Sonos is planning a "product launch event" for September the company has revealed via its third quarter results. While Sonos CEO Tom Conrad didn't reveal exactly what that would be, he then went on to talk about "conversational computing and predictive intelligence".

That's right, it looks like Sonos is going to be moving its platform in the direction of AI, with Conrad going on to address the debate about which is the "best" AI model and how Sonos might put AI to best use in the home environment.

"The lasting value is going to be in what surrounds the model in a real home: the hardware that can converse with quality across every room, the system that already knows the shape of a home and the way a family lives in it, the connectivity to reach the speakers, services, and devices that turn a request into coordinated action."

Sonos shot to fame more than a decade ago, thanks to enabling multi-room audio. With a central controller, multiple Sonos speakers could be grouped and controlled, making streaming a much better experience across the home.

That was followed by a deliberate focus on quality, looking to appeal to more aspiring customers, while devices like the Amazon Echo offered rival connected streaming skills at much lower prices. Sonos' audio devices are still highly prised however, with a reinforcement of its soundbar offering over recent years.

Amazon's latest move for its Echo devices was to boost Alexa's performance using AI - called Alexa+ - although Sonos' own Voice Control system is rather basic by comparison, focusing mostly on music control.

Sonos has, in the past, supported other brands' voice control systems, but with the rapid acceleration of AI, the sort of voice models that Amazon and Google have offered over the last decade are probably easier to develop.

Exactly what Sonos will offer and how it will implemented remains to be seen. However the company is no stranger to riling its user base with changes, having struggled to put a new app in place and facing criticism for dropping support for a number of legacy devices.

Whether Sonos' current line-up have the processing power to handle AI functions is unknown, although the company might hand it off to the cloud for processing, so that older devices remain supported.

With September just around the corner, it won't be long until Sonos' plans are revealed in full.

If you've ever looked at a friend's fancy extension and wished you had hidden ceiling speakers, then this could be the answer. Flexson - known for its Sonos accessories - has an in-ceiling mount for Sonos speakers, so you can do it yourself.

The mounts support the Sonos Era 100 / SL, Era 100 Pro or older Sonos One models, allowing you to install those like a professional, hidden from sight.

The advantage of using existing Sonos speakers is, firstly, you don't have to buy ceiling speakers, you can just use the units you already have. Secondly, you don't need an amp or to run cables to power these speakers, because they are self contained.

That's a great starting point from a simplicity point of view, allowing you to continue to use the Sonos app that you already have.

From a DIY point of view you will need a degree of competence. Firstly, you'll have to cut a hole in your ceiling and secure the mount in place, which is fairly straightforward. The second stage, however, could be the stumbling block.

You'll have to power the speaker using a standard plug like you normally would, so you'll have to get a socket into the ceiling space. That's not impossible, but depends on the construction of your house. If you can lift floorboards it's easy, but if you're looking for a dedicated mains extension you might need an electrician.

What happens when something goes wrong and you need to restart the Sonos speaker? Well, you might consider a remote switch to power cycle the speaker so you're not scrabbling around in the ceiling trying to get to it.

But once that's done, you just clip the Sonos speaker into the cradle and clip it into the mount. There are round and square grilles to suit the design of the room, and the grille can be painted.

The price for the mount is £150 / $170 / €170 but you'll have to provide the speaker yourself.

If there's one thing that Sonos knows right now, it's that it absolutely cannot mess up another app update. The debacle of its new app still haunts the audio brand a couple of years on, which explains why its latest big update has been more carefully tested and deliberately launched than any other I can remember.

If you're on the latest version of the Sonos app you can now test it out before it goes live for everyone at some point down the line, and I activated it to see what it offers up. The option is called "Enable Improved Navigation" in the Settings menu if you're keen to see it for yourself.

There are indeed subtle tweaks to a lot the navigation methods through the app, with more pages now letting you swipe them down or backwards to return to previous screens, which should make things more intuitive.

I really like that I can now sort my systems and order them as I like, rather than just in the order they were set up, and being able to mark my TV system as a favourite to pin it to the top is also a nice time saver.

Impressively, though, it's an incredibly tiny change that I'm loving the most, because I know I'll be glad of it every day from now on. For a long while, adjusting the volume of my TV system during playback has been a bit imprecise – the volume line in the app spans a huge range of noise levels and can be hard to tweak super precisely.

I often have the TV on really low volumes, and that's been particularly the case with some of the recent late-night World Cup games, and it's been fiddly to get right. With this update, though, whenever you use that volume dial you'll now see a "+" and "-" sign on either side of it, letting you go up or down in the smallest possible increments.

This makes it far easier to quickly get to the exact level I want, and Sonos says that another must-have feature is also on the way – lock screen controls. That'll be another major quality of life win for me, as a daily user.

Sonos says that all these changes have been tested with community members in recent months, and that this opt-in test is the latest phase before it all properly launches. That shows it's learned the lesson from its previous app mistakes, but we'll see what sort of feedback it gets in the coming weeks.

Gen Z is bringing about a resurgence of wired headphones, apparently. But it’s not the only category that doesn’t get enough love. Who’s going to care about home hi-fi headphones if we don’t?

This is actually one area that has seen a bunch of interesting developments in the last two to three years. We’re currently amid the — admittedly pretty quiet — rise of the Wi-Fi headphone. And there’s also Bluetooth Auracast, which allows for super-low-latency streaming, ideal for wirelessly hooking up to a TV.

We’re covering the gamut today.

The Sonos Ace are our high-profile do-it-all headphones that can play the role of portable headphone outdoors, and hook up harmoniously with a Sonos setup at home.

Replacing the classic RF-based headphone archetype, there’s the Bluetooth Auracast-based Sennheiser RS 275 TV. They’re so living room-bound that their wireless dock has an HDMI port.

Or if you have a limitless budget, consider the truly top-tier Hifiman HE1000 WiFI, which bring together the worlds of audiophiles and wireless tech.

Sonos vs Sennheiser vs Hifiman: What's Unique?

These three headphones have fairly different roles. And despite being the most firmly rooted to a proprietary system, the Sonos Ace are the top pair if you want a set to act as your only pair of headphones.

It’s not just because they have all-purpose Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi Sonos connectivity. They also offer active noise cancellation and a closed-back design that stops sound leakage. The ANC may not quite be Bose-level, but it’s solid. Comfort is exceptional too: real chef’s kiss stuff.

They support head tracking as well, which emulates listening to speakers, intending to make it seem as though the audio position stays as you move your head — a neat tech, although at review we found its implementation could be better.

Right at the other end are the super-focused Sennheiser RS 275 TV. As the name suggests, these are primarily intended to be hooked up to a TV. They include a little transmitter box, which has an HDMI input with ARC support, along with optical and 3.5mm sockets. Buttons on the top of the box let you switch to virtual surround sound and dialogue-booster modes.

This is as near to a latency-free wireless setup as you’ll get — ideal if lip sync issues do your head in. And, in theory, you’ll be able to use the dock with other headsets as Auracast becomes more prevalent. You can also use the pair as a regular Bluetooth set, hooked up to your phone.

The Hifiman HE1000 WiFi, meanwhile, has a somewhat more open version of Wi-FI streaming. They can be used like a Spotify Connect source or with Apple AirPlay 2. And Bluetooth is on board too. The design firmly values sound quality over convenience, mind, with an extremely open-back style that makes the rear part of the driver itself unusually visible.

They leak sound freely and don't really isolate at all, though. You've been warned.

They work well as headphones for a PC too, though, and can be plugged in directly over a USB-C cable. There's no 3.5mm jack input, though.

Sonos vs Sennheiser vs Hifiman: Which sounds best?

You’re not going to be shocked by this one. The Hifiman HE1000 WiFi are the best-sounding of this bunch by some distance. They cost far more than the other pairs, and have the type of cup design that makes it easiest to get the most coherent, open and expansive sound.

They have fantastic bass depth and punch with no boominess, and real three-dimensional imaging, great detail and a more easygoing approach than some Hifiman pairs. There’s some extra weight in the mid-bass that has a crowd-pleaser thickening effect that may not be to all high-end tastes, but it’s a choice, not a mistake.

On first putting on the Sennheiser RS 275 TV, there’s perhaps a slight lack of refinement in the upper mids. They’re not obviously ultra-smooth, with a touch of hardness up there. But you quickly realise this is mostly because they aim for great dialogue clarity when you’re watching TV.

These are also by no means thin-sounding headphones either, with totally respectable low-bass depth and power. You just have to appreciate you’re not getting the classic bulked-up sound of a standard mainstream portable headphone here. But when the expected environment is a relatively quiet living room, not a packed commuter train, that’s no bad thing.

We like the Sonos Ace's audio too, but we find they benefit from some tweaks. They sound good, but improve following from some EQ’ing of the treble to add a bit of missing spark, otherwise they can seem a little flat.

The Ace's app does thankfully offer some EQ customisation, though, even if it isn’t the most fine-grained of sound control. So, yeah, they’re good, but you need to come in with the right expectations. If you are switching from an already high-end Sony, Sennheiser, Apple or Bose pair, it may not be a direct upgrade on the pure sound front.

Sonos vs Sennheiser vs Hifiman: Which one wins?

This is a tricky one as these three serve slightly different audiences. But if you are already a somewhat Sonos-packed house, it’s easy to recommend the Sonos Ace — especially if you often like to watch stuff while the rest of the household has gone to bed. While these aren’t the best-sounding headphones in their class, you can tweak them successfully with EQ. And they’re a real chameleon pair we’ve loved using.

The other two excel in other ways. If you're buying for someone who wants to be able to largely forget the techy stuff, the Sennheiser RS 275 TV are a top pick. Having the pre-paired transmitter box could really solve some potential techy headaches.

And for peak sound quality, it's obviously the Hifiman HE1000 WiFi in pole position. Few are seriously going to consider spending this much on headphones, though.

Honourable mentions

This isn't the most abundant of audio categories, with wireless generally being linked to portable use. Sennheiser has made these pairs for years, though.

There's the predecessor to our top pick above, the RS 175 TV, an old pair that uses RF tech rather than Bluetooth Auracast.

Or if you want something a little more up-to-date that's cheaper, the Sennheiser RS 120 use Bluetooth and came out in 2022.

There's a much lesser-known brand in this field, too – Avantree. It makes sets generally marketed at older folks, headed up by the Bluetooth Auracast-powered Opera Aura.

It never takes long for the Great British Public to embrace a heatwave – even one that's slated to end *checks notes* tomorrow?! That's a bit of a bleak prospect, but a few days of glorious sun have nonetheless brought some real succour to those of us desperately hoping for the actual turn of the seasons to bring some proper warmth.

When it hits the mid-twenties in London this early in the year, I can confirm that the parks become packed literally immediately, and there's nothing that goes with chilling in the park quite like a decent speaker. Too many times, as you stroll around the UK's parks, you'll hear tinniness and distortion, and know that people are enduring flaky battery life and a total lack of durability or weatherproofing, just to get some tunes on for the vibe.

I'll be honest – while I swallow my pride and do it for outdoors testing whenever I review speakers, I'm normally a little reluctant to bring a speaker to the park in my own free time. I love a bit of music, but I can sometimes feel like I'm setting the tone for other people, whereas some earbuds would give me the same vibe without that imposition.

That changes when it's a gathering, though, and this hot and sunny weather has made me look again at the Sonos Play, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago and on which I lavished plenty of five-star praise.

After all, the whole point of the Play is that, while it's a great home speaker that integrates with Sonos' multi-room system beautifully, it also has the flexibility to let you simply pick it up and take it out with you when you want something portable.

I did just that at lunch today, seizing the moment to grab an hour in the sun with a speaker that I was admittedly slightly leery of taking my eyes off to avoid anyone getting too jealous. I'd already used the Play outside for my review, but doing so again really underlined just how impressive I think Sonos' work here has been.

It's taken the sort of sound performance that you get from the Era 100, but put it in a package that feels stable and durable enough to take a little punishment in the outdoor world. It's also really quite pretty, in my view, especially in the white version that I've still got on hand.

I'm pretty confident that the white finish might scuff up over time, with grass stains being a real possibility, but I'm a picnic blanket kind of guy, so I'm hoping that keeps me safe from any lasting marks.

Crucially, though, it's the sound that really made its mark. Sonos says that its Automatic Trueplay system should account for your surroundings using the onboard mics, and I switched the Play back and forth on this setting to see how it impacted things. True to expectations, I did find that I got fuller sound when the speaker was able to detect the huge open space around me.

Staying true to my attempts to be sociable, I didn't crank the Play up to near its maximum volume, but I never found that it was weedy at the lower and medium volumes I explored more fully – everything I threw its way sounded great, and while there are bassier speakers on the market, none of them can match the other benefits that Play boasts.

So, with full awareness of a weather forecast that suggests we won't get another day like today for a while, my point is this: if you're on the lookout for a great home speaker that can also join you in the park, the Play is a terrific choice. It'd be great to have one on standby for when we get our next heatwave.

