Sonos Music System - Review

I got my first SONOS for Christmas 2012 and have now had the PLAY:3 and BRIDGE for just over a year. In that time I’ve also added a CONNECT, although the PLAY:3 is the most used, it spends most of its life living in our bedroom where we use the internet radio facilities to listen to both live radio and iPlayer. As it is so easy just to unplug and move to another room this quite often happens and provides my musical accompaniment in the office, generally running digital music from my NAS. The connect sits in the living room where it is connected to the television meaning that the sound of the TV can be heard in other rooms, handy for when you need to pop out.

I’ve been impressed by the SONOS mainly be the ease of use but also by the amount of sources available to stream audio from, not only does it support various file formats from a local NAS drive you can play directly from your iPhone, iPad or android device using the free app that also acts as controller. As well as local music sources you can stream from Spotify, napster, last.fm, tunein (radio, live and archive) and amazon cloud player to name but a few of the many sources available.

Next on my list to add, once you have one unless you live in one room you just keep ‘needing’ more, is a PLAY:1 or two for the kitchen and study. After that when we get a shiny new TV I really like the idea of a PLAYBAR, SUB and a couple of PLAY:1 to replace the living room sound system.

	PLAY:1	PLAY:3	PLAY:5	PLAYBAR	SUB
Speakers	2, 1 midrange 1 tweeter	3, 2 midrange 1 tweeter	5, 3 midrange 2 tweeters	9, 6 midrange 3 tweeters	2, 2 subwoofer
Class-D Amplifiers	2	3	5	9	2
Act as Home Theatre Rear Speakers	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Line In	No	No	3.5mm	Optical	No
Ethernet Port	1	1	2	2	1
Wall Mount	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Orientation	Vertical	Horizontal or Vertical	Horizontal	Horizontal	Horizontal or Vertical
Humidity Resistant	Yes	No	No	No	No
Size (H x W x D)	16.2cm x 11.9cm x 11.9cm	13.2cm x 26.9cm x 16cm	21.6cm x 36.6cm x 12.2cm	8.5cm x 90cm x 14cm	380m x 380cm x 158cm
Guide Price	£169	£259	£349	£599	£599

	BRIDGE	CONNECT	CONNECT:AMP
Inputs	n/a	RCA analog line-in	RCA analog line-in
Outputs	n/a	Digital Optical, Digital Coaxial, RCA analog line-out	Sub, 2 x 55w
Class-D Amplifiers	n/a	n/a	1
Ethernet Port	2	2	2
Size (H x W x D)	4.1 x 11cm x 11cm	7.4cm x 13.6cm x 14cm	8.9cm x 18.5cm x 20.7cm
Guide Price	£39	£279	£399