Sonos One Smart Speaker

I now have four pairs of these speakers. I discovered Ikea sell Sonos Speakers in a rectanglar box which sound ok but the base and volume is not as good as the Sonos One. Ikea also sell wall mounts for these speakers would have been useful, but in the end the sound quality prompted me to ditch them for these Sonos One which was much better in my side by side comparison. As for the actual product, the downside is the limitation of the voice control. There are three options, Google, Alexa and Sonos. No matter which you pick, you cannot tell Sonos to play any song unless it is from a music service such as Spotify, not even a playlist. I hoped the Sonos voice control would be relaxed since I assumed it would not be bound by Google or Amazon restrictions, but this was ... MoreI now have four pairs of these speakers. I discovered Ikea sell Sonos Speakers in a rectanglar box which sound ok but the base and volume is not as good as the Sonos One. Ikea also sell wall mounts for these speakers would have been useful, but in the end the sound quality prompted me to ditch them for these Sonos One which was much better in my side by side comparison. As for the actual product, the downside is the limitation of the voice control. There are three options, Google, Alexa and Sonos. No matter which you pick, you cannot tell Sonos to play any song unless it is from a music service such as Spotify, not even a playlist. I hoped the Sonos voice control would be relaxed since I assumed it would not be bound by Google or Amazon restrictions, but this was not the case. Setup has gotten much better over the years. You can easily change the voice assistant or eq settings within the app, although most changes must be done on a phone, not the windows apps Sorry Sonos for rating as a 1 star, but I only read the one stars so felt it important to reach out to others who do the same. Other than the voice control these speakers are excellent.

Things that are annoying but would be easy to fix :- 1) Alexa voice a) the signal from the speaker to indicate it is taking a command is too loud and doesn't adjust down in line with adjusting the media volume (unlike the Amazon Echo products). Late at night if you ask it something this creates a booming noise that is far to loud. I know that one of my friends has same issue and he reported this back but hasn't heard anything. Yes you can probably switch off the confirmation completely but you shouldn't have to . b) once the speaker has activated when hearing the key word (and boomed at you), it reduces the music/media volume (partial mute). On Amazon units this is around 5 seconds which makes sense. On Sonos this is around 30 seconds which really interferes with ... MoreThings that are annoying but would be easy to fix :- 1) Alexa voice a) the signal from the speaker to indicate it is taking a command is too loud and doesn't adjust down in line with adjusting the media volume (unlike the Amazon Echo products). Late at night if you ask it something this creates a booming noise that is far to loud. I know that one of my friends has same issue and he reported this back but hasn't heard anything. Yes you can probably switch off the confirmation completely but you shouldn't have to . b) once the speaker has activated when hearing the key word (and boomed at you), it reduces the music/media volume (partial mute). On Amazon units this is around 5 seconds which makes sense. On Sonos this is around 30 seconds which really interferes with what you are listening to. Example is, If you ask it to turn volume down then you can't tell if this is ok for at least 30 seconds as its still in partial mute. More difficult things to fix I think (that make it unusable at times) :- In a mixed environment with Amazon Echo devices the Sonos doesn't know if its coming or going. You ask it to play a song and it either says it will and doesn't play anything or plays something else entirely. In either case when you ask it what it is currently playing it tells you its the song you had actually asked for (when obviously it isn't) ! The Alexa app struggles to play a song on the other echo system. E.G I ask the Amazon echo units to play something on the Move (example Sonos device name configured in Alexa app) and they can't. Likewise I can't use the Alexa on the Sonos to then play in the Kitchen Echo. Its truly horrible. After trying to do that the system gets really confused and nothing works for a bit. You ask it to turn volume down on the Alex app , Sonos will turn down the speaker that answered the request but not the others that are involved in playing the same music in the room (eg Move and 2 x Sonos Ones) Other things When using Alexa voice control , the voice prompt has to be Alexa and can't be changed. The rest of my Amazon eco system has "echo" as its key word. You can't create an Alexa music group that has both Echo devices and Sonos devices (so you can't do mutli room music with other devices). In terms of sound Quality. They are ok. I purchased 2 X Sonos Ones to replace a 20 year old Stereo in the Kitchen where the speaker are about 50% bigger than a Sonos Move speaker adn being fed via Auxinput from Echo DOT. Even after using the Apple EQ setup tool I wasn't impressed enough to leave it in place (I thought it was inferior). I relegated them to my lounge and linked in the Sonos move and am pleased with how that sounds (so for £800 it sounds about the same as something I paid £100 for with £20 DOT (call it £200 for inflation). Other things that make it not as good as it could be. You should be able to use the Move in bluetooth mode (so send from a projector or something) and allow it to pass that media onto wireless network to the rest of the Sonos equipment . That is a feature request I guess rather than a problem. There are plenty of other issues and anomalies, but I won't post them here as people have already probably got bored of reading this. So Sonos , you have so much still to resolve to call your speakers smart.

Love the sound and love having wireless when the system works correctly. That's really my only positive at this point. I dislike not being able to control the sound of my TV with TV remote. Have to use my phone to control the volume. This would be great, however, at least once per day the sonos app on my phone can't find my products and each time this happens it goes through the process of trying to find my products and then eventually tells me to unplug my modem and replug it, wait till it resets, try again. Meanwhile I may have turned the volume on my TV low or high and I'm unable to adjust it. Have to wait until the app finds my products because it won't allow me to use the remote to my TV to adjust the volume. Had I known prior to purchase that Sonos sound ... MoreLove the sound and love having wireless when the system works correctly. That's really my only positive at this point. I dislike not being able to control the sound of my TV with TV remote. Have to use my phone to control the volume. This would be great, however, at least once per day the sonos app on my phone can't find my products and each time this happens it goes through the process of trying to find my products and then eventually tells me to unplug my modem and replug it, wait till it resets, try again. Meanwhile I may have turned the volume on my TV low or high and I'm unable to adjust it. Have to wait until the app finds my products because it won't allow me to use the remote to my TV to adjust the volume. Had I known prior to purchase that Sonos sound system and Sony TV are not smoothly compatible, I would have bought the Sony system and not have to deal with this. Currently, I have to unplug and reset my router at least once per day if not more. I was in chat with tech support recently but had to disengage because it was taking too long to find a solution. I will try again when I have a couple of hours to spend online with tech support. I would recommend to a friend if they had more patience than I. The problem is the constant disconnect.