Sonos PLAY:5 sound system, hands-on and impressions

Sonos is quickly establishing themselves as a premium name in home music streaming hardware. We recently looked at a full home setup, rigged with four Sonos CONNECT:AMP units pumping tunes into different zones of the house.

The Sonos PLAY:5 is a standalone music player, with all the smarts and speakers built into one unit. It connects via WiFi, or plug in an Ethernet cable, if you choose.

The name of this device is indicative of its build, with the Play:5 housing 5 speakers in its roughly 14-inch by 9-inch frame. Those speakers include tweeters in the top corners, main drivers below and a little sub driver in the center.

Overall, sound quality is very good – which is just my humble opinion. Volume is very loud, filling a large room with ease. Since ’tis the season, the unit was used mainly to pump out your favorite Christmas tunes. The ring-a-ding of all those jingly bells really put the tweeters to task, and they performed very well with no noticeable distortion occurring, even at unreasonable listening volumes. I would easily put this guy up against the more expensive Bose Wave music system III and be pleased with the results.

If, like me, you have a preference for a wooden enclosure over a plastic one, and can hear the difference, I fear that you will notice that ‘plastic’ sound to this speaker system. This is not a bad thing, and I promise that if you do not know what I am talking about, you will be very pleased with the overall sound of this unit.

Controlling the Sonos PLAY:5 is about the same experience as controlling the Sonos CONNECT:AMP. There are only three buttons on the device, volume up and down and another to mute audio altogether. However, with just one PLAY:5 in the house, there is no zone control settings to deal with. Simply fire up the Sonos app on your Android device, choose your favorite streaming music service and enjoy.

The Sonos PLAY:5 runs for $399 direct from Sonos in black or white, or hit up Amazon where it is just $395 at the time of writing. Keep tabs on it though, we’ve seen it for even greater savings during Amazon deals in the past, or with a $50 gift card and 6 months free Google Play Music All Access.

What do you say, is the Sonos PLAY:5 likely to land in your living room/kitchen/bedroom/media room/office/garage…?