What's not to love about modularity, eh? There's nothing quite like a home speaker system that can flex as your budget does, letting you start with a modest one or two speakers, but with the ability to become a much more well-rounded system if you flesh it out over time.

That's exactly the proposition being made by Cambridge Audio's stylish new launch, a subtle but noticeable refresh of its old Minx speakers. These new versions come under the branding MSX, and there are four different ones to pick from, including two main satellite speaker options.

They're the MSX10 and MSX20, and their relationship to each other is really clear at a glance, just as with the previous Minx range. The smaller and cheaper MSX10 is basically a little cube of sound output, while the MSX20 is two cubes stacked on top of each other (or next to each other when horizontal).

They're augmented by two much bigger subwoofer options – the MSX Sub 200 and MSX Sub 300, which again are two different sizes to let you decide how much space you want to give over to your sound system in a given room. All four speakers come in either matte black or matte white, too, and I'm a real fan of their interesting and modern design notes.

From a sound point of view, the MSX10 features Cambridge Audio's BMR driver in its latest generation form, while the MSX20 adds a dedicated and custom-designed woofer to that same driver for much more bass performance.

The fact that the subwoofers are being launched alongside these two, though, suggests that those who want really powerful bass will probably want to add one to the mix. Cambridge says that the speakers can be arranged to give stereo and indeed surround sound, so it'll be interesting to see how easy this is to set up, and indeed how solid its sound is. Based on the Minx range, it should even be possible to ceiling mount satellites for a 7.1.2 cinema system.

Both of the smaller satellites, on that note, can be wall-mounted or put on optional stands that Cambridge is also selling. They're just as fine on surfaces, though, so it's up to you how you arrange them.

The good news is that these are also approachably priced for those looking to build out a system over time. The MSX10 comes in at £79/€99/$99, while the MSX20 might be the most sensible option at a very reasonable £99/€119/$129. Adding the subs will push your investment up a decent amount – the MSX Sub 200 is £349/€449/$449, and the MSX Sub 300 is £449/€549/$549.

They're all going to be available to order this month, so we shouldn't have to wait too long to get our hands on them and see how they stack up to the obvious, but much pricier Sonos-shaped competition. These could be one of the best alternatives launched in a good long while, though.

Last week was a big one in the week of audio reviewers like me – it had been quite some time since Sonos last launched new hardware, and the Play had every indication of being a super-interesting speaker.

Well, two weeks into using it, that's definitely confirmed in my view – the Sonos Play is a banger, and I had basically no hesitation in awarding it five stars when I wrote my review up last week. Now the speaker is actually available to buy, so you can add one to your home if you have the budget.

If you don't, though, I think that Sonos' other new piece of hardware might actually be the best and most obvious entry-point for its ecosystem... ever. The Era 100 SL is basically everything you could want in a static Sonos home speaker, for a price that's genuinely persuasive.

At £169, it's not the cheapest audio addition you can find for your living room, bedroom or wherever else, but what it does offer is the best way to get started with Sonos without breaking the bank too badly – especially compared to the £299 Play.

The Era 100 SL is, as the name suggests, basically identical to the older Era 100, but it strips out one big feature to cut down the price tag – voice controls and smart assistant compatibility. Well, here's the good news: I've had Era 100s in my living room for months now, and I've literally never used voice control a single time.

That doesn't make it a useless feature, to be clear; it's obviously something that some smart home enthusiasts love to use for automation, and plenty of people welcome it in speakers, but I can only speak for myself, and I'm just not someone who needs or wants it.

So, when Sonos offers up the same excellent sound quality and rock-solid design, but shaves £40 off the price by removing something I never use anyway, that's a pretty terrific situation from my point of view, and that's without actually having gone hands-on with the Era 100 SL.

I have every reason to suspect it's going to be a banger, though, and I'll be able to confirm that when we get our review sample next week, so keep your eyes on T3 to find out what my verdict is when it does come around.

I'm also very hopeful that this ushers in a new era for Sonos – one that sees it focus on its users' needs and wants, rather than change for its own sake. If it can nail those fundamentals, this wave of new speakers suggests that it could be onto something special.

It won't take you much of my five-star review of Sonos' new speaker, the Play, to clock that there's an obvious comparison to be made between it and the older Era 100. After all, by pricing the Play at £300, Sonos has made a bold move, and the £100 price difference between these two speakers bears examination.

So, I've done just that. As the proud owner of a couple of Era 100 speakers, along with, now, a couple of Plays, I've been able to test them in detail to see how they stack up to each other. Read on to find out which of these two excellent speakers you should buy, depending on what you need from your smart speakers.

Price and availability

As covered by the cutouts above, there's a £100 difference in price between the Play and the Era 100. The Play comes in at £299 in the UK, $299 in the US and €349 in Europe.

The Era 100, meanwhile, is £199 in the UK, $199 in the US and €209 in Europe (after a price cut post-launch). A further wrinkle is added by the newly-launched Era 100 SL, which shaves away voice controls and cuts the price further to £169, $189 or €199.

The Sonos Play and Era 100 SL both launch on 31 March, meaning they're not quite here yet at the time of publishing, but the Era 100 has been out for a couple of years at this point and is widely available. It also sometimes sees discounts during sales to lower its price to where the Era 100 SL now sits.

Design and features

Especially if you have them in the same colour, like the white models I've photographed here, the Sonos Play and Era 100 look pretty similar from the right angle. They're both basically cylinders with perforated grilles covering most of their outside panel.

The Play is ever so slightly taller, though, and the Era 100 is far more circular and has a bigger footprint as a result, while the Play is more of a pill-shaped device. They both have heft and are clearly built well, though.

Sonos has differentiated the Play with some more rugged design notes to acknowledge its portability, including a rubber coating on the bottom and top, and physical buttons instead of the touch controls atop the Era 100. The Play has more buttons overall, too, since it has a power button on the back along with a Bluetooth pairing button, mute switch and USB-C port.

The Era 100 is heavier, too, for what it's worth – 2.02kg to the 1.3kg of the Play. That doesn't really matter, though, since it's also not a portable speaker. Still, the more you know, eh?

The other differentiating note is that the Play has a carrying loop on its back side, which is handy for clipping it to hooks or bags, and also has a dock that you can cradle it in when it needs a charge (or when it's just not in use portably).

Overall, though, I think there's basically nothing between these two speakers from a design perspective. They're both extremely well-made and feel great to interact with, and both are modern and pretty consistent with each other.

On the features side, though, things are different. As mentioned, the Play is a portable speaker with a dock for its default home. When carried around, it has a 24-hour battery life and can be grouped in a stereo pair with another Play (or in a wider audio group with other Sonos speakers).

It also features reverse charging for your gadgets and has Automatic Trueplay using its microphones to adapt its sound to your surroundings. These microphones also enable voice control and smart assistant integration, although this is easily disabled.

The Era 100 also has voice controls and smart assistant options, but its Trueplay is the standard type that needs manual tuning with an iPhone, since it doesn't move around. It also has no portability, although it does feature a mounting screwhole on the bottom that can help it attach to wall mounts, stands and more. It, too, can be stereo paired, and also easily used as surround sound satellites if paired with a Sonos soundbar like the Beam Gen 2 or Arc Ultra.

Both speakers have similar connectivity options in the home, using Wi-Fi to connect to your Sonos multi-room setup and offering AirPlay 2 for super-easy wireless music if you're an Apple user. They also both have Bluetooth as a backup option, although you'll likely use this much more with the Play since it's portable.

Sound quality

So, if you read the previous section in proper detail, you'll probably have noticed that these speakers are basically ploughing slightly different furrows, but are in touching distance of each other from a design and features standpoint. How's that change in the sound department, you ask?

Well, not much! I've used both of these speakers for dozens of hours, including back-and-forth testing between them, and once again the comparison between the two requires quite a lot of qualification.

If you pop both speakers on a middling-to-low volume setting and listen to the same song, you'll often struggle to hear a difference between them. That's a pretty big compliment to both, in different ways.

The Era 100 is a terrific-sounding package, so for the Play to sound similar is no bad thing. That said, the latter is substantially pricier, so it could equally be a downside – except that it comes with the upside of portability and flexibility. So, my view is more that you can't pick wrong on sound quality.

That said, when you stretch to louder volumes, which many of us probably rarely do for reasons that can be summed up by the word "neighbours", the Era 100 does pull away slightly. It's bassier, in short, and retains its richness more impressively at these levels.

That means that those who think they're going to be listening exclusively at home to their songs of choice should probably know that the Era 100 is the more rounded choice from an audio perspective. Of course, if you put any value in being able to pick up your speaker and walk around with it, that equation changes again, and the Play takes the lead.

Verdict: Which should you buy?

These two Sonos speakers have created quite a buyer's market, in my view. Filling a major gap in the lineup, the Sonos Play now feels like the best all-round speaker the company makes – with total flexibility of use and great sound quality. It meshes with your wider Sonos system beautifully but also has the advantage of genuine portability.

That said, the Era 100 is probably the speaker I'd buy if I were looking to build a Sonos system from scratch and wanted to do so without spending too much money. Heck, from the point of view I actually think the Era 100 SL is now the winning option, despite not having tested it. Superior sound quality is a real win at its price, and if you're buying it for home audio then it won't disappoint you that it's not portable.

In fact, this looks like a pretty great time to gear up with Sonos stuff, especially in light of the messaging around that app debacle, which the company's looking to put behind it. So, as mealy-mouthed as it might seem, I'd say the Sonos Play and Era 100 end up being very much different strokes for different folks, depening on your priorities.

I've had the Sonos Play in my hands for nearly a fortnight at this point, which has been more than enough time to test it in-depth, and it's become more and more clear as I've used it that this piece of hardware might represent the future for Sonos. While that's obvious in some ways, given it's the company's latest launch, I think it does represent a big change from how Sonos was orienting itself a few years ago.

I'm one of many tech journalists who spent a couple of years writing about rumours and leaks concerning Sonos' now presumed abandoned effort to make a streaming box, and that was one of a few initiatives that seemed like quite a bold play for a company based in the world of speakers.

That period of uncertainty was crowned by the disaster that was the great Sonos app update, and for quite a few people, it might have felt like a tipping point for a previously highly-trusted brand.

Speaking only for myself, though, I always had a suspicion that Sonos would, or at least should, be able to right the ship. After all, its brand identity is so strong, and its hardware has a great reputation for a reason.

Now, under a new CEO, it seems to be making the right decisions at last, culminating in the Play. Again, I can't speak for every Sonos user out there, but on my end, this has felt like the speaker I've always wanted Sonos to make, which is no mean feat.

By marrying its multi-room home speaker experience with a design that can be lifted off its dock and taken on days out, trips and holidays, with a far smaller footprint and weight than the chunkier Move 2, Sonos has basically hit the ball outta the park.

I love almost every part of the speaker, from its design to its extremely impressive sound, with basically the only hangup being its chunky price. That's an equation that's been familiar to Sonos reviewers for generations of speakers, though, and a far easier one to square away compared to the threat of app redundancy and abandoned support that hung over the last couple of years.

Sure, I'd love the brand's decision-makers to heed my calls for an included charging plug in the box (given this is a £300 speaker at launch), but other than that, I really don't have any quibbles with the speaker from a user perspective.

Now, though, the test continues – one great bit of hardware doesn't necessarily wipe away all the missteps that came before it. Sonos needs to demonstrate that it can continue to make decisions that foreground what its users actually want, and build itself back up to the industry-leading position it could arguably occupy.

Sonos is hoping to put the last couple of years behind it – that much is obvious from the interviews its CEO has been giving, and from the way it has launched the Play and Era 100 SL. These speakers are very much giving "new start" energy to the brand.

While the Era 100 SL isn't exactly pushing the boundaries, the Sonos Play does represent a very interesting new addition to its lineup of multiroom speakers. For the first time since the Roam, it feels like Sonos is bringing out a speaker that people have been asking for – basically, "the Move 2 but smaller".

I'm definitely in the camp that wanted a product like this from Sonos, and I'm pleased and unsurprised to say that I'm hugely impressed by how the Play delivers on its promise. Here's why.

Price and Availability

The Sonos Play is available from 31 March 2026 in white or black, and can still be pre-ordered from a range of retailers right now – including directly from Sonos itself.

It's priced at £299 in the UK, $299 in the USA and €349 in Europe. That makes it a pretty expensive home speaker, obviously, and positions it as £/$100 more expensive (and entirely less portable) than an Era 100.

Of course, as we'll get to, what you're paying for is flexibility, so you'll have to consider whether being able to move the speaker around freely makes that extra chunk of change a worthwhile expense for you or not.

Design and Features

When I've been hands-on with the two main portable speakers that Sonos made before the Play, I ended up feeling a little like Goldilocks in search of the right fit.

The Roam 2 is a great size for sticking in a backpack before a sunny day in the park, but a bit weedy when it comes to filling a room with sound.

The Move 2, by contrast, is pretty hulking and therefore hard to imagine as a genuinely portable option other than for moving to your garden and back.

