Sonos has always managed to make great products for multi-room audio (though, not necessarily always great apps). But the problem with making seemingly indestructible speakers is that the lack of planned obsolescence means that eventually, people will have enough speakers to fill their home. That is, presumably, why Sonos has spent the last few years making speakers (and headphones) for users to take out of their homes.

The Sonos Move 2 is a great speaker, but one you wouldn’t want to carry too far. The Sonos Roam is a good little speaker, super portable, but not really enough to fill a garden party; it’s more for those people you hate at the beach.

The Sonos Play is here to be the Goldilocks of the Sonos portables. It’s not too big to carry around, but not so small that it lacks the details. But, is it any good?

First impressions
Specifications and price
Wi-Fi performance
Bluetooth performance
Portability
Who is the Sonos Play for?

First impressions

I was surprised by how compact the Sonos Play is. For some reason, I pictured something a bit larger. It looks like someone artfully cut a Sonos Play One in half.

Taking it out of the box was a pleasant experience, and it was easy to set up through the Sonos app. However, what surprised me is that there is no wall plug in the box. I can understand the justification for phones not coming with a wall plug — most people are upgrading from an old phone and already have a charger. Headphones, I can even almost forgive because they don’t have to be plugged in all the time.

Remember to BYO wall plug when charging. Image: Alice Clarke.

However, a speaker that’s likely going to be plugged in most of the time, so people can listen to music indoors? That needs to come with a wall plug. Not including one in the box is a cheap cop out. Especially since the Play doesn’t seem to easily charge on any old wall plug — my review unit has had issues with two of my plugs so far, because most older plugs cap out at 15W. This, frankly, isn’t good enough on a $500 speaker.

Sonos Play specifications and price

Price	$499
Warranty	One year in addition to your Australian Consumer Law rights
Official website	Sonos Australia
Battery	24 hours battery life Battery is user-replaceable
Waterproof rating	IP67
Wall plug minimum requirement	18W
Amplifiers	Three Class-H digital amplifiers
Speaker drivers	Two tweeters, one mid-woofer
Dimensions	Height: 192.3 mm Width: 112.5 mm Depth: 76.7 mm
Weight	1.3kg
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 6 USB-C (works with line-in adapter) Apple AirPlay 2 Bluetooth 5.3

All those specs look great. But I really want to highlight that the built-in battery is user-replaceable. It’s not one designed to be switched out all the time, but when the lithium battery inevitably stops being able to hold a charge, you can just get it out with a screwdriver and chuck in a new battery in around five minutes, judging by the manual.

Sustainability is all about not just making new landfill, and I’m so pleased to see a brand that doesn’t want users to just chuck their product in the bin when it starts to slow down. It’s sad that a $500 device being easily repairable is something to be praised for, rather than the norm, but that’s just where we are at the moment.

Wi-Fi performance

I’m really impressed with how the Sonos Play sounds. It’s such a small speaker, and yet it puts out such big, detailed sound.

They’re pretty versatile, too. In Wi-Fi mode, a single Play can be used on its own, it can have a line-in connected to connect a CD or record player, you can use two as a stereo pair, or you can use them as rear speakers in a home theatre system. You can also then put them in Bluetooth mode and take them outside, but I’ll cover that in the next section.

Going to my testing playlist, it’s obvious that this is a small speaker. The bass isn’t as rich as I’d usually like in a $500 speaker. However, it sounds much fuller than I’d expect for a speaker this size. On “Simmer” by Hayley Williams, I’m getting enough of the emotional punch, even if I do have to turn it up really loud to get proper detail on the snare ghost notes.

Table of contents

First impressions

Sonos Play specifications and price

Wi-Fi performance

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