After living with the Sonos Play, I think it's the only speaker you need — here's why | Tech Radar

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After living with the Sonos Play, I think it's the only speaker you need — here's why

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We’re not exactly short of options when it comes to choosing a wireless speaker to blast tunes out of either at home or on the go. But how often have you chosen what you believe to be a perfect speaker, only to eventually discover it doesn’t quite meet your evolving needs?

Perhaps you have a large, powerful speaker to use at home, but then you want something you can take on the road with you. Or vice versa, you have a portable speaker that’s easy to throw into a bag, but the sound quality is disappointing. You've been forced to juggle multiple speakers to cover your life — until now.

The Sonos Play laughs in the face of that compromise. One speaker. Every scenario. Done.

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Having used it at home, it really does cover all bases. Its impactful audio delivery means it can comfortably be used as a home speaker, as it has little trouble filling a room. And it’s small enough to go into a bag, and you can stream over Bluetooth when you’re away from home.

Throw in a long-lasting battery with up to 24 hours of play time, and you really do have what I would consider to be the only speaker you need.

The current Sonos line up is really aims to have something for everyone (Image credit: Sonos)

Looking at Sonos’ speaker lineup, it would seem like a fair statement to say the brand has a model for every person and every scenario. There are home speakers including the Era 100 and Era 300, then you have the Move 2, which is ‘portable’ speaker but is too large to truly carry around, and finally the Roam 2, that’s about as portable as you can get but not as good as a standalone speaker like its bigger brethren.

That left a little gap between the Move and the Roam that needed filling.

The Sonos Play perfectly slots into the gap, while also crossing over into home speaker territory, sitting above the Era 100 in terms of price, but backing it up with extra features. Tom Conrad has claimed it to be a true ‘Goldilocks’ speaker — I couldn’t agree with him more, and I'm amazed it didn’t already exist.

The Play’s superb sound quality and its versatile design has had an unexpected knock-on effect for me — it’s got me listening to music even more. With multiple Sonos speakers dotted around my apartment, including a stereo pair of One SLs in the kitchen that I use when working from home, I didn’t think I’d have a real need for the Play, yet I’ve found myself using it the most since it arrived.

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It’s been great to be able to have it right next to me on the table where I work, then take it into the bedroom where I have a Sonos Arc and another pair of One speakers already set up. But since the Play is already, well, playing, I’ve not seen the need to swap over to that bigger system.

If you’ve never owned a Sonos speaker before, I think the Play is the perfect entry point to the brand. It offers excellent sound quality and usability from the get go, while also having the capability to open up a wider multi-room audio system thanks to its Wi-Fi support.

And given Sonos found its footing in multi-room audio, I love the fact the Play makes joining that ecosystem ridiculously easy.

I’ve always been a fan of Sonos’ aesthetic, so much so that my home is filled with its speakers and soundbars, while the Ace headphones were the first over-ear headphones I truly fell in love with. Every product is lovely to look at and to touch, and the Play continues that trend.

Yes, the buttons on the top panel could be a bit more defined to save you from needing to actually look at which one you’re pressing, but otherwise I can’t find any faults with what the Play offers physically.

There’s great cohesion across the lineup too. For example, Sonos has used the same green color for the Play’s small carry handle and its charging base that’s been used for the interior of the Ace’s case. It’s a subtle nod, but one that’s very effective and I, for one, truly appreciate.

I’m fully aware of the tumultuous couple of years Sonos has had recently. While the launch of the much-anticipated Arc Ultra soundbar at the end of 2024 could be deemed a genuine success — it’s maintained a spot in our guide to the best soundbars ever since we reviewed it — the disastrous app update fiasco certainly would have soured relationships between the company and its millions of users.

Throw in a number of competitor brands — such as Wii M, Audio Pro and Denon — also offering a seamless gateway to multi-room audio, and Sonos’ position as a leader in its field was in serious jeopardy.

While many of the issues that plagued the app have been fixed and with CEO Tom Conrad confirming the company has plans to improve it further, Sonos still needed something to say to customers ‘we’re back and we’re better than ever’ — and in the Sonos Play, it’s well and truly proved it.

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Max is a senior staff writer for Tech Radar who covers home entertainment and audio first, NBN second and virtually anything else that falls under the consumer electronics umbrella third. He's also a bit of an ecommerce fiend, particularly when it comes to finding the latest coupon codes for a variety of publications. He has written for Tech Radar's sister publication What Hi-Fi? as well as Pocket-lint, and he's also the editor of Australian Hi-Fi and Audio Esoterica magazines. Max also dabbled in the men's lifestyle publication space, but is now firmly rooted in his first passion of technology.

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• After living with the Sonos Play, I think it's the only speaker you need — here's why