So, the Play's design is a pretty obvious attempt to fill the gap in the middle, and you can see that immediately. At just over 19cm tall, it's big enough to compare pretty tightly to the Era 100, but far smaller than the Move 2. It's also much lighter (at 1.3kg to the Move 2's 3kg), and a bit simpler in design terms.

The speaker is basically a simple, rounded column, with a grille covering most of its outside surface. The back has a rubberised channel housing a power button, charging port, mute switch for its microphone system, and Bluetooth pairing button.

The top of the speaker is also rubberised, and houses physical buttons for volume control, play/pause and a voice assistant shortcut. There's a short carrying loop attached to the back of the speaker, too, which is great for clipping to a carabiner or some other hook.

The bottom of the Play, finally, is also rubberised for grip, and has a two-pin charging jack at the back to connect to the included charging dock.

One of my few unequivocally negative notes comes at the expense of that dock. It's a great inclusion, but the fact that this sort of money gets you the dock and its attendant cable, but not an 18W power brick (as recommended by Sonos to go with it), is a bit cheeky. This is a premium speaker, so that sort of extra should be packaged in.

Reeling off the Play's features makes it clear just how much it brings to the table. This is a fully Wi-Fi compatible speaker, making it a full part of your Sonos multi-room setup in the app. It can also work with AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect for convenience, and if you have two of them, you can set them up as a stereo pair.

With microphones on board, you can use voice control if you want, but this also unlocks Automatic Trueplay, which is Sonos' way of compensating for your surroundings to adapt the sound (making it punchier when you're outside, for instance).

When you want to take it outside or simply move around your home, the Play can simply be picked up off its dock, and has a 24-hour battery for you to whittle down. It can also act as a power bank with its USB-C port, which is handy, and outdoes the Move 2 in a big way on durability. That's because of an IP67 water and dust-resistance rating, which makes it basically weatherproof.

That's one heck of a package, and the focus on versatility shouldn't obscure the smart design choices that Sonos has made, reiterating how impressive its hardware can be when software isn't distracting. Physical buttons are a great inclusion, for one, as is the easy mute switch for microphones. The handle works a treat, and the size and weight feel really well-judged for the use cases that are actually likely with this speaker.

Sound and Performance

It would be a major letdown if the series of good decisions I just described was let down by the Play's sound signature – but, thankfully, I've found that it's lived up to my expectations.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably worth saying that for this sort of money, you can probably find higher-fidelity sound in other packages. You won't find it so convenient or so slickly packaged, though, and that shouldn't be understated.

The Play's sound is really warm and sprightly for its size, with a depth and tone that I find really engaging. I've been using it to listen to a bunch of Samm Henshaw in the last week, along with a dollop of Olivia Dean and Raye, and those artists' rich vocals come across beautifully – both when indoors or out.

Swapping to some slightly heavier material, though, from Gorillaz to Kasabian, and I've had no complaints – there's still a good amount of depth and bass for my purposes.

Since Sonos sent me two Play speakers, I've also tried them out as a stereo pair (which is trivial to set up in the app) and been impressed. The upgraded sound stage is immediately apparent when you have them this way, compared to the simpler boost of simply playing through both speakers at once.

It's fairly tempting to use the Era 100 as a comparison for the Play, since it's a similar size, but cheaper and tethered, so I'll indulge myself. I've had two Era 100 speakers in my living room for a few months now, but isolating one to test it against the Play, and things get interesting.

The short version is this – the Era 100 has more powerful bass, especially at higher volumes, so for a purely tethered setup, it's the clear winner thanks to a much cheaper price tag (especially for the new Era 100 SL).

However, the comparison at low and medium volumes is close enough that if you think you're remotely likely to benefit from being able to take the Play with you on the move, it's easily great-sounding enough to be a real success on that front.

Of course, the app experience has been a huge part of Sonos' past 24 months, and it's central to how you use the Play. Despite the notable screw-ups of the recent past, if you didn't know about the app scandal and used the Play in a vacuum, it's an impressively easy experience.

The speaker is simple to add to your Sonos app and to control from there. I now have a proper multi-room system, so getting used to selecting my speaker groups then choosing my music has been a learning curve, but a welcome one. Plus, of course, the fact that you can select your Play right from AirPlay is incredibly convenient for iPhone users.

One tiny quibble is that pairing two Plays into stereo mode does lock you in a little. Say I have a stereo pair in my bedroom, but want to bring one speaker into the kitchen for music while I cook. In this setup, based on your groups in the app, you'd get one half of your stereo sound when you bring the speaker with you. I've therefore found it more convenient to leave the two Plays as a group rather than a pair, since that makes it quicker and easier to get full-channel sound from one speaker when I take it with me somewhere.

Regardless of that, though, the experience is a super slick one; the fact that I can turn off status lights, pick and choose the extent of voice integration, and control the speaker either through the Sonos app, its onboard buttons, or my phone's media controls, all makes for a great little array of options.

Sonos Play review: Verdict

Before the Sonos Play, there was a clear gap in Sonos' lineup for a truly portable home speaker. With the introduction of the Play, however, that gap has been closed.

In releasing the Play, Sonos has basically created the speaker that many of us were waiting for – one that sounds superb in the home, and fully integrates with a multi-room system, but can also come with you wherever you want to take it.

In use, its hardware feels like a collection of terrific choices, and the only quibbles I can bring to bear are from a value perspective – it should include a charging brick, and its price makes it one to consider rather than snap up immediately.

Still, with two Sonos Play speakers now in my flat, I'm going to be recommending it to plenty of people in the next couple of years. Even if the Era 100 has more bass at louder volumes, the Play just fits my needs better.

So if you want great sound that can basically follow you along as you move around, I've never tested a better solution than the Sonos Play. It's that good.

Also consider

I've mentioned them enough in this review that you can likely guess that I'm going to bring another Sonos speaker to bear as a consideration here. I do think the Era 100 SL (once it's out) will be a great option for those looking for home sound without that portable flexibility. It's a great price and shears off voice controls you don't need – what's not to like? The Era 100, meanwhile, is a brilliant choice for those who do want the voice stuff.

If you want something less Sonos-coded, then you could save some money on a Wi-Fi-integrated portable speaker, so that you can get some connectivity smarts without losing out on portability. The JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi is a great pick that's now impressively cheap – it sounds great, is incredibly rugged, and has Wi-Fi (unsurprisingly, per its name). Again, what's not to like?

As purveyors of luxurious home audio technology, Sonos enjoys a handsome reputation. While software issues have grabbed headlines recently, the brand has a portfolio full of beloved products which have earned its stellar reputation.

Now, two more speakers are joining that line-up. The Sonos Play – which was leaked last week – is a smaller, portable Bluetooth speaker. And, for those seeking a more accessible entry point for its larger home speakers, the Sonos Era 100 SL offers exactly that.

Let's kick things off with the Play. As you might have guessed, that exists as a sort of halfway house between the current Sonos Roam 2 and Sonos Move 2 speakers.

Described as the brand's most versatile speaker, the Play will integrate seamlessly with the other Sonos speakers in your home. Designed to offer premium audio on the move and at home, you'll find 24 hours of battery life and an impressive IP67-rated waterproof design.

You can even group up to four Play or Move 2 speakers when out of the house, to bring the brand's signature connectivity to any space, indoors or out. Priced at £299 / €349 / US$299 / AU$499 , the speaker should occupy the gap between the brand's other Bluetooth speakers nicely.

As for the Era 100 SL, fans of the brand should spot a number of noteworthy similarities between this and the current Sonos Era 100 speaker. In fact, the two are almost identical, save for the lack of a mic input on the SL device.

There's also a minute difference in the physical dimensions, with the SL sitting half a millimetre taller and deeper, yet shaving 70g from the overall weight.

Priced at £169 / €199 / US$189 / AU$289, this feels like a really appealing prospect for most people. Whether you've already got a Sonos system and want to add another compatible speaker on the cheap, or you're looking to get a foot in the door without raiding your piggy bank, the SL offers a lot to love.

The world of Bluetooth speakers has seen a lot of action recently. I've been enjoying testing the Majority Move M1, which is surely one of the most affordable options on the market right now.

But if you've got deeper pockets, there may be something new coming to satiate your appetite. A new leak shows a new Sonos speaker, which is called the Sonos Play.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the device was first leaked on the Best Buy website, and – at least at the time of writing – is still showing up on Reddit. The device is described as a smaller version of the Sonos Move 2 speaker, with a loop on the back of the device to make it easier to carry around.

It's said to enjoy a 24-hour battery life and an IP67 water resistance rating, which should make it a useful choice for those looking to take the party on hikes or longer excursions. The relatively minimalist back panel also shows an aux input, as well as a USB-C port. Images also show it on a wireless charging base.

Upcoming Sonos portable speaker? from r/sonos

The listing also suggested a release date of the 31st of March for the speaker, which means we could see it officially unveiled in just a few short weeks. The listing itself showed up on the Canadian version of the site, priced at CA$399.99 (approx. £220 / €250 / US$300 / AU$415).

That's quite an attractive price point for a speaker of this ilk, and sits neatly between the Move 2 and the Sonos Roam 2. It looks to be about as large as you'd want any kind of portable device to be – any larger and it would probably be more hassle than its worth.

All in all, that sounds like a really exciting new product from the brand, which has had a troubled time in the last few years. Hopefully this marks the beginning of a return to previous highs.

We’ve already heard about a couple of features coming to iPhone with iOS 26.4 when released, based on the latest beta software. And there are seemingly improvements coming to Apple's next tvOS software, too.

According to 9to5Mac, there’s a new audio feature in the latest beta of Apple's TV operating system that appears to resolve long-standing sound problems experienced by Sonos users. In particular, those running Sonos speakers alongside AV receivers.

What does Continuous Audio Connection do?

The feature, called “Continuous Audio Connection,” is due to arrive with tvOS 26.4 and works by maintaining a Dolby MAT connection to ensure uninterrupted playback as audio formats shift.

Apple has noted that legacy receivers may display a Dolby Atmos indicator when the function is active, though the source audio is said to remain untouched.

The update seems designed to tackle a frustrating problem that has plagued a subset of Apple TV owners for some time. Viewers using Sonos hardware connected through AV receivers reported unexpected crackling sounds and unusually quiet output, particularly when watching content with 5.1 surround sound.

Word spread quickly on the Sonos community forum on Reddit, where multiple users reported that enabling the new option resolved their issues immediately. One user said: "I can confirm that this function fixed my issues with 5.1 multichannel PCM content being way quieter than Atmos content."

Another added: "My 5.1 content sounds just as great as Atmos now."

A third user highlighted just how significant the improvement is compared to previous workarounds: "The previous solution was to disable eARC and let the TV recode to Dolby Digital Plus, or force Dolby Digital in Apple TV. But this is no longer needed!"

Not everyone is celebrating, though. A separate discussion thread has surfaced with users claiming that enabling the setting creates fresh complications when streaming standard stereo audio.

Since tvOS 26.4 is still in beta testing for developers primarily, Apple will likely continue to refine the feature before the final build is released. Fingers crossed!

It's rare that a big brand like Sonos can launch a product without numerous leaks beforehand – at least in modern times – but that's what's happened here.

The company has announced the Sonos Amp Multi – a hardcore streaming amplifier with the potential to drive up to 24 speakers across four independent zones. All of which being wlinked by the Sonos platform.

Of course, this will largely be overkill for most home entertainment needs, with the Amp Multi aimed more for professional uses and custom installs. But should you have an enormous home or fancy making use of its advanced tuning capabilities and high power output, you might be tempted.

It's certainly well-specified for multi-zone playback. The amp offers eight amplified outputs at 125 W per channel, with each of the channels capable of driving up to three Sonos Architectural speakers.

It is rack-friendly and combines GaN power architecture with Class-D post-filter feedback (PFFB), ensuring high performance with tight thermal control. This also results in very little noise coming from the unit itself – there are no fans on board.

The Amp Multi also comes with professional-grade tools, including a new ProTune feature to allow for precise, manual audio customisation.

It might seem overkill for some, but Sonos reminds that's why the Sonos Amp exists – this is an extension of that.

"Sonos Amp is the most widely used two-channel streaming amplifier in residential installation because it’s powerful, dependable, and intuitive,” said the CEO of Sonos, Tom Conrad.

"Amp Multi takes that same philosophy and applies it to larger systems. It makes ambitious designs more efficient to build and install, and easier to live with."

The Sonos Amp Multi will be available globally in the "coming months". Pricing is yet to be announced, but considering the target market, it'll more than likely cost a fair penny.

I've made the argument for years now that a soundbar is often the biggest single upgrade that people can make to change the quality of their home cinema experience. Loads of us now have great 4K TVs, even if they're not necessarily ranked in our list of the best TVs on the market, but very few of those affordable or midrange displays have remotely solid sound.

If you're looking to get a soundbar to transform how movies and streaming shows sound at home, there are few better choices than the Sonos Beam (2nd Gen), which is compact but extremely impressive – which is why it's a best-seller. Despite being a bit of a stunner, though, that doesn't mean its performance is always perfect without any tweaks from you, the user.

