SONOS PLAY:5 Smart Wireless Speaker, Black

Product Information

I’m not seeing the case that a ‘ standalone’ Arc would be referred to as a 5.0.2 setup? I would class it, in a similar vein, as a 3.0.2 system and perhaps state that it handles the two pseudo rear channels and that the ‘5 phased array channels’ referred to are the Arc’s FR, FL, Center and 2 height channels. There’s Bluetooth for easy streaming, but the Move also features Wi-Fi connectivity for easy integration into your Sonos setup. When you’re using the Roam at home, Sound Swap can automatically switch audio to the nearest speaker. It also supports a host of streaming services, plus Alexa and Google Assistant. Battery life isn’t world-beating at 10 hours, but its feature set, sound quality and connectivity options make the Roam a properly versatile option for go-anywhere audio. Although it's about the size of a large shoe-box (and heavier than it looks, at 6.36kg) the Sonos Five isn't quite a cuboid since its grille portion is slightly bigger than its rear end and the baffle is slightly bowed out and angled upwards too, to aid with sound dispersal. Rarely does a device arrive that does so much and does it all so well. Even rarer that it remains a class leader almost three years after release. Be in no doubt; the Sonos Arc is a superb bit of kit.

The Era 300 can also be used as Dolby Atmos rears in a surround system with the Sonos Arc or Beam Gen 2soundbars and a Sub.

Its clean, streamlined chassis can be stood up or laid flat: the Five will cleverly detect how it’s positioned and adjust output to suit. If tinkering is your thing and you’ve got an iOS device, you can also deploy Trueplay tuning tech to tweak the listening experience. Of course, your TV’s specs are important here. To get True HD Dolby Atmos, your TV needs to not only support eARC but also have pass-through functionality. And just because your TV has eARC or ARC doesn’t mean every one of its streaming apps that should carry Atmos actually will.

It's particularly handy for use in the kitchen as it can be used hands-free, such as for catching up on the news, radio or cooking recipes, with extra information displayed on its seven-inch screen. You can also use it as a hub for your smart home, such as for turning smart lights on and off with just your voice. Premium rival simple Bluetooth speakers like the new JBL Charge 5 can be similarly-priced to the Sonos Roam too, despite offering far fewer features, as the table below shows.In comparison with a single HomePod 2, which is one of the biggest rivals for this speaker but costs a lot less (and is less than half the size), I would say the HomePod actually has a marginally better audio balance, thanks to its deeper bass. But it sounds smaller in comparison, in more ways than one. The Era 300 can go a LOT louder than a HomePod 2, but its expansiveness means music sounds much more free – and that's before you get to the strength of its stereo and Dolby Atmos. Switching between the two, I really missed what the Sonos could do when I moved away from it. This Sonos product isn't flawless. Despite its huge, airy soundstage and energetic, solid bass (which sounds more natural than the Playbar) there's a sibilance to the treble that can be hard to ignore. It's punchy and dynamic, though, so we'd recommend giving it a try before you buy. It sounds like a crazy risk but, as you can read in our Beam Gen 2 review, we can confirm that its use of forward-facing drivers (configured into five separate arrays rather than the original's three), combined with more processing power, results in a product that's even better than the original.

We were impressed with the sound offered by the original lamp, so while we haven't gone twelve rounds with the new Symfonisk table lamp yet, we have high hopes for an even better experience here. The result is a soundbar that can handle Dolby Atmos more capably than many more expensive soundbars with actual upward-firing drivers. It creates a more spacious soundscape, with an impressive sense of height.

The Sonos Arc soundbar is bending the rules of surround sound

Sonos Swap (exclusive to the Roam) lets you 'hand off' whatever music the Roam is playing to another Sonos speaker nearby, while improved Auto TruePlay uses the speaker's microphones to optimise the sound according to the speaker's surroundings. https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/the-sonos-arc-is-the-long-awaited-playbar-update-with-dolby-atmos-support/%3famp=1 The Sonos Era 100 has a sound architecture comprising three Class-D drivers, two dual-angled tweeters and a mid-woofer. The woofer is said to be 25 per cent larger than the Sonos One's woofer, and there is a 47 per cent faster processor too, future-proofing the Era 100 for software updates. The Era 100 also delivers stereo sound rather than mono and overall, the sound performance it delivers is absolutely excellent.