Sonos Wireless Music System Review

I had heard a lot of great things about Sonos before we started stocking it at KRCS, but I hadn’t yet taken the plunge, despite my love for tech and music. A few months later, I’m now a serious Sonos addict, and it’s become one of my most used tech products at home (for those that know me, you'll know that's no small feat)!

So what is Sonos? To put it simply, it’s wireless HiFi. The Sonos speakers connect to your existing WiFi network which then enables you to control your music through an app that you can either have on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, as well as a PC or an Android device.

The Sonos system allows you to have multiple speakers throughout your home. Each room can then be set up to become a “zone” on the Sonos app. This makes it incredibly simple for you to fill the whole house (group all zones) with your favourite 90’s cheese or, if you feel like you just want some mellow soul for your bedroom, you can play your music through just one speaker (a single zone). Of course you can group rooms however you want, so I’ll group my open planned kitchen/living room together if I’m cooking, making it easy to fill the space with amazing sound, while not affecting other rooms in the flat. You can even put two of the same speaker in a room and easily have them become a stereo pair.

Where Sonos really shines for me is just the simplicity of everything, from the setup to the hardware and the software. Each speaker has one mains lead that plugs into the wall and that's it for cables! No speaker wire anywhere, easy to position and the speakers hardly take up any surface space. See just how easy it is with a video from my colleagues in Doncaster!

There’s a range of speakers that should suit everyones’ house and room sizes as well as your wallet. The Play:1, the smallest Sonos speaker, still packs an impressive punch and even more so when you consider the relatively low price point of £169. The Play:5 at £349 offers a bassier, more dynamic sound and the option to plug in any device which has a 3.5mm out (perfect if you want to connect an Airport Express and Airplay any of your apps).

Want to use your own amp and/or speakers? Then Sonos also have you covered there with the Sonos Connect Amp.

The Sonos app (free on the Apple or Google app stores) is simple and intuitive to use and continuously updated to add new features. Once downloaded to your device, you can get a new speaker up and running in only a couple of minutes. If you do need any help, then the Sonos website has some great info and their telephone support really is superb; friendly, helpful and they really know their product!

Of course great hardware and software doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t got access to the actual music itself. The good news there is that Sonos support pretty much every major streaming service going. Your iTunes library (from either your device or computer), any NAS music drives on your network as well as Spotify, Google Play, Deezer, and Soundcloud with Apple Music support coming later in 2015.

Occasionally want to listen to the radio? Sonos supports TuneIn, which gives you access to over 100,000 local and international radio stations streaming for free over the internet.

The app beautifully combines all these services and your current music collection, so playlists can be a combination of any of the songs you want access to whether they’re downloaded or streamed.

So Sonos for me, have totally nailed the music experience and I would have been happy with just that, but then they’ve gone out and created a mind-blowing home cinema solution too.  This means with the Sonos Playbar (one of the original, and some would say still one of the best, TV soundbars), a Sonos Sub and a pair of Sonos speakers you can also have a full 5.1 wireless surround sound set-up for your television. How does this sound? Simply put, WOW!! Listening to the main heist scene in the film Heat, bullets whizzed by me and it actually felt like I was in Los Angles witnessing a bank robbery. The level of immersion in a film or TV show with sound quality like this is incredible!

The important thing to remember when buying Sonos is that you don’t have to buy it all at once. It's a modular system, so you can build your collection of speakers over a period of time and develop a set-up that works best for you and your home.

Sonos time and time again shines for me. Whether it's waking up to my favourite Spotify playlist each morning, or going to sleep to a random radio station that is over 10,000 miles away and experiencing cinema-quality surround sound at my own house. It’s made discovering new music a great experience, and it’s enhanced how I listen to the music I grew up with and it's made the films I watch sound amazing. Sonos for me is so easy to recommend, it’s no wonder that my parents now have 5 of their own speakers at their house.

If you want to see (and hear) for yourself, then come into store for a demo of Sonos and be prepared to be blown away…maybe even literally!

You can shop the full range of Sonos speakers at our online store.

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