SONOS PLAY:1 Smart Wireless Speaker, Black

Product Information

Other rivals have emerged, and the Audio Pro Addon C3 is a worthy alternative, but if you're set on Sonos, the Play:1 is still a great bet. On its own the Sonos Play:1 is an excellent small speaker, offering pretty much class-leading sound quality for a wireless speaker of this price and size. All told, this is a punchy, dynamic and fairly detailed performance, particularly when compared to the Playbar. But that isn’t to say it’s perfect. As with the Sonos Playbar, the Playbase has just one audio input - optical. The idea is all your video sources run into your TV, and just the one optical cable (which is included) takes the sound from your TV and into the Playbase. If you want a Sonos speaker with an HDMI input, you need to look at the Beam.

The narrow channel of sound that you’re probably used to is transformed by the Playbase into something airy and spacious, with it’s 3.1 array doing a quite remarkable job of convincing your ears you’ve got speakers in the far-left and far-right corners of your room. Certainly you wouldn’t expect an all-in-one unit this slim and compact to manage that. Sonos was created upon the belief you should never have to choose between quality sound and an easy way to access all your music at home," said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. "The PLAY:1 makes getting started with Sonos even more accessible to music lovers than ever before." When you do get listening you’re going to be immediately impressed by the width and three-dimensionality of the sonic presentation, particularly if you’ve previously been listening to your telly’s own speakers. This is a flaw that’s most pronounced when you have Trueplay active, but it’s also there when you turn Trueplay off. Turning Trueplay off also seriously reduces the width, dynamism, punch and clarity of the presentation, so ultimately we’d recommend leaving it on - even though it brings the harsh treble to the fore.Make the move to stereo (with a second unit) and the sound is even bigger, with a solid stereo image. You can choose to place them horizontally or vertically in this arrangement, and while horizontally will certainly offer a wider sound, we preferred it when vertical. Assuming you do get the intended spacious sound, you’ll find it’s combined with bass that’s punchy, authoritative and energetic. The bass here is far more natural and tonally expressive than that of the Playbar, which feels as though it’s compensating hard for its diminutive chassis and sounds a little artificial as a result.

One more consideration and we'll move on, we promise. It's just that if you were looking to buy a second Sonos Five to create a stereo pair, the KEF LSX stereo speaker system (and brand new LSX II) is closely priced and boasts a more comprehensive connectivity spec-sheet and hi-res capabilities out the box. For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS. The treble is the biggest issue here. It’s just too sharp and sibilant, which means big special effects are often ruined by a harsh and domineering top-end that annoys the ear, and that the sibilants in vocals are overdone and incessant.

Sonos' biggest wireless speaker is kind of a big deal generally

PLAY:1 lets you stream all the music on earth and access it all using a single, easy to use app. Play millions of songs and playlists from the most popular music services like Pandora, Spotify, Hype Machine and Rdio; listen to your personal music library, whether it’s stored on your computer, in the cloud, on your smartphone or on your tablet; or tune in to more than 100,000 free Internet radio stations, podcasts, and shows from around the world. We expect most will be fine, even if your TV and Playbase are in a corner or you have more air on one side of the room than the other, but we did try it in one room that had floor-to-ceiling fabric blinds that soaked up way too much sound and left us with a wonky presentation.

Head into the dropdown menu at the top of the screen labelled ‘Room Settings for’ and choose the speakers you’d like to pair The Sonos Play:1 is the most accessible Sonos speaker. It offers all the convenience of its streaming brothers in a smaller, cheaper form. The Play:3 and Play:5 can be positioned horizontally and vertically so you’ll want to make sure they’re in the same orientation if you plan on pairing them.The rear of the Sonos Five reveals its power cable, Ethernet and 3.5mm ports –so your turntable is catered for too. (Image credit: TechRadar) Sonos Five review: Features If you’re not familiar with the Sonos system, here’s how it works: any music sent to the Sonos Play:1 is not streamed using AirPlay or Bluetooth, but Sonos’s own Wi-Fi-based software system. You access this through an iOS/Android app, or on your computer. But the Sonos Play:5 now has a problem (as do its rivals, for that matter) that it didn’t when we first reviewed it: the Audio Pro Addon C10. In traditional Sonos style, the Five is not interested in a shy, retiring sound – it's here to bring the bass and make you feel it, and we're not complaining. However (and we've said this before) it's important to note that we like it more if you can use TruePlay tuning, and not everyone is granted that privilege. Sonos’ support technicians are very helpful (we know, we had to call them), and one way or another you will get up and running in the end, but in our experience it’s not always the super-simple process that Sonos sells it as.