort of samey feeling buttons. And I've gotten pretty good at knowing which one is which. But I'm still, every time I put my hand up, I kind of like slide it down the cup to find the right hit. And it seems like Sonos just like figured it out from the jump.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's very good. The content key is it's called. I'm not sure about the name.

• 8:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's a bad name.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  Bad name. But it's great. So it takes some time to get used to just like finding it and like sliding it and like that difference you don't want to press when you slide. That takes like one day to get used to. But on the whole, yeah, it's very good. Compared to swipes on all these like Sonos headphones and stuff and like the tab gestures, once you have gloves on, forget about it. So this kind of stuff works a lot better in my experience. So there's that button. There's a button for the noise cancellation mode and a power button. And that's pretty much it. So.

• 9:17David Pierce?

  That feels right. I will say I am just adamantly against touchpads on headphones. I just don't think they work. I just, it's just a bad user experience. I'm not, I'm out on it everywhere it exists. So I'm very glad Sonos didn't do that.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  I'm with you.

• 9:30David Pierce?

  Yeah. Okay, so let's, let's talk about the TV audio swap thing because there are a bunch of other interesting features that sort of are and are not here, but TV audio swap was the thing, right? Like if Sonos is going to convince you to buy these headphones, one is it's a Sonos product. Sonos tends to make very good sounding products. But the TV audio swap is the thing. Tell me about your experience with this.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  It's been mostly good. I had a few hiccups where it just like didn't work. And Sonos tells me it's a bug, of course, that'll be fixed soon, like so many other things that are coming soon. But on the whole, yeah, like so you have an arc, you just go home, you come home, you turn on your TV, start watching something and you hold down the content key for like two seconds and then it just beams it right over to your headphones. And there's head tracking if you want that. So you can like, you know, move around and feel more immersed in your content. So it works for like anything plugged into your TV, be it like a gaming console, which works super well, like surprisingly. So and it's just a nice little private way of watching TV and whatever else you want.

• 10:25David Pierce?

  Sonos seems to have this idea that it's for more than just watching something quietly while someone else doesn't want to watch it. Like, for me, I, I used private listening on Roku for months after I had a kid because, you know, I have, I have a kid in my arm and I'm wearing headphones and that is a way to listen to things quietly. But I get the sense Sonos thinks of this as like a, like a lifestyle feature or is like an audio feature more than just you can hear the audio, but others can't. Like what, what is the big sort of galaxy brain case for? Audio swap and why you would wear headphones to watch TV?

• 11:02Speaker 04

  I think it can be more immersive, like there's spatial audio, surround sound, like the upconvert stereo if you want that as well. So it does sound really good.

• 11:08David Pierce?

  I guess that's true. It's like a 5.1 system on your head.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:11David Pierce?

  That's fair. That's something.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  And so there's that. And then this fall, there's a new feature called True Cinema that's going to like map your room using both the soundbar and the headphones. So it sounds like more real, the surround sound effect, but like trick your brain into like actually thinking they're actually speakers around you. Right now, it's not quite that level, but they say sometimes this year that'll be there. And Bose is also working on like similar ideas to like pair soundbars and headphones and earbuds together for like super immersion. So once that rolls out, if it, you know, works as advertised, that'll be interesting. But yeah, it's like very immersive. It sounds very nice. You don't have to like sacrifice audio quality just to not have your soundbar blurring away at night, which is nice. And you can game on it. Like I said, that's what I've done a ton and it's great.

• 11:53David Pierce?

  What's been your experience so far in terms of actually sitting down and doing it? Like obviously when you're reviewing the product, you're going to go through the work to sit down on the couch, grab the remote, grab your headphones, do the whole thing. Do you think it as just a normal person in normal life, you're going to add headphones to the flop down on the couch mix?

• 12:11Speaker 04

  I think so. I've got roommates, so that's the main thing. Like what's really late at night, I'm not going to like have my arc going full blast while I'm watching, you know, Top Gun Maverick. It's not super considerate. So that's there. That's a use case, you know, late night gaming, yada, yada. Past a certain point of night, it's like a super handy thing to have and it sounds really nice. So is it worth the cost of the headphones and an arc? You know, that's a pricey thing.

• 12:34David Pierce?

  I think in that case, the key is to try and convince everyone in the house to split it. And it's like, listen, this is not for me. This is for all of us. It will be mine and I will own it and you can't use it, but it is for all of us. And so this like, what $1,100 purchase, we're just going to split it together. It's going to be no problem.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it should be coming to the ray and the beam pretty soon. It's cool for the ray because like the ray is just like a basic like stereo soundbar, but now you're going to get like Dolby Atmos like upresd surround sound through your headphones, which is nice to, nice to see. But yeah, like, once they roll out that support, once TV audio swap works on Android at all, that'll be a nice thing. So I think I am going to like go back and like readdress the score once some of these software updates go out for more people.

• 13:14David Pierce?

  Yeah. So it's the once it works thing that is killing me here, right? Because this is, this is the story of Sonos these last few weeks is it rolled out this half finished app supposedly in order to support these headphones, which themselves don't feel finished from a software perspective. And on the one hand, if you want to pick a weakness of Sonos, it has always been its software. So I guess on the, I shouldn't be totally shocked that it seems like it nailed the hardware and didn't finish the software. Like that is kind of a Sonos story. But on the other hand, I just can't stop thinking like, why, why ship any of this A now and B in this order when it doesn't seem like there was any real like rhyme or reason and none of it's done?

• 13:56Speaker 04

  I don't understand the whole June timeframe thing. I think maybe like they're like thinking like Apple's gonna have new AirPods in the fall. That would just drown out this if they waited until, you know, September, but even like waiting until August would have given them like precious weeks to just polish everything a little bit more and get it out the door as a fuller thing. Yeah, it's just a big rush and it's not clear why. I mean, people aren't like buying speakers and soundbars like they were during the pandemic. So that's the main like impetus for these coming out in the first place.

• 14:21David Pierce?

  Is Sonos a little Peloton-y in that way? Do you think that like it's a great product that is always going to be kind of a niche thing, just by virtue of A, what it is and B, what it costs. And everybody who was gonna get one, got one, which is great, but now puts you in a position of like, there, there probably aren't many people out there right now shopping for Sonos upgrades because everybody upgraded in 2020 and 2021. So now if I'm Sonos, like is the whole headphones push just, we need a whole new thing to give people so that they're not upgrading, they're actually buying like a net new object?