So, as the proud owner of a second-generation Beam myself, I've come up with this short list of settings that you should pay attention to if you have one – with only a few minutes of tinkering in the Sonos app, you could get a welcome boost to your sound.

Tune your soundbar immediately

One of the longstanding features that has made Sonos so beloved of audio reviewers is its Trueplay system, which lets you tune your speakers to the room they're in, based on reverb and spatial detection. The only asterisk is that you need an iOS device for it to work fully (on Android, you get a less detailed QuickTune option for some speakers).

If you have access to one, do this immediately by finding the option in the Sonos app, as it'll help you Beam (2nd Gen) tune its sound more specifically to your setup, and can really help the tone and accuracy of its audio both for music and even more so for movies and TV.

It can be easy to forget this step, or to assume that it's a very optional extra, so don't forget it. It's also worth remembering that you should do the process again if you rearrange your room!

Experiment with speech and night modes

When your Beam (2nd Gen) is connected to your TV and playing audio from it, you'll have live access to two audio mode toggles that are well worth exploring – night mode and dialogue enhancer.

These two toggles can be life-savers in certain scenarios. Night mode curtails the soundbar's dynamic range to massively reign in the bass, making it ideal for late-night movies where you're worried about disturbing neighbours or anyone in adjoining rooms.

That dialogue booster, meanwhile, uses some very clever systems to detect spoken dialogue in your audio, and boosts it a little to make it easier to hear and make out from background noise. It's great for those who sometimes have a little difficulty making out lines, and it is a real help for older movies and content that might not have quite the clean audio of modern productions.

Banish that LED

I love the design of the second-generation Beam, which ditched the dust-magnet that was the previous version's fabric grille cover, but there's one detail that persists from the first-generation Beam – a little status light. Some people will find this helpful, since it lets you know the connection status of the soundbar, but I have beef with it.

Primarily, if you're watching a movie in a dark room (as you should be), even that tiny soft-glowing LED can be a slight, minute distraction, and it's better off deactivated. Luckily, Sonos has thought of this – you can easily turn it off in the Sonos app, and I'd recommend you do so and never look back.

Choose your microphone settings carefully

The Beam can be a pretty smart speaker if you want it to be, but it's fair to say that plenty of us haven't embraced smart assistants such as Siri or Alexa nearly as tightly as their creators might have hoped.

If you're in the camp that doesn't really use voice controls in your home, then it's a good idea to head into that familiar Sonos app before too long to simply deactivate the Beam's microphone entirely. It's unlikely to wake accidentally, to be fair, but it's a little bit of peace of mind to know that it's just off and not a problem at all.

There's no way I'm the only person in the world to have audio-visual problems whenever I go home for Christmas. I think it's almost a rite of passage for anyone who starts to get into their home cinema setup to have to go to their parents' or relatives' house for the holidays and accept a huge downgrade while they're there.

I'm not going to argue it's that massive a sacrifice – the free food, hospitality and festive cheer more than make up for it, but every year I do the same calculus in my head. I need to come up with a watchlist of movies that I'd happily watch, but which I don't mind watching on a smaller screen with subpar sound.

In my parents' case, that's always been a pretty decent Sony 4K set they got a good long while ago, but without any form of external soundbar – the TV was always too snug on its old stand to allow for one, despite the very muddy built-in audio that resulted.

They recently moved, though, and that opened up more space, making for the perfect slot for a hand-me-down first-generation Sonos Beam, and the difference it made was actually almost impossible to overplay.

I had a first-gen Beam of my own for around half a decade, and recently upgraded to the Beam Gen 2, so I'm a certified fan of the hardware in question, but what the change confirmed for me was more fundamental: every single person needs a soundbar under their TV.

Finally, I was able to watch recent movie releases without feeling like I was compromising hugely on the experience. That manifested in the form of Jay Kelly and Train Dreams on Netflix, both of which I found really interesting, and each of which has plenty of muddled vocal audio, a real challenge for even a good soundbar and doubtless annoying without one.

Don't get me wrong, though – I'd still have quite liked to hear the immersive soundscapes of Train Dreams on my own system, with a subwoofer rounding out the bass to really make its fire sequence land more deeply, for example. That's the curse of the expert, though: I'll always be aware if there's a flaw in the presentation.

Still, the good news is that the best soundbars on the market are often less prohibitively expensive than people might assume. If you're still watching TV and movies without one in your home, take this as your prompt: go look at what's out there and what could fit in your setup affordably. I promise you that it'll be an upgrade you won't regret, as my Christmas holiday just reiterated for me.

As I've written about a few times in the last couple of months, I recently managed to upgrade my home surround sound system with a far superior Sonos setup to what I enjoyed before. Even more latterly, though, Sonos lent me a pair of the Sonos Ace headphones to see how they integrate with things, and I have to say I've been impressed.

I'd tried on the Ace a couple of times before, so I knew how outstandingly comfortable they can be to wear, but without a pair at home, I'd never been able to test their biggest USP – sound swapping.

This feature lets you swap the audio from your Sonos soundbar to the headphones and back, really quickly, meaning you can enjoy personal audio rather than forcing bystanders to listen to whatever you're doing on your TV. I wasn't sure if this was a good enough differentiator compared to other top headphones I've got access to (like the Sony WH-1000XM6), but I've been very impressed in the last couple of weeks.

The headphones can be set up like any other Bluetooth pair, simply by pairing them to your phone and getting on with things. In the Sonos app, though, you'll see the option to set up TV Audio Swap if you have the Ace connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your TV audio system.

It took me about a minute to complete the setup, and I can now swap audio to my headphones anytime I like by powering them up and holding down the rocker button that controls volume on the headphones. It's a simple and handy system, and the same long-press of the button can swap the audio back to the soundbar and surrounds when I need to.

Obviously, nothing here is new, but I'd never used the feature until recently, and it has indeed come in handy. I often game with friends in the evenings, and my long-suffering girlfriend hasn't had much of a buffer against my side of in-game conversations until now. She's been using the Ace to watch movies and TV in a much more cocooned sound environment, and she's also been gaming with it in the same way.

From my own use, it's handiest when I want to watch football, which I often do. Again, this can be a bit of a bore sound-wise for other people, so the Ace lets me watch matches I really care about without having to worry about the crowd noise or commentary being obnoxious.

It's basically exactly as slick as Sonos indicated it would be – albeit after a series of updates to widen how many soundbars the feature works with. It basically now stands as the cherry on top of my living room system, which I can't see myself upgrading any time soon (even if a Beam Gen 3 is surely around the corner at some point).

Whether audio swapping is a good enough reason to buy the Ace over another set of headphones is down to individual taste, but I can certainly say it's a nice feature to have if you also have a Sonos soundbar.

The moment Marshall first announced it was making soundbars, I started to assume that it would be after Sonos' lunch sooner rather than later. Sure enough, although the top-of-the-line Heston 120 was the first launch, it didn't take long for Marshall to release the Heston 60, which seems directly aimed at competing with the Beam.

I'm lucky enough to have used both the Heston 60 and the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) in recent weeks, swapping back and forth to compare them both. Which is best, though? Well, keep reading to find out my detailed thoughts.

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) vs Marshall Heston 60: Design and features

These two soundbars come from very different directions in terms of aesthetics. Sonos iterated on its first-gen Beam, removing the cloth mesh and going for a very modern look, especially in the white version I have.

The Beam (Gen 2) is basically plastic all over, albeit sturdy, heavy-duty stuff, and has touch controls on its top face in case you need them. Its inputs are round at the back, and the soundbar is impressively compact, making it easy to fit on even smaller stands.

Marshall's is a little bigger, but also very different to look at. It summons the ghosts of bygone Marshall amps, with a lovely fabric finish and brassy control buttons. You can also arrange it in two different ways, depending on whether you're wall-mounting it or leaving it on a surface, which is cool.

In terms of features, both soundbars have multiple sound modes to choose from, including bass-dampening night modes and dialogue-boosting voice ones. Marshall adds a welcome feature by letting you tune how intense the effects of each mode feel, but Sonos punches back by letting you turn them both on at once, making for just about a draw.

Where Sonos pulls away, though, is in how modular the Beam (Gen 2) can be. You can add a variety of wireless Sonos speakers to it as surrounds, something the Heston 60 doesn't allow at all right now. You also have more multi-room flexibility with the Beam, in case you have other Sonos speakers in other rooms.

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) vs Marshall Heston 60: Sound and ease of use

If you leave the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) and the Marshall Heston 60 on their own to handle TV audio without any additional hardware, there really isn't much to pick between them in sound terms.

Both are excellent, with Dolby Atmos compatibility to ensure that they can handle the full range of surround sound (in theory). Because of its design, though, the Heston 60 definitely has an advantage when it comes to the verticality of its soundstage, since it has upfiring drivers that the Beam (Gen 2) can't quite match.

That's nitpicking, though, and you have to listen quite hard to discern the difference. For most people, the main contrast will come in the form of a slightly more precise sound from Sonos, compared with some added warmth from Marshall. That means taste plays a big role here.

For one thing, both soundbars let you tune and edit their EQ settings, meaning you can change things to your tastes anyways. For me, though, this means that a lot of my judgment between the two is about ease of use.

Here, I think Sonos scores a clear win, with an app that I found more responsive and slick (as it continues its rebirth following a shambolic launch). I'm more reliably able to find the settings I want quickly, and the fact that I can control a bunch of other speakers easily, too, makes it more powerful.

It's also freer of hitches. In Sonos' app, I never suffer drop-outs in audio while swapping between settings, while Marshall's routinely made me miss a second or two of audio, which is rewinding territory when you're watching something as dialogue-dense as The Wire.

Marshall's app is no problem, to be clear, but it's just not as responsive as the best in the business. Another more significant gripe is that the Heston 60 doesn't auto-switch between inputs (or at least it didn't for me). That's a huge quality of life feature that Sonos' soundbar nails, ensuring you actually don't need to reach for the app or its buttons nearly as often.

Sonos Beam (Gen 2) vs Marshall Heston 60: Verdict

I'm hoping it's clear from everything I've written so far that there's no wrong choice between the Heston 60 and the Beam (Gen 2). Both sound terrific and will provide massive upgrades over the sound that your TV might otherwise be outputting.

That said, I can't pretend I don't have a favourite, and therefore a winner: the Sonos Beam (Gen 2). I think it shows the polish that more experience in the market brings, and the fact that you can far more easily expand on it down the line seals the deal. It's slicker to use, with basically the same compatibility, and I think it can more easily fit into most aesthetics, too.

Price is a question, too, since the Beam (Gen 2) is older – it gets more frequent discounts and sales, although those will doubtless start to appear for the Heston 60 in 2026, too. Right now, you can get the Beam for 24% off in the UK, for instance, which opens up a big value gap that even further underlines my choice.

I've written a few times in the last couple of weeks about the new Sonos setup I've been using, which represents an upgrade on what I had before in basically every single area. I've swapped a Beam Gen 1 for a Gen 2, upgraded my Ikea Symfonisk surrounds with Era 100 replacements, and added a Sub Mini to top it all off.

While that last part left me impressed with the huge bass on offer, I have to admit I wasn't entirely sold on whether it was really adding enough to make me notice the change on a daily basis. That was my impression after some gaming and some streaming – but I just experienced something that changed my outlook.

A couple of nights ago, I hooked my PS5 Pro up to the living room TV and stuck in a Blu-ray copy of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd never seen the film in full, and we fancied some Spielberg magic, but there wasn't much more of a rationale behind the choice than that.

As the movie unfolded, it looked and sounded great, with the 5.1 surround sound coming across really well, even without the presumably newer mix of an UltraHD version. Then, though, the first spaceship scene arrived, with the cherubic little Barry running around his house as a ship implicitly hovers overhead.

Team, I simply wasn't prepared for the bass response I got from my sound system, largely driven by the Sub Mini. This wasn't just a subtle bit of low-end rumble at the bottom of my consciousness; it was a full-on earthquake of sound, with the ship's futuristic technology coming across on a totally new level thanks to the bass responsiveness of the subwoofer.

This isn't the first time I've had a sub connected to my system (I used Marshall's new Heston Sub 200 recently, too), but it's probably the first time I've had everything come together at once to demonstrate just what the point of one can be. It's not cinema-level sound, but it feels like an addition that gets you closer than you might expect in your own living room.

That said, I still find the pricing of the Sonos Sub Mini off-putting, as I'm sure many others do too. Plus, there's no getting around the fact that about 30 minutes further through the movie, I had to activate Night Mode on my system, because the bass was getting so obnoxious that I felt too awkward about my downstairs neighbours hearing.

There's no wiggling out of my living situation, and I'll be in this flat for years to come, so the simple fact is that my Sub Mini might have to be deployed pretty carefully and judiciously, rather than being let off the leash all the time.

Still, it was a revelatory bit of movie-watching, and really did sell me on keeping the Sub Mini in my setup for good. Now I'm building a bit of a watchlist to see what else I can use to test it to its limits.

