Sonos One

Not a lot can be said that hasn't been said already about what a great system this is for getting music off your media player or PC out to where you want it. I've had the Sonos 3 and a SONOS BRIDGE for about a year and it's one of the best things I've ever purchased.We have a modest house - about 2800 square feet with a pretty open first floor - and this thing puts out such a good sound you can hear the music in nearly any room in the house. It doesn't have a big booming, cloudy sound, like from an old boom box, but it's also not weak in the lower ranges. I can play anything from electronic to jazz to classical clearly and loudly (as loud as the wife will let me) and it sounds just great. I'm still amazed at what a great sound profile this thing can put out, and then I think I haven't even tried out a Sonos 5 yet. That's going to be my next purchase.A lot of people still don't realize what you really need to get this up and running, so let me clarify. I've got all kinds of networking going on in my house, especially when it comes to moving, saving and playing media files. This is dead easy, but I can see where the novice user might get a little confused.The Sonos 3/ 5 are great SPEAKER systems, really, for your music, especially if you don't need, or don't have the space for, a full stereo or a bunch of larger speakers. The way to get your music to a Sonos 3/ 5 is to hook it up to your network so it can play tunes off your computer or other media device, like your NAS. The Snos 3/ 5 themselves will require an ethernet connection to your network router (or switch) so you can send tunes to it with the Sonos app for PC or Mac (or Android or iPhone). The Sonos 3/ 5 can do wireless, but not the typical wireless you might have in your wireless router/ AP at home. If you want to use the wireless capabilities for the Sonos, you have to invest in the Sonos Bridge, but it's well worth it.The Sonos Bridge also needs an ethernet connection to your home network, but if you get one hooked up, the bridge itself will allow you to stream all the music you own plus anything off the internet. (You can still stream internet stuff to your Sonos 3/ 5 by themselves, but your home computer has to be on with the Sonos app running to do that.) Plus, if you get more than one Sonos in the house, the bridge makes it much easier to manage all of them together or separately. The bridge also makes it easy to put the speakers anywhere in the house and get music to them, like out in the garage or the backyard. You just need power for the speakers and you're set.Overall a great investment, especially if you've got all your music in one place like the hard drive of you computer and especially if you've got a smartphone you already use for everything.And if you think it's a little pricey, especially if you have to throw in the bridge, just go shopping at Amazon Warehouse where all the returns end up. Most of the time, the stuff I get there has been opened once, or never opened at all, and there's a good cut in the cost of a new one.Highly recommended.

I've been using the Sonos Play 3 for a couple of weeks now with a Sonos wireless bridge and I have to say it is quite a remarkable system. I never give 5 stars, but I have never been so impressed with a technology system before. Very simple to use, well designed, and the controller app for PC and IOS is excellent. The Play 3 sound quality is quite good for a small set of powered speakers. The major benefit of the Play 3 is the easy portability of the system. I can move it to the porch or garage and within a minute the system is linked (you can easily tell its status - when the white led stops blinking, it is connected) and can use my ipad or iphone to control what I want to listen to. The ease of set up with the bridge is quite good. The system uses a simple auto-connect process to add devices to the Sonos network where, after being prompted by the application software, you press a button on the Sonos device and it automaitcally searches for a Sonos network to join. This is similar to the easy connect process many new wireless routers use to add devices. No passwords, but secure.The Sonos wireless bridge does not use a standard wifi network, it creates its own proprietary wireless Sonos network which cannot be seen by standard wifi devices. I believe the Sonos uses some of the channels in the 2.4GHz range. I have not seen any interference issues with my existing wifi network.You should do the initial set up from a PC or Mac, not a mobile device. I tried to do the initial set up from my ipad but when I added the app to my PC, the devices weren't recongnized and I had to reinitialize the system. To be fair, the Sonos app warned me that it is recommended to initialize the system from the pc app, so I don't consider this a problem - it was no big deal.The design of the components is very good, not cheap or cheesy looking, and the ease of use is excellent. One's reaction is that this is the wireless music system I'd expect to see come from Apple in terms of robustness, design, and ease of use. Although my first reaction was that the system seemed to be a bit expensive, the Play 3 is not much more than a set of of higher end powered PC speakers, and when you include the Sonos functionality, my assessment changed to thinking it was actually a good value.The system integrates easily with iTunes library and seems to support almost any media library. I've only really started to explore this aspect. Setting up music queues and playlists is trivially simple. The biggest drawback is that it is addictive - since getting the Play 3, I've added a Play Connect to my existing stereo amp and speakers. I can play to and from the Sonos system with my stereo now. This is really cool - I can play different streaming radio or music library tunes on the different Sonos devices in different rooms, or the same, or whatever the heck I want to do - all easily controlled from the Sonos app. I'm just seeing how soon before I justify another Sonos component. It's clear there is a very complex technological base for the Sonos system, both hardware and software, but that complexity is well hidden behind a simple to use interface for the user.Sonos may not be the "cheapest" system for home music, but it is the best. I did a lot of research before purchasing and no one else nailed this application nearly as well as Sonos. It just does this, but it does it exceptionally well. Over the years, we've made a significant investment in our music library and I view the Sonos as a great way to unlock the value in this investment by making it easy for me to enjoy my library wherever I am in the house. Kudos to the Sonos team for a job well done.