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. That's the main reason behind this. They've also got services, you know, they've got Sonos Radio HD. There's Sonos Pro for businesses where they like manage all your speakers. So they're all trying to branch out and find like new ways of more income. But yeah, like you said, like, you know, I've had an ARC. It would take a lot for me to like upgrade a soundbar. Like, there's not much of this thing doesn't do that I would need from some new version. You know, same goes for the Play 5, which has been around forever. So these are first and you can see like a world where they do, you know, like not just headphones, but also earbuds and kind of like, you know, do the full thing. This is a good start. They're 450 bucks, which is, uh, that's a lot of money, but people, people spend a lot on this stuff. So Sony and Bose and everybody else, you know, they're all in the same territory. But yeah, for a first time out, you know, super impressive. I think they've got a lot of bugs to work out. The app is still causing chaos.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  I mean, the Sonos subreddit is just, I've never seen anything like it, just every day, still, still people venting, which I understand, you know, people lose features. I'd be upset too. Uh, like I'm with Neil, I knew, and I don't really use my Sonos system that way, or I've noticed much different, but yeah, they should have just waited one or two more months, put all the stuff out in the fall and had a way smoother experience that like, didn't cause, cause this huge outcry.

• 16:05David Pierce?

  Yeah. I think to some extent, Sonos is lucky it got the hardware as right as it did because it'll, it'll buy it a chance to do that. Like, I think if, if there had been even one kind of big flaw in the hardware on top of all the stuff with the app.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:21David Pierce?

  This would feel almost dead on arrival, whereas now it's like, okay, I think there's a reasonable chance that come this fall, or like this holiday, when a lot of people are Christmas shopping, this is going to be a damn good pair of headphones.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:32David Pierce?

  That is actually going to make a lot of sense for a lot of people. I will say the thing about it that kills me, the sort of dream that I think a lot of people have had for a Sonos pair of headphones, and what I'm seeing a lot of in our comments too, on your review, is this idea that it should fit perfectly into my whole Sonos ecosystem, right? That I should, I want to listen to music on the speaker in my kitchen while I make dinner, and then pop on headphones and just boom, the music switches, everything works great. And then I can play from, you know, my, my record player and the TV in my living room and the TV upstairs, and everything that is in the Sonos ecosystem just sort of beautifully flows around. And this has been the promise of Sonos for forever. And the ACE just doesn't feel like it comes anywhere close to that.

• 17:17David Pierce?

  Like the, the content key thing you're describing where it sits down and it works with the ACE, I am confident that will eventually work very well. I could be wrong about that, but it seems like that, that is the sort of thing Sonos will eventually get right, because it usually eventually gets that kind of stuff right. But it doesn't seem like there's any indication that this is going to be the like magical addition to my whole Sonos system that I wanted it to be.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  So funny you should say that. Last week, they had like a Reddit Ask Me Anything where people have asked about this a ton. So they had, they kind of said like, we're just not there yet as far as the tech goes. So in terms of like CPU power, these have a fraction of even like the Sonos Rome. Like it's a small processor in there, then there's Wi-Fi to worry about, battery worries. And so they're like, we tried it, like we prototyped those Wi-Fi headphones that everybody wants and they sucked. So like, we're just not there yet as far as like being able to do that and like have it be viable. Like they were like, they were like, we tried it and it's just not the right time right now. So this is like a first step, I think, and it makes sense as like a, you know, halfway point between full on like Sonos integration and what we have now with the TV audio swap.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  So it's a good starting point, but I can see the point of like, you know, do you really want like a short battery life just for Wi-Fi audio? I mean, I would sometimes, but you know, give it like two or three, four years, maybe we'll see that kind of product eventually.

• 18:30David Pierce?

  That's fair. And I will say to Sonos's credit, making a thing that is fundamentally just a very good pair of Bluetooth headphones is the right thing and not something Sonos historically always does. So like making a thing that actually easily works with all of your non-Sonos stuff is a victory. So I think if you, if you're forcing me to choose, I will take what they did. But it does, it just feels like there's that little piece of sort of Sonos magic that nothing else can get to that it didn't quite hit and that bummed me out.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:59David Pierce?

  From an audio perspective, does the Wi-Fi thing matter? I just like sincerely don't know how much I should care that I can't do Wi-Fi audio versus just having the, you know, Bluetooth codec support from my phone.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  There are always going to be people who like swear they can tell the difference between lossless audio and, you know, like all these codecs. I can tell maybe sometimes, it's just one of those things people just like want to have because they're spending all that money, I think. They just want the best thing. And so it makes sense to want that. Does it really matter? It's going to really come down to like each person individually. I can see like why you would want it as far as like a turntable in your system and like an amp and like having like play that through your headphones. That'd be awesome, but unfortunately we're not there quite yet. But like, yeah, these sound very good. They're good headphones. So they've got several features that like all these high-end headphones usually do. There's like on-head detection. So you could like take them off, it'll pause, all those like, you know, like the small quality of life things. There's multi-points, you can pair them with two devices. As it wants. And so they've covered a lot of ground. There's like wired USB C listening.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  So if you want lossless audio, there's your answer. So yeah, they've covered a lot of ground, but now we're in this like weird game of wait and see for like the Android support and the beam and the ray. But that stuff should shake out like Sonos promises, software fixes, and they usually do make good on actually, you know, putting them out. So yeah, we'll see how long it takes. Hopefully this month for some of this stuff, but there's no firm timetable just yet.

• 20:13David Pierce?

  So yeah, it does seem like audio quality wise, I feel like the, the gold standard is like whatever new Sony hexadecimal thing, I can't remember the name of thing. The new Bose Quiet Comforts and the AirPods Max. I feel like that's kind of like the trio. Everybody thinks of.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  There are some others in there. You know, there's the Sennheiser Momentum fours. Those sound great. Those are probably my favorite sound quality headphones besides these at the moment. There's that and like all these brands like Bowers and Wilkins for like that true like audiophile segment, but like by and large, like you said, like for most consumers, it's Sony, it's Bose, it's Apple. And now hopefully Sonos is what they want to happen.

• 20:48David Pierce?

  Well, and it seems like from a sort of what it's like to wear and use and listen to them.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:54David Pierce?

  Sonos belongs there. Uh, but I feel like the one other piece of that we haven't talked about is the noise cancellation, which to me, I think is like maybe the most important feature for me. Like this is where I out myself as somebody who is like by no means an audio quality expert, but somebody who is constantly on planes. The ANC really matters to me, which is why I've been a real like Bose loyalist over the years, because Bose is just better at this than everybody else. How did the ace shape up there?