The perils of owning a Sonos system are few and far between, but if there's one big risk that comes with the multiroom audio brand, it's the fact that you can expand your array of speakers so easily. In most cases, it's just a matter of turning a new speaker on, telling the app what room it's in, and enjoying a new audio option.

If you have a TV setup, that's still impressively the case, as I've confirmed recently in a bit of an upgrade journey. After swapping out my first-generation Beam soundbar for a second-gen one and then upgrading my cheap Ikea Symfonisk surrounds with Era 100 replacements, I've now completed my setup.

How? Why, by adding the Sub Mini, Sonos' smallest subwoofer and basically the only option if you don't want to alienate your neighbours to the point of a small claims court case.

It's the final piece in the simplest surround sound setup you could care to build, but there's no denying that the Sub Mini is also the one piece that takes the setup into a new price bracket. After all, between a Beam Gen 2 and a couple of Era 100 speakers, you're up at £797 here in the UK – not a jaw-dropping amount, but already a decent whack of cash.

The Sub Mini costs £429 on its own, and is therefore the single most expensive component in the whole setup, taking it to a total price of £1,226, which is not pocket change or anything close to it. Then again, most experts in the field will tell you that you're going to end up spending north of £1,000 to get proper surround sound, and the whole advantage of Sonos' system is that you don't have to buy it all at once.

So, what's it like to add the heft of the Sub Mini to a Beam setup? Well, in short, it's almost exactly what I expected. I didn't have any issue with the amount of bass provided by the Beam in the first place – it's an impressively powerful soundbar for such a small footprint.

However, there's no doubt that in certain circumstances, whether it's explosive moments in action movies or music tracks with particularly wobbly sub-bass, there's no doubt that it could have a little more heft. So, add the Sub Mini into the equation and you just get a way deeper sense of things.

Some testers over the years (including our own reviewer back in 2022) have commented on the slight lack of precision that the Sub Mini offers, but I have to confess this isn't something I've noticed. I've mostly been using it for TV and movie viewing, and the Sub Mini has just filled out the low-end in a really obvious and beneficial way.

It's not even just when I watch a modern Atmos mix, either (although Master and Commander does sound unreal). In The Wire, which I'm currently watching for the first time, when a character is listening to music in their car, for example, I can really feel the bass in a way that actually matters to the scene.

That sort of added oomph can really impact your viewing experience in a heap of ways, as I've been finding, and it makes for a more complete package sonically. That said, I think there's no arguing with the fact that most people don't need a Sub Mini in their setup. It's aggressively pricy, there's no doubt, and the "Mini" in its name is also a misnomer – this isn't a small bit of kit.

You need floorspace for it, and to consider just how many vibrations you're willing to send through the floor before your neighbours start to get tired of you. It took me a bit of tuning to get my sub level right, too (meaning I had to turn it down a few times before it settled).

If you can afford it, though, and know your Dolby Atmos from your DTS-HD, I won't lie to you – this is a bass upgrade that I'll be sticking with. It sounds superb, and I'll be impressed if any other system makes me envious in the near future.

The thing about tech, especially when you're a reviewer like me, is that there's always a better device just around the corner. You can spend years convinced that you know what the best option in a given category looks like, only to be proven wrong when you get your hands on something new.

That's been underlined to me in the last few weeks, because I've been using a new and upgraded version of a very familiar Sonos sound system in my living room, and reaping the benefits of an upgrade that I spent a long time thinking would be unnecessary.

A good few years ago, I managed to win a free Sonos Beam (Gen 1), way back when that soundbar first launched, and before I was a journalist. Shortly after that, Sonos announced its now-ended partnership with Ikea, with its first products being the extremely sensible £100 Symfonisk Bookshelf Speakers.

Seeing that they could act as wireless surrounds for the Beam Gen 1, I picked up a pair, and for the next half-decade, I used them extremely happily. Was it the single most high-fidelity sound system on the planet? Perhaps not – but I'd assembled it for just £200 and it worked great for most content.

Now, though, I've swapped the first-generation Beam for a second-gen upgrade, and at the same time, I've been lucky enough to change the Symfonisks out for Era 100 speakers, making for a pretty comprehensive change.

Before I get into the comparisons between these two devices and the changes I've noticed, a word on Symfonisk. I'm gutted this partnership has ended – Ikea and Sonos were doing groundbreaking work in lowering the cost of multi-room audio for the majority of people, and the system I built was a great example of how it could make for really good shortcuts.

Still, there's no getting around the fact that the Symfonisk Bookshelf Speaker was always intended to be the most entry-level and basic speaker that Sonos made, even below the Sonos One SL (which was the equivalent of the Era 100 before the latter's release).

As such, its sound was extremely credible but not necessarily earth-shatteringly expensive. You chose it not for its solo quality, though, but for how it could help you build up a system without breaking the bank, and it worked a treat on that front. Moving to the Era 100, though, I'm getting way more fidelity, as I'd hope from a speaker twice the price.

All of a sudden, my surround sound is just a little more precise, and has much more potential power, which is helped further by the fact that the second-generation Beam supports more codecs, making my chances of getting surround sound in the first place a lot higher.

The Era 100 is also a lot easier to fit into my room than the Symfonisks were – the speaker is around half the size, and while I've got each on an extremely choice stand, you can easily leave them on any surface or get wall mounts. I've got them in white, to match my Beam, but in fairness, the second-gen version of the Symfonisk could be picked up in that colour, too.

Still, the difference in size is pretty major, and the fact that you get better sound from a smaller design is hard to ignore – while I also prefer the inputs on the newer speaker, which are very subtly done and don't interrupt the design as much as the buttons on the Symfonisk.

Another small design improvement is the removal of the fabric mesh. This was a feature on the first-gen Beam as well as these Symfonisks, but as a double cat owner, it was a constant fur-magnet, which was annoying. Now, the perforated non-cloth finish of the Era 100 banishes that issue.

I know there will be some readers out there, especially those who are pretty au fait with Sonos' pricing, who'll think it's not much of a conclusion to confirm that the Era 100 is better than the Symfonisk. To be clear, I'm not surprised, nor am I arguing that anyone with Symfonisk speakers needs to upgrade immediately or face my disdain.

My point is more that I thought the difference would be really small, and I've instead found it pretty noticeable – music is fuller and more detailed, and my surround sound is clearly upgraded. So, if you're wondering whether to make a bit of an upgrade of your own, I can confirm that this one won't leave you questioning your decision.

It's the sort of upgrade that really isn't necessary, though. The Symfonisk bookshelf speakers aren't really sold anymore, with most Ikeas now going through their deadstock until they're all gone (including accessories like mounts and brackets). So, I don't think anyone should be panic-buying an Era 100 or anything. Still, if you do decide to take the plunge, like me, you'll reap the rewards in deeper, more precise sound.

For the longest time, I've been a devoted Sonos Beam user – one rooted with the first-generation soundbar after I won it in a sweepstakes about 6 years ago. That was basically the best day of my life, at a time when I absolutely couldn't afford a £400 soundbar, and it's been with me through a heap of house moves and life changes.

Around a year after getting it, I upgraded it with the addition of two surrounds, but again did so in the most affordable way I could, using the Ikea and Sonos collaboration Symfonisk Bookshelf Speakers since they were just £99 each. It added up to a great little living room sound system, and one that I love to this day.

That said, in recent years I've been getting more into my codecs and audio standards (almost with regret), and the first-generation Beam has started to be a hindrance at times, thanks to its slightly spotty codec choices and lack of Dolby Atmos support. So, when I got the chance to upgrade to a second-generation Beam, I leapt at it, trading one of the best soundbars going for one that's even better.

Now I'm just a week into life with the newer Beam, and even though it's a soundbar that came out back in 2021, I can't believe how big the difference really is. For one thing, I'm no longer playing the lottery when I start up a Blu-ray disc, whether it's 4K or not – I'm getting my proper surround sound in almost every circumstance.

That's not just as a result of Atmos support, but also because the newer bar has HDMI eARC support, not just ARC – meaning it can handle a lot more audio bandwidth. I'm noticing that fuller audio, too, with richer sound quality that doesn't make my old bar sound bad, but does let me pick which one's better quite easily.

Atmos support means, in theory, far better simulated overhead audio, and that's an area where the hype doesn't quite match reality. Again, there's no doubt that I can now hear more verticality in my surround sound in appropriate scenes, compared to the Beam (Gen 1). It's not a patch on real overhead speakers, though, and you shouldn't kid yourself otherwise – but it also doesn't really matter, since you can still get a stellar overall sound stage.

I'm also surprisingly taken with the design changes that Sonos made for the newer Beam. The fabric grille on the older version was nice, of course, but with two cats in my household, it tended to be a lint and fur magnet, so losing it in favour of a simpler perforated plastic finish is welcome.

I've also opted to get the new version in white, along with some other Sonos bits and pieces I'll be discussing in subsequent pieces, and not just to tell it apart. I think there's something really clean and modern about how the Beam looks in white, especially if you're not trying to hide it.

All of this means that I've done a 180 on my Beam opinions, to be honest. A couple of weeks ago, I'd have confidently said that I saw no reason to upgrade my Beam, and I think that's still justifiable – few people will have even noticed the codec gripes I encountered. However, the new thing is that I think anyone buying a Beam now should absolutely get the Gen 2, even if they find the first-gen Beam for a good chunk lower on a discount.

It's way more future-proof, at present, and the sound performance it delivers is a cut above its predecessor without rendering it completely obsolete. In fact, the only real hesitation I'd have is in acknowledging that there surely must be a Beam Gen 3 in the works somewhere. We're four years into the second generation now, and that can only mean an upgrade is around the corner again at some point soon. I can't wait to see what it brings, to be honest.

JBL is one of those names that some people don't really realise the scale of – you might think it's one of the also-rans in the audio world, but its sales figures are simply astronomical, and there are plenty of device types that it has near-total market dominance in. Still, other areas are hugely competitive, and it isn't hard to tell that the soundbar market is a feisty one right now.

Everyone seems to be throwing their hat into the ring, and the recent arrival of Marshall on the scene has added further spice to the situation. So, JBL's coming back with a big range of new soundbars, building on some of the ideas that it started with in 2024 – including one key feature that blew me away when I heard it at an event in Copenhagen this week.

Last year, JBL launched the Bar 1300, a chunky Dolby Atmos soundbar with one huge new feature: detachable wireless surrounds that didn't have to be wired in to power wherever you placed them. This flexible system got a rave five-star review here at T3, but JBL hasn't rested on its laurels and now has the Bar 1300Mk2, which I heard in a demo setting.

The improvements this time out might not be quite enough to make any original Bar 1300 owners need to upgrade, but if you're coming from a much older soundbar, or none at all, they're pretty major. The bar is a fully-capable Atmos system with a massive 27 drivers in total, and a huge amount of power to call on – as you can see in the transparent version JBL showed me, below.

Played at maximum volume, its output is frankly antisocial, especially with the included wireless subwoofer, but I'm more excited about the new ways it uses its surround speakers. These can be simply detached from the main unit and placed anywhere you like, with a new system in the JBL One app allowing them to wirelessly react to the space they're in and tune their sound accordingly (a much slower manual process on the older Bar 1300).

With each surround having a roughly 10-hour battery life, not only can you watch multiple movies in a row without needing to plug them back into the main bar, you can also walk into other rooms and use them as standalone wireless speakers if you like. There's even a handy toggle to switch them from being surrounds to simply full-driver speakers, so that you can go to another room and keep up with the action from your TV – ideal for a sports game, for example.

Another new tweak is the addition of a clever Night Mode. Rather than just dimming down the bass and volume of the overall system, it actually completely mutes the central soundbar and subwoofer. You can then move the surrounds in front of you, and they become the only sound source, making for what JBL's reps called a "personal sound bubble" that's far less room-filling. I'm hoping there's still a more traditional bass-limiting mode as well, but this new option seems like a brilliant one for those with babies, sensitive neighbours, or any other reason.

JBL's idea of detachable surrounds might be over a year old at this stage, but this was my first time seeing them in action, and I have to say I'm hugely impressed. I have a slightly ageing Sonos Beam Gen 1 in my living room with two Ikea Symfonisk bookshelf speakers as surrounds, and it's been a constant battle to find good places behind either side of a sofa to house them in a non-ugly way.

Being able to put surrounds out when I need them, but put them back away on the soundbar when I don't, is a pretty massive game-changer, potentially, and I suspect I'd find a huge amount of value in it. The only downside is that the feature is only available on JBL's bigger soundbars – the entry-level and much more compact Bar 300Mk2 doesn't have a similar system (or true Atmos, for that matter).

Still, it's not often that I'm won over as quickly as this by a product demo. Sound quality is one thing, and a total prerequisite when you're buying a soundbar; good codec and wireless play support is major, too; still, convenience is everything. If I had a TV stand that could adequately support the width of the Bar 1300Mk2 I'd be keenly hunting one down for review. As it is, I might just have to accelerate my search for that new TV stand quickly.

