Review: Sonos PLAY:1 wireless streaming speaker

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

There's no shortage of streaming music on the Internet and there's various ways to get this into your home or office, but none are as satisfying as what Sonos offers. The company is a pioneer in Internet radio and hifi audio streaming and has enabled a powerful solution with its Bridge and PLAY products as well as its iOS and Android apps that enable fast access to various music sources. Here's what the PLAY:1 has to offer.

I have tested various wireless speakers. Some are Bluetooth enabled devices that serve to connect to PC's, smartphones and tablets and double as a handsfree microphone as well as on-the-go speakers. I also used AirPlay enabled speakers that synch seamlessly with iPhones, iPads and Macs and which can be wired to any other device.

The Sonos PLAY:1 intrigued me because it is a standalone solution. You can connect it directly via Ethernet to your router or, even better, use a Sonos Bridge to create a wireless network which means you can put the Play:1 anywhere a power source is nearby and stream the audio directly.

Source audio is managed by an app on your smartphone or your tablet. I quickly installed it on my iPad mini, which seemed to be the perfect size for a portable DJ console around the house. Connecting the Sonos bridge directly to my Linksys router was a breeze and setting up the PLAY:1 was even easier. I was up and running in less than 10 minutes.

The big part of the equation is ease of use. With the Sonos remote app on an iPad or iPhone, you can traverse an entire universe of free streaming music and find the right sounds for the right mood. Since Sonos runs its own wireless network, there isn't any annoying latency or sputtering issues. Find a channel, press play and you're good to go.

The beauty of Sonos is it takes usually questionable quality of Internet radio and music streams it in as high quality audio as possible. There's no better way than to experience and marvel at this feat than with their smallest ZonePlayer, the PLAY:1.

With two speaker drivers, a mid-woofer and a tweeter, the Sonos PLAY:1 delivers sound that's not just full and punchy but is also crystal clear.

Definition is the key to any great sound experience. I used the TuneIn radio app to stream a range of music from classical, hip-hop, classic rock, 80's, 90's and to get a feel for the season, a lot of Christmas standards and was simply amazed at how consistently gorgeous the sound quality was for a sub $300 speaker.

Playing the Sonos:PLAY 1 at half volume was more than enough to fill my large family room/home office. I'd usually have to crank the volume way up on my stereo speakers in order to get the type of loudness, and even then the clarity just isn't there.

Being a Sonos product, users can integrate the PLAY:1 into a larger network of speakers, subwoofers and power sound to any room in their house wirelessly (again, provided they are near a power source). Even bathrooms can enjoy some streaming tunes since the Sonos PLAY:1 is humidity resistant and even has a provision for being hung on a wall.

After listening to what one Sonos PLAY:1 can do, I am sure many audiophiles who consume music via Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, Rdio, SiriusXM, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Rhapsody, MOG, Slacker, and Last.fm will think about getting two speakers for a solid stereo experience. Doing this is quite easy as all you need to do is add it to your bridge network.

You can also add music from your NAS (Network Attached Storage) to the PLAY:1 but you can't play off your iTunes playlist automatically as you'll need to add to a queue and even then some DRM songs won't be able to play at all (damn you, DRM!).

There also doesn't seem to be a straight up way to plug and play, say a standalone CD player since there's no line-in ability.

This is a big bummer for me as I still collect and listen to hundreds of CDs and they would sound just great on this speaker. This could be a deal breaker for some users who want versatility or who have old school sources of music they prefer to play from. No excuse not including this $5.00 functionality in a $220 dollar speaker.

Still, there's no denying there's some serious genius behind the Sonos PLAY:1, it is the most affordable Sonos speaker, it will appeal to a number of streaming audio fanatics and it guarantees great sound all around. It is also a gateway into a really solid, expandable and high quality system of streaming audio playback.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Comments

[Matt]

Great review. I'm loving my Sonos system and just added a couple PLAY1's to an already extensive Sonos network and they sound fantastic. I think I'll grab one more to stereo pair the set up in my office (I love the separation between left and right channel).

The Sonos CONNECT component will solve your CD problem, I believe. Have you checked that out?