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Bose is still better than everybody else, but these are good. You know, they're not like top tier level, uh, but they're good enough for a plane ride or the train. You know, I've had them on the past two weeks and they're good for the subway. My coffee shop, I can still hear like a little bit of racket when I work from the coffee shop in my block, but so they're not like Bose level of like a total cocoon of silence. But for most like everyday situations where you just want to like have some peace and quiet, it'll do the job just fine.

• 21:43David Pierce?

  What about the flip side? The, what is it called? The, the like audio pass through thing where it tries to pump in the outside noise? How is that?

• 21:50Speaker 04

  That sounds actually very, very good. That's like, the AirPods Max have the best pass through mode of all, and these are like, not too far behind that, honestly.

• 21:57David Pierce?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  It's like, that's where Sonos really came through and kind of surprised me.

• 22:00David Pierce?

  Cause the AirPods Max are drastically better than the Bose.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, those are great. Uh, these are, you know, like a stone's throw away, pretty close. And then, uh, Bose and Sony are not, not so hot when it comes to the pass through mode. But, yeah, so it's not world-class ANC, but it's close on the transparency mode front. So, pretty good, all in all.

• 22:17David Pierce?

  So it seems like, even if you're not a Sonos person, and you're just wanting to buy a really good pair of headphones to pair with your computer and phone and whatever, if you don't have any other Sonos gear, this is probably like a hundred dollars more than you want to spend on this pair of headphones, but like absolutely belongs on the poke around the Amazon listing.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:38David Pierce?

  Set. Is that, is that a fair characterization?

• 22:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, but surely I don't know who's gonna start their Sonos journey with headphones that cost this much, but I'm sure some people will, you know? There'll be a person who just buys these and then thinks these are great and buys, uh, you know, the whole, the arc, obviously, you would get first if you want to actually, uh, use the core feature. But, yeah, I mean, they're great. Like, they belong in the same conversation as everybody else as far as like, sound quality, fit and finish and comfort. Like I said, the comfort is really, you know, go to your local Best Buy and try these and you're gonna be pretty surprised by how good they feel, I think.

• 23:08David Pierce?

  It's a big win for Sonos, honestly. Especially if you go back to that, like, Sonos has to find a thing to sell people who don't want Sonos gear.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 23:15David Pierce?

  That's a big win. And I, I would bet, I could be totally wrong, but I would bet that we're gonna get to like Black Friday and this thing is gonna be $349.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  That'd be nice. That would help, for sure. But even now, they're great. I think the white one are my, my favorite compared to the black. I know the black is fine, but...

• 23:30David Pierce?

  The white ones are really nice looking.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:32David Pierce?

  They're really nice looking.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  So that's the way I would go if someone wants advice.

• 23:35David Pierce?

  Which ones have you been testing the most? The white ones, I worry, would get sort of a, like, gross patina on them after wearing them for a while. Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  So far, they still look good. Uh, the case is getting pretty, uh, pretty dirty, uh, the white case, but it's got a nice green interior. So, you know, uh, the black ones get all smudgy. They've got like an anti-fingerprint coating on them to help with that a little bit, but they still pick up smudges and stuff like all, uh, black plastic gadgets tend to do. But, personal preference, as always.

• 24:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, I will say for for all of the kind of missing Sonos-y stuff, I'm very impressed that Sonos did as well as it did here. Just to make this good a pair of headphones, just absent all the other stuff, just this good a pair of headphones on its first try out of the gate, gives me great hope for what Sonos might be able to do here.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Pretty good. I think Patrick Spence's job is safe for now.

• 24:24David Pierce?

  I mean, give me a couple of app updates until I feel very confident about that, but I like the thought so far. I also forgot one other Ace question that I forgot to ask. We're gonna come on and we're gonna do a full fancy headphone mic test at some point, because that's a thing we need to do. The people love when we put horrible sounding audio on the Vergecast, and we haven't done it in a while, Chris, and we're gonna have to do it. But give me the, give me the quick feeling of how the microphone is on the Ace.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Pretty good, pretty good. If you go to the review, there's an embed of me testing them that I put out today. We've got the Sonos things here in New York, trying to give you a sense of how they sound, how clear they are, and whether they're suitable for phone calls on the go. So let me know what you think. They're clear. I'm not one to like really take calls outside. I just don't enjoy it for myself or the other person on the line. So I try to avoid it. But sometimes, you know, you're at the coffee shop on a Zoom call, and these seem like they'll work just fine. They do a decent job of like cancelling out background noise and all that, and you come through clearly. So I'm not sure what else you would really ask for beyond that.

• 25:25David Pierce?

  So before I let you go, you also have the new Rome, the new Bluetooth speaker. You haven't published your review. That's coming later this week. Give me a preview. How you feel so far?

• 25:34Speaker 04

  They added a button. That's really, that's really what it comes down to.

• 25:39David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  So the first Rome had a combined power and Bluetooth pairing button, and you had to set it up at home first before you could use it as a portable speaker, which never made any sense. So they fixed that. You can use it out of the box now. Whoop-de-doo. But yeah, there's a new button. It sounds the exact same. So if you've heard it before, you've heard this one. Battery life is the same. Some people haven't like had the best time with the Rome over time, because the battery ages not so well. So Sonos told me that they've done some work there to make it last longer. But yeah, it's the same speaker as before, same price, just a new button. Comes in colors. It's small. It's a good bathroom speaker. That's how I use mine. For the shower, but yeah, it's not my top tier favorite sound source gadget.

• 26:16David Pierce?

  Fair, but I mean, buttons are good. We here on the Vergecast, we believe in buttons. You know this, so I will take it.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Love buttons, yes.

• 26:23David Pierce?

  All right, well, it's very upsetting that I want to buy one of these now, and I will not forgive you for that. I also want to buy an Ace now. I like, don't have a soundbar. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, $1,200 is a perfectly rational amount of money to spend upgrading my TV audio today. Like, what could possibly go wrong?

• 26:38Speaker 04

  There's the Arc, and there's an Arc 2 coming, and even like a higher end soundbar they're working on.

• 26:43David Pierce?

  I don't, don't tell me this, Chris. This is not helpful. All right, we gotta take a break, and then we're gonna be right back to talk about MoviePass. Chris, thank you as always.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  My pleasure. Thanks, y'all.

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• 28:30David Pierce?

