The Sonos ‘Amp’ brings a useful power upgrade

The Sonos Connect:Amp and its predecessor the ZonePlayer 100 have been around for many years, so arguably the new model from Sonos, simply known as ‘AMP’, was a long overdue and welcome update. If you’re not familiar with this kind of device, the Sonos Amp is designed to offer all of Sonos’s streaming smarts in a unit to which you can simply add hi-fi speakers.

The AMP’s headline act is more power over the popular previous Connect:Amp model, with a welcome increase from 55W to 125W. This makes it far more capable of powering bigger, more demanding speakers. Dimensionally, AMP has a slightly larger footprint yet marginally lower profile, making it well suited to concealment in a hi-fi rack. You can also stack multiple AMPS on top of one another in a central rack location for multi-room configurations, a deliberate change to its form that Sonos included after acknowledging how popular the previous Connect model had become in the custom installation market.

AMP features all of the connections of the Connect:Amp – speaker terminals, a subwoofer output, two Ethernet sockets and a stereo analogue input. But there’s one important addition: an HDMI socket. This gives the Amp handy TV-syncing capabilities, including automatic switching to TV audio when required, and volume control via your TV’s original remote.

The AMP also has all of the music streaming capabilities of every other Sonos device, in that the AMP uses the Sonos App for control. Still one of the best in the industry, the App gives you access to music from practically every service and makes it extremely easy to control different Sonos devices in one interface.

In addition Sonos is making advances towards making the system increasingly hands-free. The AMP doesn’t have an in-built microphone, but it does respond to voice commands issued to Amazon Alexa and Siri-powered devices including, naturally, the Sonos One and Beam. For those that use it, AirPlay 2 is also available.

AMP offers some welcome upgrades over the previously popular Connect:Amp model and if you’re a current Sonos user, you will almost certainly appreciate an upgrade to the new AMP. Price $999.