Depending on when you ask me, I will either tell you I love these speakers or kind of hate them with a white hot burning passion. I've been looking for a whole-house sound system for a while. I have a very strong mesh WiFi network, so when I saw these speakers and the reviews talking about how great the sound was, I decided to take the plunge and purchased a bunch of them (10) to hang everywhere around my house, basement to second floor.
At first, I absolutely loved them. Their sound, as reported by others, is excellent. And the addition of Alexa made controlling them so convenient. I really fell in love with them and started telling everyone about how great they were. Then, about 4 weeks in, I started running into issues which have plagued me ever since, and I can't seem to get the system back into a stable state.
The issue seems to stem from the integration with the Amazon Alexa software. The first odd thing I noticed was that occasionally, the speakers seem to just turn dumb, for lack of a better term. You wake them to ask for something and they ding indicating they are listening, but no matter how carefully you articulate your request, they pause for a few seconds and then just die. Or they respond to confirm a request for something that doesn't even remotely sound like what you requested. Or, perhaps most annoyingly, they respond correctly and start playing the thing you requested for about 10 seconds before just fading out and stopping without explanation.
I have tried restarting the speakers, my cell phone, my WiFi, and my Internet router, all to no avail. When the speakers just decide to not work for some reason it seems you have no choice but to wait for 6 or 7 hours or so for them to start working again, for reasons as mysterious as the reasons they stopped. I can't tell you how aggravating that is, particularly since these speakers are supposed to be a nice mid-level solution that should just work.
Another annoyance I've noticed is that occasionally one of the speakers will simply drop from the Sonos software, causing that speaker to be completely unresponsive and uncontrollable no matter what you do. The only way to re-add it to a group when this happens is to stop all activity on every speaker and have them do their best impressions of expensive bricks until you open the Sonos software and find that the missing speaker has reappeared. Which leads to another bug, which is that sometimes the speakers will simply decide to not take commands, verbal or in the Sonos software. You tell them to 'stop' or 'cancel' and they don't. So you grab your phone and open the Sonos app, click on the speaker group, and click the stop button and...nothing happens. Just keeps right on playing. It's absolutely maddening to be ignored like this by your "digital assistant"; you are often left with no choice but to go around unplugging speakers around the house to get everything back to a base status.
These problems could be YMMV type issues; plenty of reviews practically glow when talking about them. It could also be that by buying so many I exposed myself to more hassle than most and would have been better off purchasing fewer of them and accepting some sound gaps. But my feeling is that as these are not cheap speakers, and that since at least according to the product literature I should be able to setup the speakers in a configuration like this, it shouldn't be this much hassle.
My gut feeling is that the integration between Sonos and Amazon is not very stable and that problems crop up over time. I say this because I have noticed that Alexa updates seem to happen at a breakneck pace, which introduces weirdness all on its own. For example, for over a month I could ask Alexa to 'play NPR' and the speaker would open the radio station without issue. Then one day the exact same request prompted a series of questions about where I lived, which station identifier I wanted, etc. What the heck? Why take something that worked and make it more complex for no reason whatsoever?
The bottom line is that when they do work they are amazing. I just wish Sonos and Amazon could get some more stability into their products, because otherwise this will never be more than a niche product.
Edit 12/15/2019:
I was going to ignore the comment by the manufacturer, but since this is the season when people might be spending a lot of money on these things, I'm just going to post a quick follow-up. In between the quietly sponsored 5 star "reviews", manufacturers do damage control PR when someone does post a negative comment about their products. The responses are meant to convey the idea of 'sure, here is a negative comment, but we're nice guys and look how politely we listened to his complaint and offered to help; this negative experience was probably not even our fault and in any case it certainly won't happen to you.'
So here's my truth: I did take them up on their suggestion to call for support. It was an agonizing multi-hour call where they had me repeat the exact same troubleshooting steps over and over and over again, right down to connecting the devices to the local LAN for setup and using a computer connected to the LAN to run tests against them. Nothing they did fixed the issues, but the technician had no strategy but to keep asking me to repeat the same steps until, after 6 repetitions or so, I gave up in frustration. And honestly, I think that was his goal. He certainly wasn't learning anything by asking me to repeat the steps ad nauseam when we were receiving the exact same results each time. I think the idea was that if they could make me give up in frustration first, they could frame the experience as me giving up when all they wanted to do was help. It's actually clever, in it's own infernal little way.
The reality is that if you read commentary around the web, you'll see that I'm not the only one reporting weird, glitchy behavior out of these devices, particularly if you are using the Alexa interface as opposed to the Google one. The rate of issues also seems to be affected by how many you have on your network. One or two, and you might not have many issues. More, and the odds seem to shift considerably. This product has (in my opinion) a hardware or software (or both) issue that causes the speakers to drop out periodically without explanation, occasionally flat out refuse to join a network, or go dead to commands for random periods of time. I can't say that if you buy these you absolutely will have a problem, but I feel comfortable saying that there is a chance, and it might be higher than you would be comfortable with, given the expense of the units.