The partnership between Sonos and Philips Hue was first announced at IFA a few weeks ago, alongside a bunch of new product launches and the long-awaited Hue Bridge Pro. It revealed that users can now control Hue lights entirely by voice through Sonos speakers, which is a pretty exciting step for smart home fans.

Fast forward to now, and Sonos has officially rolled out the feature with a fresh app update and new speaker firmware. In a forum post, a Sonos rep confirmed five supported commands so far, letting you adjust brightness, change colours, switch lights on or off, trigger smart scenes, and even control smart plugs with your voice.

So... how does it work?

To use it, you’ll need a Hue Bridge and at least one Sonos voice-enabled speaker, with both your Hue and Sonos accounts linked. Right now, Sonos Voice Control only works in English and French, so if you’re hoping for another language, you may have to hang tight a little longer.

Setup is pretty straightforward and begins in the Smart Home section in the Philips Hue app. You just have to select Sonos Voice Control, and the setup wizard will walk you through it. Once connected, it all runs locally after the initial internet setup.

The update is rolling out to Arc Ultra, Arc, Beam (gen 1 and 2), Era 100, Era 300, One, Move, Move 2, Roam, Roam 2 and the Era 100 Pro – and we expect new Sonos speakers to support it too as they arrive.

Sonos and Philips Hue have taken to IFA 2025 to announce a team-up. Owners of their combined hardware products can now control lighting with voice commands alone.

Currently, the Sonos Voice Control offering is there to let Sonos speaker owners activate their devices, and music, with spoken commands alone. By adding Philips Hue functionality, that opens up controls to the many Hue lighting products out there too.

It also means Philips Hue smart plugs can be controlled, creating even more options for voice control in the home. But, it's the privacy benefits that may be key for some.

How Sonos voice control work on Hue?

Voice controls are already pretty common, but what makes this special is the offline privacy. The Sonos Voice Control system was developed to work locally on the device without the need for an internet connection – and so it is more secure than, say, using Amazon's Alexa with Hue lighting.

Sonos' type of voice control offers total privacy. There's no need to access the cloud, no third-party listening, and you also get the most responsive speeds possible.

The new voice controls will allow Sonos and Philips Hue owners to use audio commands to control lights in many ways. This includes turning them on and off, adjusting brightness and colour, and activating pre-set scenes.

The control of smart plugs via voice allows you to turn many more devices on an off with a simple voice command, too.

Nathan Hart, senior product manager at Sonos said: "We built Sonos Voice Control to make controlling your music with your voice faster and easier than ever before, all with the privacy of your data staying right on your speaker.

"By bringing it together with Philips Hue, we’re making it just as easy to transform lighting as it is to control music – helping users create rich, connected experiences across their home."

This upgrade will roll out in September worldwide in US English and French. It'll be available everywhere except China.

Philips Hue has officially lifted the curtain on its latest launches and updates, and now that the event has wrapped, we can finally share exactly what’s on the way.

The showcase took place last night, and whilst much of what was announced lined up with the major leak from a few weeks back (something the presenters hinted was a slight headache for them), it didn’t dull the excitement.

In fact, this was Philips Hue’s biggest launch in the brand’s history, introducing a huge variety of products and features that cater to both seasoned smart home enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Let’s dive in.

1. Philips Hue Pro

First up is the highly anticipated Hue Bridge Pro, and it looks like the expectations were pretty spot on. It sets new standards for performance, speed and control, and I was also glad to see that most of the top five things I’d hoped for actually made it in.

The new Bridge Pro can now handle three times as many devices on a single network, supporting up to 150 lights and 50 accessories. It’s powered by the new Hue Chip Pro too, which has 15 times more memory and can store up to 500 unique scenes. One of the most exciting additions is a feature called Motion Aware, which cleverly turns your existing Hue lights into motion sensors.

On top of that, the Bridge Pro is designed to be more flexible in where you can place it, and there’ll be an app feature that lets you transfer all your devices and settings from the older Bridge with just a few clicks. Priced at $89.99/£89.99/€89.99, it’ll be available in Europe and North America later this month.

2. New strip light portfolio

Up next is probably the most surprising announcement of the night, but Philips Hue confirmed it was releasing an entirely new range of strip lights. There are seven products in total, covering both indoor and outdoor options with different brightness levels.

One highlight is the new Philips Hue Omniglow Strip Light, which uses Omniglow technology to create beautifully smooth colour gradients. It gives out 900 lumens per metre and up to 4,500 lumens in total, so it works just as well for functional lighting as it does for adding atmosphere.

To go with them, Hue is also releasing new accessories, including connectors and blackout cables to give users more flexibility. Alongside these, Hue also confirmed the launch of the Festavia Globe string lights and Festavia permanent outdoor lights that leaked a couple of weeks ago.

3. Hue Essential range

Another big addition is the new Hue Essential range. This one’s designed for people who might feel a bit intimidated by the smart home space, making it simpler and more affordable to get started.

The Essentials will include bulbs, strips and starter kits that don’t require a Bridge – or even Matter support – to work. Each product will run on the same software as Hue’s premium products, just with scaled-back performance and light quality. It’s a clever move to make Hue more accessible, and whilst it won’t match the premium line, I think this new range could be a hit.

4. Video doorbell and Chime

Now, this is the one I’d been holding my breath for, but the Hue Secure video doorbell is finally here. It features a 2K camera with a head-to-toe view, can automatically trigger Hue lights as a deterrent, and supports two-way talk. There's also a chime which adds the obvious sound alert, but can also trigger a siren if needed.

On top of that, Hue confirmed that in just a few months, all Secure cameras users will get 24 hours of video history for free. That’s a bold move in an industry where most competitors are doing the opposite.

The doorbell is priced at $169.99/£169.99/€169.99, whilst the chime will cost $59.99/£59.99/€59.99.

5. Sonos collaboration

Finally, Philips Hue announced a new collaboration with Sonos, aiming to create a seamless smart home experience by combining light and sound. This will allow Sonos voice control users to manage their Hue lights alongside their music.

It’s still early days so details are scarce, but it’s an exciting direction. With Sonos recently ending its partnership with IKEA, it makes sense that Hue – with its big focus on entertainment – would be the next natural choice.

Finally...what's going on with the Matter update?

Hue also confirmed that the rumours were true in the Q&A, meaning more Matter support is on the way, allowing users to run Hue lights without a Bridge.

However, the presenters also clarified that the Hue Bridge Pro won’t support Thread, and the whole ecosystem won’t be fully moving to Matter anytime soon. Still, it’s a step in the right direction for smart home integration, and it’s good to see things progressing.

Sonos Voice Control is set to be introduced to Philips Hue’s smart home platform by the end of the year. This collaboration is expected to expand the functionality of the speaker and soundbar’s smart assistant, and marks the first time that Sonos is compatible with another smart home platform. While news is still scarce on this, here’s what we know so far.

Sonos introduced its Voice Control smart assistant to its smart speakers and soundbars in 2022. Since then, Sonos has upgraded Voice Control to do more than simple commands like playing music, and it can now set timers, check the weather and tell you the time, as well as adjust volume and skip songs.

This seems to be set to change as it was recently announced on HueBlog that Sonos Voice Control will become compatible with Philips Hue’s platform by the end of the year. This is a big difference from simply controlling its own speakers, as Sonos Voice Control will be able to control and customise Philips Hue’s lighting.

But other than news that this collaboration is set to happen, there are hardly any details surrounding what Sonos Voice Control will be able to do with Philips Hue smart lights. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d expect Sonos Voice Control will be able to turn lights on and off, adjust colour and brightness, and potentially control Hue scenes.

What I’m most interested in finding out about is whether Sonos Voice Control will also be compatible with Philips Hue’s other smart devices. While the brand is primarily a lighting company, Philips Hue has been expanding into other smart home gadgets, including security cameras, sensors and smart plugs.

As mentioned, there’s no updates currently about what Sonos Voice Control will be compatible with, but it’d be interesting to see if it’ll also be compatible with Philips Hue’s full portfolio of lighting and security devices.

We’ll have to wait and see, but Philips Hue recently announced an upcoming media event taking place in September – potentially IFA – so hopefully they’ll tell us more then.

Sonos has experienced something of a rollercoaster ride over the last 18 months. The company updated its app back in May 2024 to considerable criticism, yet also announced a couple of new products last year that were both highly praised.

The Sonos Ace headphones are an excellent pair of cans, delivering superb sound performance alongside a very comfortable design, while the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar is an absolutely brilliant single-box solution for better TV audio.

However, even those great products couldn't prevent Sonos' CEO at the time, Patrick Spence, stepping down after eight years in charge, with Tom Conrad taking over. And now, as part of the company's first quarterly earnings report since he became CEO, he's also had to share some less than positive news.

What's happening at Sonos now?

As reported by Bloomberg (via The Verge), Sonos posted $344.8 million in revenue and a net loss of $3.4 million. Conrad also addressed the impact of President Trump's tariffs on the brand's devices: "It has become clear that we’ll need to raise prices on certain products later this year," he said.

It's not currently clear which of Sonos' products will see a price hike, but it won't be the first time it has raised prices over the years. Back in 2021, products like the original Sonos Roam and Sonos Arc increased in price by £20 and £100 respectively.

The Sonos One, Sonos One SL, Sonos Sub and Sonos Amp also increased at the same time, with Sonos blaming the "demand, supply chain, component costs and the competitive landscape" as the reason.

Most of Sonos' current products for the US are made in Vietnam and Malaysia, with both those countries facing higher tariff rates of 20% and 19%, respectively.

Conrad added: "We continue to work closely with our contract manufacturers and our channel partners to share tariff costs." Hopefully, that means we aren't looking at a 20% increase on the RRP of Sonos products, but it's not looking good.

Our advice? If you're considering a Sonos speaker or soundbar, buy it now before the price increases kick in.

Sonos is rolling out an update for its Sonos Ace headphones that delivers four genuinely useful improvements.

The update delivers better home cinema features, the long-awaited TrueCinema audio optimisation, improved active noise cancellation, and a clever feature for voice calling.

The rollout started today, and Sonos says it's not just about updating the software, it's about ensuring its products "not only last, but get better over time".

We already rate the Sonos Ace over-ears highly. In our review, we gave them the full five stars and were particularly interested in the TrueCinema and TV Audio Swap features. Those are two of the features that Sonos has focused on here.

Sonos Ace upgrade: key features

TV Audio Swap now enables two people to enjoy the same TV audio in sync with one another, provided of course that they're both using Sonos Ace headphones and a Sonos soundbar.

The TrueCinema feature has also now been delivered. It wasn't implemented at launch, despite being one of the most interesting features.

TrueCinema is much like the TruePlay you get with Sonos speakers. It uses your soundbar to analyse the acoustics of your room and then uses that analysis to tweak the sound in your headphones – so the sound you hear on your Sonos Ace should be the same as you would hear from your Sonos soundbar.

There's a fascinating upgrade to the ANC system too. According to Sonos, the ANC "now adapts to your hair, glasses, and hats in real-time using advanced sensors to compensate for sound leaks".

Last but not least, there's high-resolution voice calling and SideTone, which puts a little bit of your voice into the mix when you're chatting with ANC switched on.

The upgrades are rolling out to all Sonos Ace owners now.

IKEA's collaboration with Sonos is coming to an end and there will be no more products made together. So, if you have a hankering for a lamp that's also a Sonos speaker or a Samsung-style picture frame with Sonos audio tech inside you'll need to snap one up very soon.

Sonos has confirmed to The Verge that IKEA's Symfonisk line-up is being phased out globally and there are no plans for future devices: “Over the past eight years, we’ve had the pleasure of working closely with IKEA and are proud of what we’ve achieved,” company spokesperson Erin Pategas explained.

“Although our work together has largely wound down and we won’t be releasing new products as partners, we’ll continue to support every existing Symfonisk product so customers can keep enjoying great sound in their homes for many years to come.”

The good news is that your existing products will continue to get software updates for the foreseeable future.

What's happening with IKEA's Sonos speakers?

It's a real shame to see the end of this collaboration. In some cases, the IKEA speakers were cheaper than Sonos equivalents and the partnership resulted in some great devices. The lamp and picture frame are fun stealth speakers, for example, while the bookshelf speakers were well reviewed.

I suspect that what's happening here is part of Sonos's newly narrowed focus.

After the long-lasting app disaster that overshadowed last year's Sonos Ace launch and kept the firm in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, it has been concentrating on its core audio products.

Sonos has already cancelled its own long-planned streaming video player, and if it's ditching first-party projects then it was probably inevitable that the IKEA collaboration would go too.

I was in my local IKEA a couple of days ago and can attest that there's still plenty of Symfonisk devices in stock, but as it's not going to be replenished it would be wise to go soon if you want to get any of these products for your home.

Tech writers like me tend to get quite a lot of questions from people we know when sales events like Amazon's Spring Deal Days roll around – and one of the most common is which soundbar they should get. Almost everyone knows by this point that upgrading their TV's sound output can be a huge boost for home viewing and streaming, after all.