  Welcome back. In the top drawer of my desk here, I have this pile of cards. Does everybody have a pile of cards somewhere? I sort of assume everybody has a pile of cards somewhere. Mine is just a bunch of random junk, mostly. It's gift cards with like 19 cents still on them, a bunch of expired credit cards that I don't know what to do with. This one, I think, is a Chick-fil-A rewards card that somehow I have. I don't know. And in that pile, the other day, I found this red MasterCard that says MoviePass in big letters up in the top-left corner. It ends in 7099, just in case you're curious. I got this card, I think, in 2017, maybe 2018.

• 29:13David Pierce?

  It apparently expires January of 2025, but I'm confident that I'm never going to get to use it again. In fact, I've never used it once. I never even managed to get this card activated because by the time I signed up for MoviePass, the company was such a mess that it never even responded to my customer service emails. I looked back through and all I have is a bunch of one-sided requests being like, "Hi, I would just like to use the card that I'm paying you for, please." Nothing. If you were online in the summer of 2017, you probably remember MoviePass. There's a decent chance you were a user of MoviePass, that you got a card and then went and saw a million movies all at once. It was an all-you-can-watch movie theater subscription. 10 bucks a month to see up to one movie a day.

• 29:57David Pierce?

  That was it. Those were all the rules, at least for a while. It was a great product for anyone who likes watching movies, and it was a truly horrific business. It took less than two years for the company to burn through $250 million and shut down the product entirely, which is honestly, in a certain way, kind of impressive. Anyway, there's a new documentary out now on Max called MoviePass: Movie Crash, and it tells the story of MoviePass. It was the greatest thing ever. MoviePass.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  MoviePass.

• 30:28David Pierce?

  MoviePass.

• 30:29Speaker 06

  The popular movie ticket app. MoviePass, we remember them. Whatever happened to those guys?

• 30:35David Pierce?

  It's a story about wild corporate greed, about a lot of bad decisions. And I think at its core, it's about how two black founders found themselves ousted from their own company and really their own story by a couple of fast-talking, wheeling, and dealing white dudes.

• 30:52Speaker 07

  I was like, "We need to pump the brakes a little bit." I just thought that it would be better if he wasn't a part of the team. It's like the heart of MoviePass. The deeper you got in, the more you realize all of this was part of a bigger story.

• 31:09David Pierce?

  The doc is fascinating. I really recommend everyone watch it, whether or not you still have your red MoviePass card lying around. A couple of days after I watched the doc, I got on a call with two people to talk about it.

• 31:20Speaker 07

  Stacy Spikes, co-founder and CEO of MoviePass. My name is Muta Ali and I'm a film director.

• 31:26David Pierce?

  I should point out, by the way, that Muta Ali is the director of this film also, just in case that wasn't clear. This is sort of a spoiler, I guess, but the bones of the early MoviePass story is this. Stacy and his co-founder, Hameh Watt, started MoviePass in 2011. And it's more expensive than it turned out to be. It's doing okay. They have about 20,000 subscribers, not taking over the world, but coming along. They hired this guy Mitch Lowe, who says he was a co-founder of Netflix, but that turns out to not really be the case for interesting reasons, who then links MoviePass up with a company called Helios and Matheson, and its CEO Ted Farnsworth, who injects a bunch of marketing money into MoviePass in order to help it grow. And along the way, Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth start testing ideas

• 32:11David Pierce?

  to see how they might help the thing grow into the stratosphere.

• 32:15Speaker 07

  We had grown to 20,000 subs. And if you go and you look at the Netflix growth curve, it has this long, slow arc, and then there's this hockey puck. It just starts to take off. And we had a very similar trajectory in that we were a multimillion-dollar revenue company. We weren't that far from profitability. We were at a $30 price point. We knew we were in the ballpark, but we got there with no advertising. It was only word of mouth. And so we had never had an ad budget. And so really, it was, we had figured out what our customer acquisition cost was. We wanted to do the deal just to get ad budget,

• 32:57Speaker 07

  but still grow with the right per month subscription price. And so that's what you wanted to do. You needed to leave the garage and you had a really hardcore fan base, that people that just loved the service. And it was break even. And so now, great, add that. Well, it broke apart when HMMY, they were coming in and they secretly ran a test and Mitch had given them access to our login page and they went online and they put the new price point up and tested it. We thought our site had been hacked and we were like, hey, our site's been hacked. Somebody just put up a landing

• 33:41Speaker 07

  page for 10 bucks and, and they were like, no, no, Mitch gave Ted and his team access to the website landing page and no one ever told us or the engineering team. And so when you clicked on the button, it didn't let you sign up. They were just using it to gauge interest. And they were like, we've got a hit. And I said, well, if you want to make it even bigger, make it five bucks a month. If you want to make it bigger than that, make it $1 a month. I said, make it 99 cents.

• 34:07David Pierce?

  Yeah. Giving money away is pretty easy. I kept thinking that, watching this, that like, oh, if you just give people money, they'll take it and you'll be very successful at giving people money.

• 34:17Speaker 07

  And it's a race to the bottom when you have no competitors. Like, well, but why? Why don't you walk your way down in price?

• 34:25David Pierce?

  10 bucks a month for all the movies you can watch was just never going to work. To be clear, it was awesome for moviegoers. And one of my favorite things about the doc is all the folks in it who saw hundreds of movies for a fraction of the price. I love that for moviegoers, but it was never sustainable. Lowe and Farnsworth had this big idea about collecting data about those moviegoers and then selling it back to theater chains. And eventually they seemed to think MoviePass would get so big and so powerful that they'd be able to negotiate a piece of ticket sales and even concessions from those theater chains. That didn't happen. Even at the time, we all kind of knew it wasn't going to happen. And just in case you think that's 2020 hindsight, here is a clip from a Verge video in July of 2018.

• 35:11Speaker 08

  I mean, look, the whole thing really is a mess and it comes down to the fact that MoviePass doesn't make money. The company hopes that when it hits a certain subscriber base size, all the math will magically work out. But in the meantime, it's burning through cash, causing the stock price of its parent company to plummet. The fix apparently seems to be to get its customers to just stop going to movies, or if they do, to pay up.

• 35:29David Pierce?

  That last point is a good one, by the way. At one point, to stop the money bleeding, MoviePass started to create weird new rules for what you can see and when. And its executives are actually under investigation for even doing worse things, like allegedly breaking the product on purpose so that people would stop using it at big movies. The whole thing was just a mess. And a big part of the MoviePass movie crash story is Stacy saying that aloud internally and getting pushed out of the door for it.

