SONOS PLAY:3 Smart Wireless Speaker, White

Product Information

The two frequency sliders only have a subtle effect on the sound – Sonos doesn’t give you the opportunity to ruin the sound quality here, but the Loudness option makes quite an impact. Finally, if you just plan to use the speakers to enhance the holiday tunes that you plan to blast throughout your home- perhaps creating a festive spirit at your next social gathering- you can use the Sonos Connect or Connect:Amp. It does all come in a smaller housing, though – about half the size of the Play:5, meaning its small enough to slot onto a bookshelf or into a kitchen nook, with feet on both sides so you can stand it either on its side or on its end. The soundbar is likely to be connected to the TV with an audio input/output cable option depending on the model that you choose to use. The chances are, therefore, that there is also a plan for the Play:3 - and there probably has been for years.

Sonos Play:3 review | What Hi-Fi?

Next, you can use the Sonos One, Sonos SL, or Sonos Move paired directly with your soundbar (though indirectly with your TV). Bon Iver's vocals on Exile sound rather reedy and flat on the Five, while Era 300 delivers deeper textures and personality. Everything is tested by our dedicated team of in-house reviewers in our custom-built test rooms in London, Reading and Bath. The beauty of the Sonos system is that you can start with one speaker, and later add more to the system in different rooms – as many speakers as you like up to 32 (in case you happen to live in a palace).You will easily be able to turn on the Bluetooth with the touch of a button on your speakers, and then you can pair the device with your TV. Depending on the soundbar that you choose to use, you might be able to connect that to your TV wirelessly as well. The mics can also be muted using a new speech bubble button, or turned off entirely with a switch on the back of the speaker.

Sonos Era 300 vs Sonos Five: which premium Sonos speaker is Sonos Era 300 vs Sonos Five: which premium Sonos speaker is

Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages, so you will want to review which one will work best with your larger or smaller space. They improve the sound quality throughout your home and are able to do so with a sound connection to your home’s Wi-Fi.Sonos claims its software is more than happy to take on large libraries of around 65,000 tracks, and we found browsing through albums and artists wonderfully easy using the iOS app.

Sonos Three: The compelling case for a Play:3 upgrade Sonos Three: The compelling case for a Play:3 upgrade

Since there are so many different Sonos devices out there, you might be wondering which of them you can connect to your TV in the first place. Of course, both speakers can be controlled by the Sonos S2 app, which comes with all the multi-room powers that Sonos is renowned for, as well as plenty of EQ settings, music streaming service and radio integration. Inside are six drivers (four tweeters, two woofers, all powered by dedicated Class D amps), which fire sound in all different directions to create a truly room-filling sound. In short: The process of using one or two Sonos speakers (the latter for a stereo pair) as your Mac's default speakers is very similar to how you would use one or two HomePods as your Mac's default speakers. With no distortion to be heard, plenty of power to draw on and superb software at its core, this is a brilliant box – as long as you can live without a physical dock to slap your aging iPod Classic into.

The thing is, even if every one of the 21 million Sonos speakers ever sold were bought solely for their audio quality or multi-room capabilities, Sonos itself cares about design. The current Sonos Five is an evolution of the Sonos S5, which became the Play:5, then the Play:5 Gen 2, and then the Five. Anyone familiar with Sonos’s history will know that it’s the streaming software that’s been its raison d’etre since the beginning, but it’s nevertheless refreshing to see such “ego-free” design in action. Spotify is the killer app here for our money, giving you access to over 15 million tracks – alternatives Naptser and Deezer both lag behind here.