Some of the best soundbars on the market can be a little pricy for most folks, but sales events obviously help with that, and Sonos currently has a really tasty reduction on the excellent Beam (Gen 2) that can't be ignored. It knocks £90 off the superb compact Dolby Atmos soundbar to make for a bit of a bargain, and its lowest price in months.

I've been the extremely happy owner of a first-generation Beam for years now, having nabbed one back when they launched, and right now the only upgrade I'd consider would be the second-gen version. Sonos didn't mess with the format much at all, but added some extra smarts to let the soundbar work with Dolby Atmos, for a big boost in audio quality.

I'd love to have that better sound, so anyone who does grab this deal will be doing themselves a favour. If you want more detail about what makes the Beam (Gen 2) so impressive, be sure to read our five-star review from back in 2021.

Soundbars are the type of tech that ages incredibly well since audio formats don't get revolutionised very often, and this has consistently been one of T3's best soundbars for years. In theory this price should last through to Monday, since that's how long Amazon's sale lasts, but it's worth pulling the trigger earlier if you're keen, as you might find that it dips in and out of stock as people buy up the stock.

Last week, it emerged that Sonos has scrapped its TV streaming box as part of the continuing fallout from its 2024 app disaster.

Now its chief innovation officer, Nick Millington, has posted an update to explain Sonos' progress in fixing the app, and what's still to be done.

The short version is that Sonos is still working on it and has made a lot of improvements and fixes, but there is still significant work to be done.

Millington says the Sonos team has two priorities: "[To understand] the root cause of every single customer issue, whether big or small, whether common or rare, and making sure the technical performance of the app meets or exceeds what you have come to expect from Sonos."

The second is to close the gaps "in the functionality and usability of the new app relative to what you enjoyed before". The corrections are being made "in a priority order" and there are still some significant ones to be addressed.

Where is Sonos's app today?

The most recent update was delivered on 4 March. According to Millington you should now have the return of alarm snoozing, a more usable System Settings interface that no longer makes key options "too buried", better performance with search results, and interface elements such as volume sliders.

There are also improvements related to Sonos' portable speakers such as the Roam and Move.

Recent updates have also replaced "vague errors" and require fewer authorisations between the Sonos app and your music services.

Next on the to-do list? Creating and editing Sonos Playlists (originally predicted for the November update), improving the app startup time, making it possible to once again queue entire folders of your stored music in one operation, faster scrolling of large lists, and "continued improvements to volume and overall system responsiveness."

The improvements are of course welcome. But, as MapsAreAwesome put it in the r/sonos subreddit, it's "amazing that the chief innovation officer is focused on recovering from [an] app launch nearly ten months ago."

Sonos has cancelled plans to take on the Apple TV and Google TV Streamer.

Sonos' own TV streaming device, codenamed Pinewood, was intended to be one of the brand's big product launches of 2025. However, it's been confirmed that the company has ditched the entire project "for now".

The Verge reports that Sonos staff were informed of the cancellation this week. The streamer was in an advanced stage of development and had spent "months" in beta testing, but interim CEO Tom Conrad is changing the firm's direction in an attempt to recover from what was a pretty awful 2024.

Shuttering the Pinewood project leaves a huge hole in Sonos's hardware plans for 2025, as the firm continues to work on its software. But, that focus may be more valuable – the Sonos brand was severely damaged by software issues last year, so much so that they overshadowed the launch of Sonos's first headphones.

What we know about Sonos's cancelled streamer

The better news is that Sonos' streamer may not be dead forever. The company says it's still working with its software partner, The Trade Desk, but we won't see the device in the foreseeable future.

The streamer was expected to launch in early 2025, and leaks said it had a "beautiful" interface, excellent integration of all the key streaming services, voice control and more.

It was believed to work as an HDMI switch with passthrough capability, and had both Wi-Fi 7 and Gigabit Ethernet for lag-free streaming to Sonos speakers and soundbars.

Technically then, the streamer sounds great. But, the price was rumoured to be as much as $400, which is about £319 before tax / AU$636. That's a lot of money when the biggest rival, the Apple TV 4K, is £139.

According to The Verge, some Sonos employees even felt that the streamer could likely see a repeat of the Sonos Ace headphones' launch, with the brand trying to enter a new product category against heavyweight rivals and failing to meet sales expectations.

Victrola has announced a really big upgrade for owners of its Stream Carbon, Stream Pearl and Stream Onyx turntables. The company has announced that it'll be issuing a software update for all of its current "Works With Sonos" turntables to add extra streaming capabilities, to make them compatible with more devices than Sonos. That includes Bluetooth, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), and Roon.

The flagship Victrola Sapphire turntable has already received the update, and the other Sonos-streaming turntables will get it imminently. You don't need to do anything, it'll will install automatically and you'll then see additional supported speakers in the Victrola app where you'd previously only see Sonos devices.

Why is Victrola adding extra streaming powers?

According to Victrola's Scott Hagen: "The Victrola Stream turntables have been the best option for Sonos users, and now we're extending that same effortless streaming experience to even more audio ecosystems."

I suspect that there's a bit of bet-hedging going on here, because after nearly a year of bad publicity, the Sonos brand isn't as strong as it was previously.

Sonos-only streaming was a much stronger sales pitch in 2024 than it is in 2025. But no matter the reason, it's a very welcome upgrade both for existing owners and for anybody who's looking for the best turntables to stream to Bluetooth speakers and other audio devices.

It also helps Victrola compete with rival manufacturers. The trickle of Bluetooth turntables has become more like a flood in recent months, and Bluetooth streaming is a big selling point for Victrola's own 2025 line-up.

For example, the 2025 Victrola Wave has Bluetooth 5.4 with Auracast, aptX Adaptive and aptX HD for just £399 / $399 / about AU$643.

Sonos has been in the news a lot recently. While the company has been updating its soundbars with the Arc Ultra and stepped into the high-end headphone category with the Sonos Ace, those achievements have been overshadowed by problems with its app.

It has lead to the company parting ways with much of its management and worse, a considerable amount of its workforce, but a product was also reportedly scrapped along the way.

According to The Verge, Sonos was working on a MagSafe speaker for the iPhone. The details describe a squared device a little like Apple’s MagSafe battery pack but thicker, with the suggestion that it would showcase the clever speaker tech that Sonos acquired with the Mayht Holding acquisition.

That speaker tech changes the way a membrane moves, meaning you can get more powerful speakers into a smaller space. That would fit with the idea of slapping a speaker on the back of an iPhone, to deliver better sound performance than the phone’s own speakers.

It’s not a new idea and we’ve seen similar before, such as the JBL SoundBoost. That was a Moto Mod designed to work with the Moto Z. Motorola designed a thin phone, thinking that users could then add accessories to get the experience they wanted – including a speaker.

The theory stands, but in the case of Apple’s iPhone, MagSafe only offers power, there’s no connection to pass audio through to the speaker, so you’re literally looking at a magnetic speaker with Bluetooth.

The idea, it seems, wasn’t to be, so it was assigned to the R&D bin and never to see the light of day.

Apple’s MagSafe has provided an innovative way to attach a wireless charger to the iPhone and has been used for some accessories, most notably that battery pack I mentioned and a card wallet.

Attempts to bring magnetic charging to Android phones under Qi2 haven’t got off to a strong start, however. The OnePlus 13 launched with a magnetic wireless charger accessory, but requires a special case to use it. Samsung didn’t launch with Qi2 when the Galaxy S25 came out, but it is in the HMD Skyline – and not a lot else.

Perhaps, like that Sonos speaker that never was, magnetic accessories just don’t have the appeal that some might think.

We've been reporting on Sonos' rumoured home TV streamer for some time. The first details emerged way back in 2023.

However, it looks like the device could finally release in the early part of 2025, and newly leaked details suggest that it'll be a very attractive option. There's just one big downside.

Let's get the bad news out of the way – it could cost as much as $400. That's roughly £319 before VAT, and about AU$636.

To be fair, the leak says that's the upper price point being considered. It may cost half that, and while that would still make it more expensive than even the Apple TV 4K, the extra bells and whistles might be worth it.

What we know about the Sonos streamer

The Verge reports that while the Sonos TV box looks pretty unassuming on the outside, it has a "beautiful" interface and some really welcome features.

It'll combine content from most of the best streaming services, including Max, Netflix and Disney+, and it'll offer unified search across that content. Sonos Voice Control will be included, and there will be a remote controller too.

So far, so common. But now it gets interesting.

The device reportedly also works as an HDMI switch with passthrough functionality – and it's being developed in part to stop Sonos hardware encountering issues with certain models of TV. By plugging your PS5 or Blu-Ray player directly into the box, Sonos has much more control over the communication with your speakers.

The streamer is said to have Wi-Fi 7 and gigabit Ethernet too.

That will ensure it'll be able to stream wirelessly without lag to Sonos speakers and soundbars, and it will add a much-requested feature too, it's said – you'll be able to set up a full surround system using Sonos speakers for more complex Dolby Atmos setups.

According to The Verge, Sonos is still finalising the speakers this feature will work with.

After a terrible 2024, this device is intended to re-establish Sonos as the go-to brand for home entertainment. That means the box could be the most important product the brand has launched in some time.

It's worth noting though that, according to The Verge, the mood inside Sonos isn't hugely optimistic regarding the new streamer, especially because of its expected price.

Ever since the Sonos Arc Ultra launched, the future of the original Sonos Arc has looked precarious. The newer model improves on the original in several ways and for not much more money.

Now it seems the end is near for one of the best soundbars ever made.

If you pop along to the Sonos website just now, you'll see that the Arc has acquired a "last chance" flag – which is what Sonos usually puts on products it has discontinued. The good news is that there's also a hefty discount of £180 off, bringing the Arc down from £899 to £719.

By comparison, the Arc Ultra has a RRP of £999 in the UK ($999 in the US and AU$1,799 in Australia). So that's quite a big difference.

How does the Arc compare to the Arc Ultra?

The Sonos Arc sounds fantastic, and if we only judged on its audio prowess we'd have given it the full five stars. However, as you can see from our Sonos Arc review there are some design and connectivity issues we weren't so keen on at the time.

So, is the Arc Ultra worth spending £280 more on? We reckon it is the best-sounding single-box soundbar on the market right now, with impressive Sound Motion technology and improved speech performance.

It's a significant upgrade over the Arc – especially in the bass department. It does have some of the same issues as its predecessor, though. There's only a single eARC HDMI, for example, and no HDMI passthrough.

At normal prices there was just £100 difference between the £899 Arc and the £999 Arc Ultra, and the improvements in the latter definitely made that £100 worth spending. But when the gap's £280, I think many would-be Arc buyers will find the original does more than enough for the money.

Harman Kardon has been showing off its Sonos-rivalling Enchant series at CES, with the promise of superb surround sound and wireless flexibility.

There are four devices in the series – the flagship Enchant 1100 soundbar and the slightly smaller Enchant 900, the Enchant speaker, and the Enchant Sub.

The Enchant 1100 is made for larger rooms while the 900 is for slightly smaller spaces, and the Enchant Speaker can be a stand-alone portable speaker or part of a setup with the soundbars and Sub.

The soundbars and speakers have Dolby Atmos and multi-beam for immersive audio, and the larger soundbar has DTS:X too. There are 11 drivers in the Enchant 1100 and nine in the Enchant 900, and both have Wi-Fi for cable-free connection to the Enchant Speaker and Enchant Sub.

They both have what Harman Kardon calls PureVoice technology, which is designed to make dialogue clearer.

Harman Kardon Enchant: key features, pricing and availability

The soundbars work with AirPlay, Chromecast Built-in, Tidal Connect and Spotify Connect, and you can also stream over Bluetooth. The flagship Enchant 1100 is also Roon Ready certified.

The Enchant speaker is designed to be flexible, and can be used as a stand-alone wireless speaker, as half of a stereo pair, or as an integral part of a full surround sound setup.

The Speaker has angled side drivers and upwards-firing drivers to deliver a convincing 3D sound field, and it has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming. The speaker also comes with automatic sound calibration, which analyses the sound of your room and tweaks the speaker output accordingly.

The range will go on sale in March 2025 with recommended prices of £849.99 (about $1,069 / AU$1,700) for the Enchant 1100, £429.99 (about $540 / AU$860) for the Enchant 900, £199.99 (about $251 / AU$400) for the Enchant Speaker, and £349.99 (about $440 / AU$700) for the Enchant Sub.

I've been a Sonos user for years (nearly a decade, thinking about it) and I was a huge fan of both the earlier Play:1 and Sonos One speakers. It's fair to say, therefore, that when I came to review the Sonos Era 100, it had a tough job on its hands to compete with the previous baby Sonos speakers.

But I've used the Era 100 smart speaker in my home for over a year – yes, we're a bit late to market with this review – and it has yet to disappoint. I still have the Sonos One, and I still use the Play:1 too, and therein lies the beauty of Sonos speakers – they have years of life in them, even after they have been succeeded, and all work together nicely.