• 35:58Speaker 07

  You had the founder who built the plane saying, "It can't handle these G-forces. There's no way the math is gonna work." What made it worse to me is you had customers saying, "I am willing to pay more to help you be solvent." Like, when your customer base is saying that, that's crazy, right? If people are like, "This is so awesome. I went to 400 movies last year. Please charge me more because I know I'm saving a lot of money. I'm still, I've got so much upside. I'll pay you 100 bucks a month, and I'm still saving money." And when your customer base is saying that and your founder is saying that, then the writing's on the wall.

• 36:41Speaker 07

  And that's part of the plan. You figure it out. You experiment and you find the right place. Great, you found an entry point that consumers love it. Now find a profitable place to be at. And if that's 30 bucks a month, yeah, you might lose a third of these people, but you're still the biggest subscription company in the world. So, for theatrical. So, that was the hard part, was just adjust your pricing. It's like, what's wrong with that? You're fired. Get out.

• 37:12David Pierce?

  Part of the reason I've always been interested in the MoviePass story is that the rough shape of that arc is something we've seen so many times in tech. You prioritize growth at all costs. You lose a giant amount of money. And then, something, something, you'll become so big and so powerful that you can either raise prices or find new ways to make money. That's the Uber story. That's the Lyft story. That's the Bird story. That's the Instacart story. That's the Tik- TikTok story on and on and on. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't. It definitely didn't for MoviePass. And in fact, I think MoviePass might have sort of speed run that whole story quicker than just about anybody. The other kind of tech trope about MoviePass that kept jumping out to me was the whole

• 37:57David Pierce?

  fast-talking founder with big ideas who might be full of crap, but everybody keeps listening to anyway thing, which is obviously a staple of Silicon Valley. And for Mutta Ali poking at that idea, and in this case, who played that part for MoviePass, was a big part of the MoviePass documentary.

• 38:15Speaker 09

  When I was doing research, a lot of people in social media who were trying to discover what's the real story behind MoviePass. Some of them were speaking with the understanding that Michelob and Ted Farnsworth were really the founders. They were speaking and having these deep dives into MoviePass and not even mentioning Stacy. And I felt that they might need to enter the story through their perspective. It serves us in a couple of ways because it's a little bit of a reveal for people who don't know. It might make some people uncomfortable who do know and maybe, oh, do these filmmakers even know who the real founders of MoviePass are? And they question that and hopefully keep watching and not assume the work.

• 38:55Speaker 09

  But it also plays into part of the premise, which kind of revealed itself in the more crystallized form. Once we were later on in production, it has to do with racial bias and people's assumptions about who plays what role, especially in a tech company. And maybe if you did enter this story assuming that, okay, yeah, Mitch is the leader and Stacy's just kind of complaining and maybe he doesn't know how to ride this rocket ship like Mitch does, you know, because Mitch is the founder of Netflix. And all of a sudden, your biases played against you and then you're like, oh, maybe I need to rethink how I was thinking about this. And, and so that little pivot in terms of the plot structure or that little inverse order

• 39:37Speaker 09

  helps play into that. I will say that it was a battle internally, you know, I didn't, this is a collaborative thing. And so I at first didn't want to start the story that way, but then there's Actual arguable point someone can make that we need to start with the excitement. We need to start with the millions of people coming into MoviePass. And in my mind, part of me is like, well, you can't look over Stacy and I'm amazed. Like all these 10 years of development they did before that. And so it was a lot of back and forth and and I actually needed to see it done both ways before I actually was on board with this little trick because I think it was Archie Gibbs who suggested it to me that, oh, maybe we should trick people at the very beginning.

• 40:21Speaker 09

  And I was like, I don't know exactly what that would do to me in terms of how I feel about this story. And I didn't like it until I decided to like roll it out the way that we did. You know, and like roll it out so that it really emphasizes that Stacy and Hamey were in a position of vulnerability, a position where they weren't in control of the ship. And okay, that's normal. They're not the founders. And then you realize, oh, they are the founders and they're not in position to drive this thing. And then you might feel a little bit more concerned about them. And so it was a lot involved. There was a lot involved and I'm glad we ended up doing it the way because it's kind of fun.

• 40:57David Pierce?

  It really does work. It's quite a twist, whatever 17 and a half minutes into the movie.

• 41:02Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 41:02David Pierce?

  Stacy, how did that part of the process, I don't know how involved you were kind of with the the overall production, but like watching a lot of this sort of twists in terms of it play out again all these years later. Obviously, it hasn't gone away. You've been involved. This is a thing you lived through, but how does it feel to see all of it sort of put into one place in order?

• 41:21Speaker 07

  I mean, I think it was what Mutali did. So I've seen, you know, WeWork and Theranos and all of them. I think we all kind of travel in a pack and we watch these things. And I think what he did was closer to the Steve Jobs Apple story because it's the only thing you know, they had a lot more airtime on CNBC or MSNBC or all of the different shows that they were on Yahoo Finance, where they were being presented as that and called themselves the founders. So whoever thought of it or whichever way, it is a master stroke in storytelling because it's not straight linear.

• 42:01Speaker 10

  And you know, a third of the way through, it's then brings you back to the beginning to the origin story. I thought it was a masterstroke. He did make me nervous the first 15 minutes. It was like, he was sitting next to me in the theater when I was seen at the first time and he got a couple of side eye glances, like, and he, and he literally said, just wait for it, wait for it. Cause I didn't know what was happening. And he literally had to tell me, hang on, cause I wanted to pause the film and go have a conversation.

• 42:35David Pierce?

  In the first cut, he should have just cut you out entirely, just as a, just as a bit, just really make you sweat for a while.

• 42:40Speaker 10

  Yeah. My wife was there with me and she, she goes, did they know you were the founder? And I go, yes. I said, yes, hang on.

• 42:48Speaker 09

  He waited until the end. We were at almost, I think picture lock by the time Stacy saw it. So it wasn't like he had a big chance to change much. So it was, it was do or die at that point.

• 42:59David Pierce?

  One thing I've always wondered about MoviePass is, could it have worked? If they hadn't grown too fast, burned money at unprecedented rates, made a series of ridiculous, bad decisions? Is there a stable idea underneath here? Both Mutallim and Stacy agreed that the $10 a month thing killed MoviePass, but both seemed to think that it didn't necessarily have to.

• 43:22Speaker 09

  I think there were a series of, of failures that took place that allowed MoviePass to, to crash in a way that it did. The biggest though, I think is having 995 as that price point for promotional purposes, turning into this is our price point forever. And I wonder, Stacy, you know, I think what you said was 48 hours when you had the price at 995 and then you gained 175,000 new subscribers in two days. If you had cut it off then, maybe that would have been the secret to success. Cause you would have gotten that marketing boosted or, or, or what do you think?