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| Connectivity Technology | Bluetooth | USB, Auxiliary, Bluetooth | Wireless | Wi-Fi |
| Item Dimensions | 6.36 x 4.69 x 4.69 inches | 3.78 x 3.78 x 6.65 inches | 8.03 x 14.33 x 6.06 inches | — |
| Item Weight | 4.08 lbs | 0.90 lbs | 14.00 lbs | 10.20 lbs |
| Power Source | Corded Electric | Battery Powered | AC | Corded Electric |
I believe it is necessary to mention that I am a gamer. I play games A LOT and I tend to listen to music ALL the time. When I read online that this speaker is great for music they were NOT kidding. The sound and the bass on it is so perfect it's better than a lot of speakers that I have heard and owned. The volume on my speaker is not even in the middle of the volume bar and it is already loud enough (To where I actually feel like my neighbors can hear it next door), but my bass was too good to where I had to turn down -5 (Bass is still loud enough to notice in the music) [Bass goes to max +10 and to -10 as well as the other (2 fuctions). You can mess with Bass, Treble, and Balance in app. I have (2) of these Sonos synched to each other and the sound quality of it is so perfect that my buddies online ask me to play music for them while we play zombies (since it goes through the Mic flawlessly and the sound quality is that crisp). They have said that it sounds like they are listening to it in person. Now I am picky when it comes to speakers and I can't say anything negative about the sound quality and bass. Now I will let you all know a few things that you may have been wondering. The setup was SUPER EASY. When I finished it I literally said out loud, "Was that it?" The steps: 1) Download app. 2)Make account and verify. 3)Connect to speaker. 4)Connect speaker to Internet. 5) Download update. *Done. That was all. App is SUPER EASY to use it's very simple which makes it a great app. Now like I have mentioned I listen to music A LOT, so I added Pandora, Amazon Music, etc and even getting those on it were easy. They guide you to it when you go into the settings of the app and it asks you if you want to add them. This next subject may be negative for you depending on your area and perspective. You have to add your own voice control system to it if your area has one. I have been using Alexa since I started owning one roughly about 4yrs ago, so I use the Alexa voice, but there are ways to get other voices. For me getting the Alexa voice was super easy. You can add it in the settings as well and it's under *Voice* in bold print. Now another possible negative thing depending on your standpoint and what your trying to use it for. It doesn't have as many functions as Alexa. Which is fine for me since I have the current newest Alexa coming in on Friday. I will be using the Alexa as the control tower for it since it has the most functions. You can apparently connect your Alexa to these speakers by using the Alexa app. I will let you know if it is true once I receive my Alexa come this Friday the 8th. If you have any questions ask away. I'll respond the best I can.
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Aditya
Be careful if you are in India
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Could have been 4+, except for this...
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Nightmare. If you like paying a lot of money to waste your time, this is for you..
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 27, 2019
UPDATE:Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 27, 2019
Still ongoing issues. Now Beam just drops out of home theater group altogether. Been buying stereo systems for almost 25 years now and this has been the most expensive nightmare. Good luck getting support when you need it. Spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why I wasn't getting sound from devices plugged in, spent another 20 waiting for their 24/7 customer service then I discovered that the Beam magically disappeared from the software. Come to find out this is a known issue that just happens?!
Now I've got to move around too much in my theater cabinet to be able to power cycle/factory reset and repair the whole group, then probably have to pair again with my Logi remote.
Movie night cancelled. Buyer beware.
Oh yea, CS finally came to chat after 30 minutes.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I purchased a pair of Sonos ones to add music into my living room. So far I consider it a huge waste of money. Not only are these speakers overpriced but constantly run into issues. First of all, the speakers that I have set up as a pair in the room constantly disconnect. I have to go through the process of removing the stereo pair and setting them up again quite frequently, however, Sonos customer support doesn't seem to consider this an issue and continually walks me through the same steps that I can undergo myself. It's a nuisance to have to go through this process every time I want to listen to music. Secondly, I purchased the Sonos brand specifically because it was Alexa enabled, however, with the constant disconnections all you get is a error response which is super annoying. Also, as a Canadian heads up, you cannot stream your Amazon Prime music to these even if you're paying for the service. You can also not stream Spotify, unless you are a premium member. All of this means that the Expensive sonos speakers you purchased are quite restricted as to what you can play. Remember, these speakers are not like bluetooth ones.
For me, a person who paid to get premium Amazon Music to play on my new speakers, I'm left disappointed to only be able to stream music from my Plex server or local radio. If I could do it again, I would neither invested money into the pair of Sonos Ones upstairs, or the Beam/One/Woofer 5.1 I put in the Mancave
UPDATE: You'll receive countless emails from the company on products and asking for reviews; in my experience, attempting to leave a negative review just errors out which means you've wasted your time. Changing rating from 2 to 1
UPDATEUPDATE: Be prepared for even more emails from Sonos and having any negative reviews entered through their site will error out on you. Stay away from Sonos!
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