Sonos multi-room

For years, Sonos has been synonymous with the concept of multi-room audio. At the very least, Sonos spotted a trend long before its competitors – at most, it’s responsible for making the market what it is today.

The current star of Sonos’s range of wireless speakers is the One. Matching the five-star performance of the Play:1, it builds on an already extensive feature list with built-in Alexa Voice Assistant. The One produces a weighty, full-bodied and spacious sound that’s capable of going loud for a speaker so small. Voices are clearly projected, bass is solid, and treble is crisp and clean. It’s a surprisingly sophisticated sound, and one that’s natural and authentic.

That sonic character carries over to the larger Play:5, but it is able to produce a far bigger and bolder sound, thanks to its larger chassis and extra drivers. It’s effortlessly listenable, with no hard or sharp edges to cause distraction. It loses some of its sheen when compared with the superb Audio Pro C10, but still represents a fine-sounding option for those joining the Sonos family. Making connections

We’ve long enjoyed the Connect as Sonos’s means of connecting existing hi-fi systems to its multi-room network, while until recently the Connect:amp has been the company’s go-to powered version of the streamer.

But the arrival of the Sonos Amp has given customers a tantalising new option. Even by Sonos’s standards, it’s an understated device. It’s available only in black and with just three touch-sensitive ‘buttons’ on the front. But in terms of character, the Amp revels in forwardsounding presentations and dealing them with gusto and a more-thanrespectable level of detail.

What restricts it from being a class leader is a relatively pedestrian sense of timing and dynamics. As part of a Sonos network, it is an admirable performer, not least for its versatility; it just falls short in terms of hi-fi separates, which its Bluesound rival does not.

Sonos’s suite of home cinema components all get consistently high ratings in our tests: the Playbase and Sub both gained four stars, with the Playbar achieving five. The stars, however, are the Award-winning Beam and the new Dolby Atmos enabled Arc. These aren’t simply soundbars: they are also wireless, multi-room speakers that can play music from almost any source, like any other Sonos kit. And they sound exceptionally good, especially for their size. Sonos has managed to overcome the usual limitations of compact speakers: scale and weight. Dialogue is also clear and direct, and never drowned out by the rest of the action. You might be blown away by the transformation from your TV’S in-built speakers. It isn’t perfect – there’s a little treble brightness and sibilance, particularly at higher volumes or with poorly recorded audio.

While the Beam’s sonic presentation is spacious, with effects stretching beyond the dimensions of the screen, it doesn’t fool you into thinking you’re listening to a proper surround sound system. But, for an AV product, the Beam makes for a solid music system, with good tonal balance, bass weight, rhythm and punch.

The Sonos app is a large part of the system’s charm. As well as walking you through set-up, it’s where control of your system takes place, enabling you to see what music is playing where, and to group speakers together.

Having everything in one place is one of Sonos’s strengths, largely because it enables genuine universal search. Search for an artist, album or track and Sonos will browse through all music services and local sources connected over a home network, such as itunes libraries and NAS drives. You can also build playlists and on-the-fly queues directly within Sonos, and again from multiple sources.

Hi-res gaps

One big gap in Sonos’s offering is its lack of support for hi-res audio, and with Bluesound offering it, it’s a shame Sonos hasn’t followed suit. There’s a question mark over how important hi-res audio is in the context of a multi-room system consisting of compact wireless speakers, but the option would be nice.

Sonos has also added Alexa voice control, either through the addition of Amazon Echo devices or the Sonos One. The One offers the most seamlessly integrated experience, but the introduction of Alexa and the constant updating of its app are testament to Sonos’s dedication to endlessly improving, upgrading and evolving its offering, and it makes investment in a Sonos system feel like a safe bet.

While we hope Sonos adds hi-res support in the near future, by combining a range of accomplished products with the most substantial selection of streaming services and the most pleasant and complete user-experience, Sonos remains one of the best multiroom performers around.

“Sonos’s dedication to upgrading its offering makes its system feel like a safe bet”