• 43:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, I I think, and we talked about it, we said, great, turn that off. Tell everyone this is a promotional price point. And just give them a heads up, this is a promotional price point. You're all month to month, at some point, this will normalize. But enjoy it for now, right? And then I would take certain segments and I would have said, these people are going up to thirty. Like, test different zones and different things, test your different price points. See what elasticity you have. If we go up to fifty dollars, how high is the churn? If we're at thirty dollars or if we're at twenty five, but what's the lowest we can go based on the behavior we're seeing?

• 44:35Speaker 07

  And then you move your price and you're gonna get some churn, but you've got so many people excited off the original idea that they keep going. And that's all you had to do and you and we would be sitting here talking about a really big company, a big global company that was way, because in AMC or Regal would never have been able to catch up to you.

• 44:59David Pierce?

  To be fair, of course, Stacy believes all of that. He's actually the CEO of MoviePass again. After being ousted from the company in twenty eighteen, it went through all of its disasters. He bought the company back in twenty twenty one and actually relaunched it last year. There were a bunch of new things about it, some Web three stuff that I thought was kind of weird at the time, but doesn't really seem to have come to anything. But it operates very differently.

• 45:23Speaker 07

  From a technology standpoint, we had some of the innovation. So we had our first year back and we were profitable. And we added a credit system where we knew we needed a governor to be between the consumer, the product and the marketplace. And in any marketplace, you need to show value to the consumer so that the consumer can have alignment with the company. And in version one, whether you went to, say, an AMC where there maybe wasn't a partnership or you went to a B and B where there was, in the app, you couldn't see the difference.

• 46:03Speaker 07

  And though we were getting wholesale pricing from someone else, there was no display of that. So this version, we simply said, let's use a credit system to show alignment when the price is cheaper and say, let's motivate them by giving them a certain number of credits. So that now they are aligned with saving money the way we're aligned with saving money. That didn't exist in V1, but we knew that was the pathway because we were beginning to test that in 2016. And so when I said, guys, let me tell you how to get there, A, raise the price, B, we have this variable pricing capability. They're like, no, this $10 price

• 46:44Speaker 07

  point is so awesome. We're adding a quarter of a million. I'm like, you're losing $30 per person per month. So I think that the technology, it's subscription. This isn't, this isn't new. Since newspapers were born, we've had subscription businesses. So a lot of it's not new, but the way to use the tech is new. So now we built it with machine learning and AI engines, which is very different. So I think the technology was there. It's just stupid was driving the bus and that's all that happened.

• 47:18David Pierce?

  The problem with that theory, though, is that the movie theater industry looks really different now than it did in 2018, or 2011, for that matter, when they first started working on this. We're in the midst of one of the worst box office runs in a long time. We just had the worst Memorial Day at the movie theater in three decades. And by at least one measure that I saw, ticket sales are 22% below where they were at this point a year ago, and a full 41% down from 2019. It's kind of like the pandemic happened and movie theaters just never came back, which makes sense, right? We're streaming more, we're on Netflix more, we're home more. Maybe movie theaters are just over. This is not

• 47:58David Pierce?

  remotely surprising to anyone who is like living life and watching TV more often, but Stacy doesn't think it's the case. This guy loves the movies.

• 48:08Speaker 07

  I am not a filmmaker, but I love and respect what people like Mutallie will spend three, four, five, six, seven years on bringing a 90-minute story to screens and telling this. They are our prophets. They are our freedom fighters. They bring stories that otherwise would Never get seen. It's such an important art form that is under attack. That if you know you have the burden of responsibility, that you have technologies that can double the attendance of movie going. And you can create efficiencies in a, in a sector that doesn't work with itself.

• 48:52Speaker 07

  When you see a Netflix, they can go into a space, dominate that space from top to bottom because they have the direct to consumer relationship. And no one ever built anything from the consumer point of view and empowering the consumer. So I think it's a beautiful moment in time because I don't want that cinema died on my watch. You know, that it was a simple technology upgrade. I want the mutalise of the world to forever be able to tell stories in such a powerful medium. And theaters shouldn't be these things on their last legs. It's just stupidity and arrogance and pride. That's preventing technology from unlocking such great opportunities.

• 49:36Speaker 07

  We're in such a beautiful moment that if we can get out of the way, I think that storytelling will go to the next level. Cause I think we're on the verge of a new golden age of cinema. From we see how storytelling creation is just mind-blowingly changing. And you see how even the sight and sound experience in the theater is changing. But what it takes to get people there isn't changing. And that's the part that we're focused on and I feel blessed to be able to have the privilege to be able to do that.

• 50:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, basically, other than Dune, it's been a disaster at theaters this year. And I'm curious from both of your perspectives, like, what do we do next with movie theaters? I agree, it could be easier. I agree buying it should, it could be cheaper, all this stuff. But I do wonder, does something fundamental in the movie going experience need to change here?

• 50:29Speaker 07

  Cinema has a PR problem. It doesn't have an attendance problem. You notice that this past weekend, okay? More people went in four days to the movies than everyone who will attend an NFL game in an entire year. In four days, that's how many people went to the movies. Okay? You don't get at a football game, they don't tell you how many tickets are sold at every single game. I think that we need to stop reporting box office numbers because we're focused on the wrong things. We're not focused on movie making. We're focused on movie going and it doesn't matter how great the movie was

• 51:11Speaker 07

  because most really big films didn't gross at the box office. Over time, they became part of our culture. And so we're focused on the wrong thing because everything is determined by one number. What was the gross of the box office this weekend compared to last year or the year before? We need to stop reporting those numbers and get back to the days when I was a kid. You didn't report grosses of Star Wars. It wasn't until IMDb and certain other things came online that my mom would call up and go, "Oh, you know what such and such grossed this weekend?" We became obsessed with that.

• 51:50Speaker 07

  And you'll hear even with YouTube and a lot of creators, they say, "I stopped watching my view number." I started focusing on content and I started focusing on doing the right content and it will take care of itself. Movie going is healthy when you stop comparing it to these numbers that every Monday morning you have a report card that you failed. No sports do this, no other industry. The travel industry, they report quarterly where some single companies, but you do not get group-wide grosses every weekend on a business. You don't have it. So I think that's detrimental to us. It gives us a very big PR problem. Definitely.

• 52:34David Pierce?

  That's a good take. I have not heard that before. I actually really agree with that. Uh, Muzali, what do you think? Our movie theaters, you're, you're making stuff for the internet. Who cares about movie theaters, right?

