SONOS PLAY:1 Smart Wireless Speaker, Black

Product Information

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. The app will tell you either to hold the Play/Pause and Volume Up buttons at the same time or to hold the dedicated Join button There’s a handful of ways to set your Sonos up, including using an Ethernet cable and using a Sonos Boost. If you’re looking to set your speaker up using Wi-Fi, you’ll want to use Standard Setup. The layout of your room and the positioning of your speaker can have a surprisingly big impact on the way you hear music. Before the Roam, the Sonos Move was the first portable Bluetooth Sonos speaker, albeit a large and heavy one. The updated Move 2 retains its chunky dimensions and ability to go loud, but boosts the sound quality to stereo, and is much clearer, snappier and more spacious than before. It has a longer battery life (24 hours) and is still equipped with all the streaming and multi-room features you get with being part of the Sonos ecosystem.

See those little feet –on the side?! It can be positioned upright too, you see, to create a stereo pair comprising two Fives or as part of a home theater system with a Sonos Arc, say. (Image credit: TechRadar) Sonos Five review: Sound quality PLAY:1 comes with all the unique benefits that can only be found in a Sonos Wireless HiFi System including Sonos PLAY:3™, Sonos PLAY:5™, Sonos PLAYBAR™ and more: It’s a very enjoyable listen, with enough finesse, a rich enough tone and more than enough punch to make you forget the size of the speaker you’re listening to. This little guy sounds unusually at home playing at high volumes, and I believe many people would be happy to use this as their main music source. It’s something to consider if the price of the excellent Play:5 is off-putting.Any speaker the size of the Play:1 has to deal with a compromise or two. But Sonos has nailed it here. When you connect a Sonos Boost to your router, all of the other devices in your house will continue to connect to your router as usual except for your Sonos products which will be redirected to the Boost on a dedicated wireless network. If you’ve splashed out for more than one speaker, your Boost will actually daisy chain the wireless signal from one device to the next. This can significantly improve the signal quality – especially in larger homes. Sonos says the idea behind the design of the Play:5 was to create “the quintessential speaker for the digital age”, with a revamped design and the focus on flagship sound. 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.

The Sonos Five is a hefty beast with a smart, slightly curved grille on the front. (Image credit: TechRadar) However, it is as well-made as its bigger brothers. The sides of the Play:1 are covered by a single-piece metal grille that curves smoothly around its edges. Its top and bottom are plastic, but still look and feel great.

The name-plate is positioned so that when you flip it to it's upright orientation, it still reads. (Image credit: TechRadar) Sonos Five review: Design It helps give the Sonos Play:1 excellent, rich and meaty sound for its size. Voicing is fairly neutral, but the depth and scale of the bass the speaker is able to produce is very impressive. The appeal of soundbars is obvious: transform your TV’s sound with one neat unit. But while a soundbar makes lots of sense when it can be wall-mounted under an also-wall-mounted TV, those who stand their telly on a pedestal or other piece of furniture can’t always find a place for a long, awkward bar of speakers.

What Hi-Fi?, founded in 1976, is the world's leading independent guide to buying and owning hi-fi and home entertainment products. Our comprehensive tests help you buy the very best for your money, with our advice sections giving you step-by-step information on how to get even more from your music and movies. Everything is tested by our dedicated team of in-house reviewers in our custom-built test rooms in London, Reading and Bath. Our coveted five-star rating and Awards are recognised all over the world as the ultimate seal of approval, so you can buy with absolute confidence. After running Trueplay once, you can toggle it on and off in the settings, as well as further tweaking your speaker to your tastes. We’d recommend giving it a go, particularly the Loudness function, which adds scale and weight but can result in a little lost clarity and cleanliness. 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. One great thing about Sonos speakers is that if you buy two you can set them up to blast your favourite tunes in stereo. But what do you do if your speakers refuse to work together? In fact, rival soundbars and soundbases that accept almost any signal via HDMI and then send the video to your TV are arguably more simple, as they don’t require you to particularly think about the sound formats being used at every link in the chain.

The Five is the biggest and most powerful wireless home speaker in Sonos' range, and it sounds every inch as detailed and musically pleasing as we've come to expect from Sonos. This flagship iteration (released in June 2020) adds increased memory, snappier processing and a new, er, wireless radio feature. Not a huge upgrade then?