SONOS PLAY:1 Smart Wireless Speaker, Black

Product Information

The question is: do you want to fill a room or fill a house? If it's the latter, and you're already using Sonos audio at home, then these are excellent sonic limbs to cast into a bedroom, kitchen or even a bathroom. On top of that Sonos has released the Boost, which is like a turbo-powered Bridge delivering, as Sonos says, “enterprise-grade wireless capabilities”. Most homes will be fine with Wi-Fi or a Bridge, but for difficult environments, the Boost ensures that Sonos will work everywhere. On its own the Sonos Play:1 is an excellent small speaker, offering pretty much class-leading sound quality for a wireless speaker of this price and size. The Sonos Play:1 is a great little speaker. We have no hesitation in recommending the Play:1 if you find the Play:5 too pricey. It works just like any other Sonos Play-series speaker, and offers excellent sound for both the size and price.

Sonos One vs Sonos One SL vs Sonos Play:1 differences Sonos One vs Sonos One SL vs Sonos Play:1 differences

If you don't see your product or are unsure which generation you own, please sign in to your account to see if it requires Sonos S1.If you’re worried that having Dancing In The Street blaring from your One will prevent Alexa or the Google Assistant from hearing your request to skip Dancing In The Street, a combination of noise cancelling, something called “smart voice capture” and a custom-designed six-microphone array ensures that you can always be heard. Inside, Sonos has fitted a tweeter and a brand-new 3.5in mid-range driver (each has its own amp), which has more cone movement than a speaker that size usually does. So, while a speaker that size would normally have cone movement of 6mm, this one moves 14mm. More cone movement means more air movement, which means bigger sound. On top of that, the crossover between the tweeter and driver has been customised, so it’s much lower than normal. Sonos says that this means that you lose the directionality of the speaker, so your music should fill the room no matter where you put it.

Sonos Play:1 review | What Hi-Fi?

Unsurprisingly, you can also use the One as a surround speaker for a Sonos Beam, Arc, PlayBase or PlayBar-based system, with or without a subwoofer. The Sonos Amp also allows you to create a 4.1 system, with a phantom centre channel, from a pair of wired front speakers and a pair of Ones acting as surrounds.

The third reason is, of course, replication. If you’ve already got plenty of voice-activated speakers and suchlike, the arrival of yet another is needlessly confusing. That goes double if you already have a Sonos One in your home. You no longer need to have one of your Sonos units wired into your router, although we’d still recommend using cables for the most stable and reliable connection. Sonos’s wireless network is one of the best around, so you are unlikely to encounter too many issues with the wi-fi route. PLAY:1 is a smart speaker that features hardware and software designed by Sonos to ensure the best possible performance for the size. A custom-designed mid-woofer and tweeter deliver deep, rich and surprisingly big sound. With a powerful low-end and crisp mids and highs, new smart processing technology pushes Sonos’ drivers further than ever before, minimizing distortion even at full volume. Plus, PLAY:1 projects a wide field of sound, delivering a great listening experience no matter where you are sitting in the room. And since the Sonos wireless network is devoted to streaming music in HiFi sound, you’ll enjoy smooth music wirelessly without dropouts anywhere in your home. Sonos is also less closed-off than it used to be. Until 2016, all music selection for your Play:1 had to be done through the Sonos app.