• 52:43Speaker 09

  No, I care about movie theaters. The most fun I've had out this year has been at movie theaters, but it was screening movie past movie crash. So I think that's probably why. But that in-person experience is something that will always be better than watching it at home. And speaking of Dune, I just watched Dune 2 for the first time with my brother and we watched it on a TV. And I wish that we had watched it in a theater. Maybe the second time I felt that way, like, oh, this movie was so great. I wish that I'd seen it in a theater, out with other people, that sort of glow that happens when you go. And that, that communal experience that Stacy was, uh, referring to is something special

• 53:25Speaker 09

  that culturally I think we're gonna turn back toward after we get enough of sort of the convenience of watching movies on our phone. And I think movie going is still gonna thrive. And I think maybe it's just time for us to be reminded of how special it is.

• 53:42David Pierce?

  I like it. I will say Dune 2 ripped in theaters. Like it's one of the, maybe the best theater going experience. Not to make you feel bad. One of the best movie theater experiences I've had in a very long time. The movie is just so loud.

• 53:53Speaker 07

  It's still playing some places. See it in Dolby Atmos. Yeah. Because the sound design in there is just insane. I haven't seen anybody's house that can do Dolby Atmos.

• 54:04David Pierce?

  He's right about that, I think. And I agree that there is still something to be said for going to the movies. I certainly felt it with Dune 2. Still thinking about that movie. And I think there's a lot more to change about the movie going experience than just the way we buy tickets and what they cost. But the way we buy tickets and what they cost is definitely a start. All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and take a question from the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.

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• 56:07David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11. The email is [email protected]. We love all your questions. Thank you to everybody who's reached out with thoughts about what's going on with OpenAI and how The Verge and everybody else should talk about this stuff. Please keep them coming. It's been really interesting to hear all of your thoughts and it's really helpful as we think about where we go from here. This week, we have a smart home question.

• 56:30Speaker 11

  Hi, my name's Chris. I'm from Los Angeles. So this is a question about the smart home. So probably, hi Jen, how are you? So I have Home Assistant running on a little Raspberry Pi and I love it. It's actually pretty good. It's pretty flexible. I have like two stupid things I need to do that Apple Home doesn't let me do. And it's great. I have speakers and lights. Is there a reason to add like a third thing? I like kind of can't come up with like, I rent and so like, I'm not gonna get all new blinds, right? Like, I don't have a gate in front of my house, so I don't want to do a smart lock, I don't think, unless there's one that's safe. I feel like the smart home's kind of just like in a really bad spot generally, but like in a, like non-starter kind of spot for renters. Am I wrong in that?

• 57:14Speaker 11

  Let me know, because I would love to be proven wrong in that. Like, please, I would desperately love that. But I don't know, you let me know. Thanks. Bye.

• 57:20David Pierce?

  All right, well, ask and you shall receive. Jen Tuohy, how are you?

• 57:23Speaker 12

  I'm good, thanks. Hi, Chris Tuohy. Very excited to answer this question because it's a topic I get asked a lot. So yeah, lots to dive into in your question there. The first one, I'm gonna say renters, yes. There is lots of great stuff you can do, especially if you have Home Assistant. I mean, Chris, you're already set up pretty well for doing some cool stuff. I'd actually say there's sort of two answers here. Like, if you're a renter, there are options. If you're a renter with Home Assistant, there are way more options.

• 57:53David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 57:54Speaker 12

  Just because, you know, it sounds like Chris is maybe, you know, quite technically advanced.

• 57:59David Pierce?

  I mean, if you have Home Assistant, I think we're safe to assume.

• 58:01Speaker 12

  On a Raspberry Pi, you know what you're doing. And then also, he mentioned Apple Home, so I'm assuming that's his main platform. That does narrow your choices down, but then Home Assistant widens them back up again. But just to answer the overall question about renters, I do think there are more and more options for renters. And you mentioned door locks. Door locks actually are in a better space for renters than they have been for a long time. There's the August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, which has been sort of our number one choice for renters, because it's retrofit, so you're not having to replace your door lock, which your landlord may not like, but you still get to control the lock in a way that is useful for a smart home perspective.

• 58:41David Pierce?

  That's the one that just goes like on over top of the existing lock, right?

• 58:45Speaker 12

  Right, of the back of your deadbolt. You do have to remove the thumb turn, but everything else stays as is.

• 58:52David Pierce?

  That is pretty clever.

• 58:52Speaker 12

  Which makes it very easy. Also means you can take it with you when you, if you move to another apartment. And also they've just, Yale has just come out with a new retrofit smart lock. So there's another good option there and they both, both Yale and August, who are owned by the same company and their sister brands. They have come out with a new keypad that has a touch fingerprint reader in it. So you can now use a fingerprint to unlock your August Wi-Fi smart lock.

• 59:18David Pierce?

  That is the thing about the smart home that feels the most sci-fi to me, by the way, the fingerprint thing, it just,

• 59:23Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 59:23David Pierce?

  It's, it's the most like Mission Impossible thing that I have tried in the smart home and I cannot recommend it enough.

• 59:30Speaker 12

  And that, well, they've now got facial recognition for smart locks. So I haven't tried that yet, but that came out at CES. But yes, and the fingerprint is great. It's really easy. It's my favorite way of unlocking the door. Apple Home Key is also a really useful way. If you use Apple Home, unfortunately, there are not any retrofit door locks that work with Apple Home Key right now because it's all inside the house. So there's nothing to do the NFC. Although these new keypads do have NSC in them. So it's potential we may see Home Key come to some of these retrofit locks. And that brings me to the second retrofit lock I would recommend, which is actually coming out this month. And when I say recommend, I haven't tested it yet, but I have tested some of their past products and they've been good.

• 1:00:11Speaker 12

  Akara is coming out with a retrofit smart lock. So the same concept, you can just replace the thumb term on your deadbolt and then you put, you can put a keypad out in the front of your house so that you can access it. That also has a fingerprint reader that does have NFC in. And I would not be surprised if at some point in future that could support Home Key because Akara already does support Home Key in some of its products. So there's lots of options now that didn't used to be. So that's nice for HomeKit, Apple Home compatible retrofit smart locks.

• 1:00:45David Pierce?

  Do you think that's a good like third place to start the lock thing?

