SONOS PLAY:1 Smart Wireless Speaker, Black

Product Information

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. For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS. Make sure you’re in the room you want to tune – a red dot should appear next to the room name if it hasn’t been tuned yet As with the Sonos Playbar, the Playbase has just one audio input - optical. The idea is all your video sources run into your TV, and just the one optical cable (which is included) takes the sound from your TV and into the Playbase. If you want a Sonos speaker with an HDMI input, you need to look at the Beam. The Playbase still has a number of strengths that haven’t yet been mentioned. The first is, unlike most soundbars and soundbases, it can be upgraded to a full 5.1 system with the addition of a Sonos Sub and two Sonos Play:1 (or even Play:3 or Play:5) speakers to act as the LFE, surround-left and surround-right channels.

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.Sonos has tweaked its software over the couple of years since the second-gen Play:5 release (and it will be getting the controversial Sonos S2 update in May 2020), but set-up is as simple as ever. If your audio keeps skipping, stopping or generally playing up, you could have an issue with wireless interference from other devices in your home. One way to reduce this interference is to switch the wireless channel that your Sonos system is using. The app itself struggles slightly under the weight of all of these features, but universal search makes it easy to get to what you’re looking for and, if you’re using Spotify or Tidal, you can stream straight from their respective apps. This is a flaw that’s most pronounced when you have Trueplay active, but it’s also there when you turn Trueplay off. Turning Trueplay off also seriously reduces the width, dynamism, punch and clarity of the presentation, so ultimately we’d recommend leaving it on - even though it brings the harsh treble to the fore. It makes using Sonos feel much more natural, particularly if you, say, use Spotify on your phone on the way to work.

At least everything else about the setup process is simple, with the Sonos app having a step-by-step guide complete with simple instructions, diagrams and even videos. During the process you’ll assign the Playbase to a room of your house, program it so the volume can be controlled via your TV’s standard remote and, if you’re an iPhone user, tune the sound to your room using Sonos Trueplay.

Sonos' biggest wireless speaker is kind of a big deal generally

Assuming you do get the intended spacious sound, you’ll find it’s combined with bass that’s punchy, authoritative and energetic. The bass here is far more natural and tonally expressive than that of the Playbar, which feels as though it’s compensating hard for its diminutive chassis and sounds a little artificial as a result. The Sonos Play:1 is the most accessible Sonos speaker. It offers all the convenience of its streaming brothers in a smaller, cheaper form. Despite the multi-room system, of which the Play:5 is an integral part, remaining our favourite, the result is a lost star for Sonos’s flagship speaker. Sonos’ support technicians are very helpful (we know, we had to call them), and one way or another you will get up and running in the end, but in our experience it’s not always the super-simple process that Sonos sells it as.

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. Pair two PLAY:1 units for amazing stereo sound, or use two PLAY:1s as rear speakers with PLAYBAR and a Sonos SUB™ to create 5.1 home theater sound for your TV.If your computer or smartphone won’t allow you to play music files on your speaker, you may need to configure your firewall. Do bear in mind, though, this width can be helped or hindered by the size, shape and furnishings of your room, because this is a system that relies upon bouncing sound off walls. 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. However, if you’re going to listen at low volumes you might also want to consider the more refined, slightly more flexible Riva Arena. Verdict You’ll do much of your controlling via the app, with the ability to add your streaming services of choice, as well as search out music saved on the local network.