• 1:00:49Speaker 12

  I do. I think locks are actually my favorite smart home device, most useful, easiest for everyone to use, not complicated, mostly. And provide real value, you know, being able to unlock and lock your door remotely if there's a problem. And there's so much value, I think, in smart locks. And the safety issue, it's just as easy. I think if you're concerned about someone hacking your smart door lock, don't be. It's just as easy for someone to break a window. It's easier, much easier, sorry, to break a window than it is to hack your smart lock. And in terms of whether someone's gonna knock your door down, again, regular door lock, smart lock, not a big difference. So, yeah, I would not worry about the safety side unless you have someone who's really smart, a big hacker who's after you, in which case maybe.

• 1:01:35Speaker 12

  But in terms of the third thing, I mean, it differs, I think, for renters, perhaps from people that own their homes. Because, you know, a smart thermostat is a big one.

• 1:01:45David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:01:45Speaker 12

  Energy management, you know, bringing that into your smart home, I would say if a smart thermostat is. The research shows that the top three devices people use in their smart homes is smart video doorbells, smart cameras, which are kind of the same, smart thermostats, and then robot vacuums.

• 1:02:02David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 1:02:03Speaker 12

  As well as smart light bulbs are in there at number four than the robot vacuums. So you've already got the smart light. I mean, a video doorbell is, you can do a battery powered one as a renter, so that's a good option.

• 1:02:14David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 1:02:15Speaker 12

  Door locks actually, you know, aren't in the top categories. I think it's just still, still a bit of a niche. But I do find it, like I said, one of the most useful smart devices in my home, and you use it every day. And yeah, there's a lot of innovation in this space too. But for Chris, who has, I think, you know, that is probably a more advanced smart home user. What I would recommend as like the third thing, based on what he has, is more automation. So that is using sensors, making your home smart, not just having a few smart devices in it. And because he has Home Assistant, you know, using devices like motion sensors, contact sensors, smart plugs, smart buttons, to kind of bring everything together and work.

• 1:02:59Speaker 12

  More seamlessly, going back to a Cara who I mentioned at the beginning, that's a really good option for someone that's using Apple Home and Home Assistant, because you can actually, most of their Zigbee devices will pair directly to Home Assistant, and they have great inexpensive motion sensors, smart buttons. So things like, he can have his lights turn on when he opens his front door. Or what would be really fun for him to try actually is the FP2 presence sensor, which is in a Cara device. And that, I think, works really well in apartment setting, because I've struggled to get it to work in my home, because I have so many people in my home. But it uses millimeter wave sensing, which is a really interesting development in the smart home sensing, radar sensing, to use presence detection versus motion detection.

• 1:03:42Speaker 12

  So if he's sitting in his living room watching TV, or your lights won't turn off because you haven't moved.

• 1:03:48David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:03:48Speaker 12

  So, and I find that, that's a really interesting sort of development in the smart home. And for Chris, the FP2 does work with Home Assistant. We can include in the show notes, this is a great blog that this one guy wrote, exactly about how to integrate it with Home Assistant and what benefits there are. So, you know, for Chris, I think more automation, you know, making your home smarter, because things like sensors, concert sensors, you can take them with you when you leave too. But yeah, so there's lots. And then the one, the final thing I would say that a lot of people are interested in and works for both renters and homeowners is a smart security system. There's a lot of benefit there, especially because if you can integrate with, say, your door lock and your video doorbell, if you want a video doorbell. So there's a lot the smart home has to offer for renters.

• 1:04:33David Pierce?

  And it does seem like, I think the stigma that anything beyond the very basics requires opening up your walls, I think is so much less true than it was even just a couple of years ago, that a lot of the stuff you're describing used to be a lot of work. And now it's a lot of like battery maintenance, and that's kind of it in a lot of these cases. Especially like, I think about Ring has done a really good job of this, of making it basically that you can just hang a doorbell on your wall. And like, I have a lot of feelings about people in, especially like apartment buildings and condo buildings who have video doorbells that just go out into the hallway.

• 1:05:08Speaker 12

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08David Pierce?

  I have a lot of like moral quandaries with that. But the idea of what it can accomplish for you, this stuff in general is a lot simpler than it gets credit for, for people, I think. Now, especially if you've gone through the work to set up a Raspberry Pi running home assistant, like you have the chops to do most of the smart home stuff that is available to you at this point.

• 1:05:25Speaker 12

  For sure, yeah. And there is, there's a lot. And in terms of the doorbell, actually, I just, this actually happened last week. So this is news for you on the Vergecast. Arlo has some good battery powered doorbells and their first generation one just became HomeKit compatible.

• 1:05:41David Pierce?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:05:42Speaker 12

  There was only one battery powered doorbell that worked with Apple Home before. That was the Acura. Now the Arlo Essential first gen battery powered doorbell will work with HomeKit. So not HomeKit Secure Video, but with HomeKit. So Chris, if you were thinking about a video doorbell, those two would be a good option. Cameras are a whole different thing. And as you say, especially if you're recording your neighbors walk past your house every morning. But if that's something you're interested in, those are two good options and a door lock and then motion. Get some sensors. Get your house to be really smart and that's really fun.

• 1:06:14David Pierce?

  I think especially if you're the type who wants to sort of experiment and play, just adding sensors and smart plugs to everything you can think of opens up so many things. And for me, it's like, most of the stuff that I've tried ends up being sort of useless. But just, it's just fun to play with and be like, okay, whenever I get to like the fourth step to the basement, what should turn on? I don't even know. Let's just have some stuff happen. And it's just, yeah, just that. And the sensors are cheap and they're everywhere and they're easy to pick up and move around. And I think, I think that's a good call. Just like buy some sensors, spend a Saturday playing with them and see what works for you. I like that a lot.

• 1:06:50Speaker 12

  See what happens.

• 1:06:51David Pierce?

  Yeah. Awesome. All right, Chris, I hope that helps. Jen, thank you as always.

• 1:06:56Speaker 12

  Thank you.

• 1:06:57David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everyone who is on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com. We have Chris's Sonos reviews. We have a MoviePass movie crash review, everything you want. Plus, again, lots going on in tech. It's WWDC next week. There's lots to see. Check out theverge.com. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or headphones you think we should buy instead of the Ace, email us at [email protected], call the hotline 866-VERGE11. I particularly want to hear what you're excited about at WWDC. We have a bunch of WWDC stuff coming. Lots of AI stuff presumed for next week. A few of us will be on the ground. Really want to know. What you think is coming and whether you're excited about what we're going to see

• 1:07:38David Pierce?

  from Apple in this next year. So hit us up, vergecast at the verge.com 866 verge 11. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Andrew Moreno, Liam James and Will Por. The verge cast is a verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Eli, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about, like I said, W W C plus a whole bunch more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:08:08Speaker 13

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• 1:08:38Speaker 14

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