If you're considering the Sonos Era 100 as a first Sonos speaker, as an upgrade, or you're simply looking for one of the best smart speakers around, it's a smart choice. I've lived with one for an extended period and here's how it stacks up all these months later.

Sonos Era 100: Price & Availability

The Sonos Era 100 was released back in March 2023 – so it's been around for some time. It launched at £249 / $249 / AU$399 – and that's the price you'll usually find it at, as Sonos doesn't often heavily discount its prices.

As it's no longer brand new, there's a better chance of finding this speaker discounted during sales periods like Black Friday or during Boxing Day. It's unlikely to be much cheaper than its predecessor, the Sonos One, which retailed at £199 / $199 / AU $299 in its heyday.

Sonos Era 100: What's new?

When the Sonos Era 100 launched, it replaced the Sonos One and ushered in an entirely new design. It's more cylindrical in shape than the previous entry-level Sonos and it has different controls too, being the first Sonos speaker alongside the Era 300 to feature a volume trough. This feature has since been put on the Sonos Move 2 and the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar, allowing for easier volume control compared to older Sonos speakers, but it was the Era 100 and Era 300 where it debuted.

The Era 100 was also the first non-portable Sonos speaker to feature Bluetooth connectivity and the first to introduce a USB-C line-in port too, offering direct connection to audio devices like a turntable. Elsewhere, the Era 100 also introduced Quick Tuning, which is similar to the company's Trueplay tuning – but it uses the speaker's on-board microphones to adapt and optimise the sound output rather than requiring an iPhone or iPad. The sound architecture within the Era 100 was also updated, allowing for stereo, and a faster processor was also introduced.

Sonos Era 100 review: Design & Setup

The Sonos Era 100 has a lovely design – one that's a lot nicer than the Sonos One and Sonos One SL speakers it replaced. It's softer and not as boxy, though it remains compact, making it the perfect size for a kitchen or bedroom.

I have the Era 100 in white and I think it's nicer than the black finish – though I do wish Sonos would have pushed the boat out a little with some more actual colour choices. The Sonos One came in a couple of different options after Sonos did the Hay collaboration, but the Era 100 has been around for over 18 months and there's still no sign of a pink or yellow edition – so it's probably safe to assume black and white are going to remain the only choices.

It wasn't just the shape that changed on the Era 100: the control panel on the top got a refresh, which makes for much easier control. A volume trough sits in the middle, enabling you to glide your finger through it to increase or decrease volume, or just tap each end. There's a separate play/pause button, as well as separate skip and rewind controls, all of which makes for a better experience than the Sonos One and its three single controls. There's also a microphone mute button on the top, though a physical microphone switch is present at the back too – if you really want to make sure those mics aren't listening.

Along with the mute switch on the rear is a Bluetooth button for putting the speaker into Bluetooth mode. The USB-C line-in port lives on the back too, though you do need a separate adapter to use that.

The power port is at bottom and there's a neat slot for the lead so the cable sits nicely – it's also better than the Era 300, which has a power cable coming out the middle of the rear. The result is a clean and concise design that will look great anywhere you put the Era 100 in your home.

Setup is simple, though Sonos is experiencing some issues with its redesigned app at the moment. Most of the issues have been resolved at the time of writing, but it's worth mentioning – as setup has been a problem for some users. When it runs smoothly, however, it only takes a few minutes from unboxing to listening.

Sonos Era 100 review: Features

Sonos may not have as much of an edge when it comes to seamless multi-room audio as it did a decade ago, but it still packs a punch when it comes to features. If you have other Sonos speakers, the Era 100 connects seamlessly to them and delivers an excellent overall experience. But it also stands strong on its own – ideal if it's your first Sonos speaker.

Bluetooth capabilities were unheard of for wired Sonos speakers before the Era 100 launched, and while they are now standard across the newer speakers being introduced into the line-up, it's still a feature worth mentioning. Apple's AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect are both on board too, so there are a number of ways to get music or audio playing from the Era 100.

Use the Sonos app, however, and you get features like the ability to adjust the EQ and setup voice assistants including Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa – there's no Google Assistant on board here anymore (like there was on the older Sonos One). I always liked having the choice, but it's not a deal-breaker. You can still control smart home devices through Alexa, though.

You can also group and ungroup the Era 100 with other Sonos speakers through the Sonos app, and there are some great tricks like presetting groups of speakers you might always want to use for a dinner party, for example. Sonos also has great compatibility with music services, with over 100 supported, while its multi-room capabilities remain a smooth and consistent experience.

Sonos Era 100 review: Sound Quality

It's the sound quality where the Sonos Era 100 really excels, however. As I mentioned, the speaker features a redesigned architecture compared to the Sonos One, with not a single element remaining the same. That was a pretty bold move from Sonos, given the Sonos One had long been heralded as one of the best smart speakers in its field – but it was a move that paid off.

The 25% larger woofer in the Era 100 (compared to the Sonos One) offers more depth to bass, while the two dual-angled tweeters offer stereo output and a wider soundstage. The result is a broader listening experience across the spectrum, from low to high frequencies, no matter what tracks or genres you play.

It's worth noting there's no Dolby Atmos support or Spatial Audio here, like you’ll find on the Era 300. And while that's somewhat fair enough given the size of this speaker, it is something the Apple HomePod (2nd generation) offers – and that's not all that much bigger.

Forgive its lack of Atmos though, and the performance of the Era 100 really is superb. It handles everything like a boss, and I say that having put it through its paces month after month.

I've listened to a huge variety of content in that time, from October Sky by Yebba, Billions by Caroline Polachek, and About Damn Time by Lizzo – and everything sounds brilliant. Space Ghost Coast to Coast by Glass Animals is one of my favourite test tracks and the Era 100 does a great job of handling and separating the mix of vocals, instruments, and textures.

Crank up the volume and you do lose a bit of detail compared to the Era 300 and Sonos Five, while the overall balance leans towards the bassier side like many Sonos speakers. But as I mentioned, you can change the EQ settings in the Sonos app if bass is not to your preference.

Sonos Era 100 review: Verdict

The Sonos Era 100 is a smashing little speaker. It offers a lovely design, a great set of features, and excellent sound performance.

The Sonos app has had a bit of a tough time over recent months, and the Era 100 ditches support for Google Assistant, but those are minor setbacks in an otherwise brilliant proposition.

If you're looking for a smart speaker that looks great, sounds superb for its size, and packs a punch when it comes to its feature set, then this entry-level Sonos is a winner every single time.

Also consider

If you just want a speaker with Alexa capabilities then you could opt for Amazon's Echo (4th generation), or the Echo Studio for Alexa with decent sound performance. If you want even better sound performance then the Era 300 is an excellent choice. Or if you want something cheaper then consider the Apple HomePod mini.

If you've been eyeing up the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar as the ultimate upgrade for your TV – or perhaps you've already bought one – then how do you upgrade your Sonos system yet further? By adding a big ol' subwoofer, that's how.

The Sonos Sub 4 was announced when the Arc Ultra was revealed, designed as the perfect pairing to fit with Sonos' best soundbar and crank up the low-end delivery to an elevated extreme. Ideal for movies, music and, well, just about anything that wants daubs of bass.

The fourth-gen subwoofer from Sonos does have a new internal design, is marginally lighter weight, while sporting a matte exterior finish that denies fingerprints – unlike its predecessor. This isn't an 'upgrade' product for current Sonos Sub owners, realistically, but it is a great add-on for Arc or Arc Ultra owners who want to turn up the bass.

Price & Availability: How much does the Sonos Sub 4 cost and when can you buy it?

The Sonos Sub 4 is available now, priced £799 in the UK, $799 in the US, and AU$1299 in Australia. That's big money for your big bass, but Sonos' subwoofers have always been pricey additions. If you're feeling the need for a sea of bass, it's possible to pair two with a Sonos soundbar – at double the asking price, of course.

You can package purchase with an Arc or Arc Ultra soundbar to knock the overall cost down a bit, or do consider the previous Sub (Gen 3) – which has seen a price reduction – or the smaller Sub Mini as alternatives which may align better with your setup. Sonos works with Sonos only, do note, so no third-party products are an option.

What's new?: What are the new features of the Sonos Sub 4?

Compared to the Sub Gen 3, the Sub 4 is exactly the same physical dimensions. It's a roughly 40cm square across its large side, and almost 16cm deep. It's a pretty regular subwoofer size, really, with similar equivalents such as the LG S95TR – which I also had out during Sonos testing – actually being slightly larger.

Where the Sub 4 differs from most subwoofers, however, is that it has a centralised opening in the middle of the product which you can see right through (even put your hand through) – most 'classic' subwoofers have a porthole design instead.

Sonos' method with this design is that two opposing drivers can effectively 'cancel out' any distortion. The porting is internal – but redesigned in the Sub 4 compared to its predecessor. The 'exploded view' of each subwoofer is shown on Sonos' official site (here and here) – and while that may mean difference in sound, I suspect almost nobody would be able to determine the difference.

The redesign does mean a slight shift in weight, with the 11.79kgs on the scales meaning a 1.36kg drop. Even though that's not significant from an at-home perspective, I'm sure it'll have a positive impact on the Sub 4's carbon footprint when it comes to shipping and, perhaps, cost of production too.

The biggest change in the Sub 4 that people are likely to notice, however, is that the exterior finish is now matte, not glossy like its predecessor. That might sound minor, but honestly, when I've handled the Sub Gen 3 before now, it's terrible at adsorbing fingerprint marks. It's not as though you need to touch a subwoofer often, if really at all, but this change is an obvious positive.

Setup & Sound: How easy is the Sonos Sub 4 to set up and how does it sound?

If you read my Sonos Arc Ultra review then you'll see I had some issues with the initial setup, but once those hurdles were cleared it was all plain sailing with a solid connection. The same was true in my Sub 4 setup: it was super-keen to be paired first, ignoring the Arc Ultra soundbar in the app, which then created a problem pairing the two. I had to reset my home router and the Sub 4 (long ol' press-and-hold on the main button) before it came good.

Once good, however, it's really good. There's no dropping in connection here, it's a sturdy companion to that Sonos soundbar. You can view the subwoofer in the Sonos app, too, and even adjust its output (+/-15) or, should you wish, turn it off with a simple touch of a virtual toggle – potentially ideal if it's for late-night viewing and you don't want your home's frame reverberating and keeping everyone awake.

Which goes to tell just how chunky the Sonos Sub 4's output is: I love bass, so I've really enjoyed the powerful low-end output from this subwoofer. It caters for frequencies down to 25Hz, which is approaching inaudible (you can feel it though!), but in those big Hollywood movie soundtracks – full of classic down-pitched 'woms' and other low-frequency rumbles – it massively enhances the audio experience.

So much so that, actually, I'm not sure the Sub 4 will be for everyone. The Arc Ultra is so good at delivering meaty bass that, for plenty of setups, it'll be more than ample. The Sub 4 massively elevates the home cinema experience, of course, but the addition of a Sub Mini might be good enough for many – that's capable of 25Hz too, it's just in a smaller package with less 'reach' for bigger spaces, really.

Verdict: Is the Sonos Sub 4 worth the upgrade?

Overall, the Sonos Sub 4 is the perfect companion for the Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar. Combined they create a superb home cinema experience – and if you're feeling extra flush then you can even add a pair of Sonos Era 300 speakers for true surround too.

That's the thing, y'see, you'll need to be feeling deep into your pockets for this bass upgrade – and while I think it's well worth it for that clean and impactful low-end, it'll frankly be more than everyone is going to need.

So the Sonos Sub 4 isn't one for upgraders who already own a Sonos sub – unless you're desperate for the admittedly much better-looking matte finish and its fingerprint-negating bonus – but for those upgrading their Sonos home cinema system, the Sub 4 is the boss of bass for the ultimate movies and music experiences.

Also consider

While the Sub 4 is great, the previous Sub 3 is exactly the same size, just has a glossy finish, but can purchased for less cash right now. If you don't mind wearing cashmere gloves when setting it up, it's one way to save money without any notable compromise.

If the full-size Sub models are going to be too much, then consider going smaller. The Sub Mini is a great product, with the same low frequency response, and while Sonos suggests it's not compatible with the Arc or Arc Ultra, it actually is (certainly with the former, I've not been able to test with the latter) – and will be as much as many need.

It was over 10 years ago that Sonos released its first-ever soundbar. Since then, the audio company has made significant headway into creating a full portfolio of soundbars – Arc, Beam, Ray – to appeal to most people's needs and, indeed, their TV sizes and setups.

Now, the Sonos Arc Ultra arrives as the spiritual successor to the Playbar, if you will, or more naturally as the audio-upgraded successor to the more recent Sonos Arc. The Ultra may look largely similar, but don't call it the 'Arc Gen 2' – as it's been redesigned and acoustically re-engineered to deliver more immersive sound, crisper vocal clarity and beefier bass.

I've been living with the Sonos Arc Ultra for a long weekend for this review – having recently tested a number of the best soundbars by comparison – to see if it's the ultimate soundbar upgrade. Amid Sonos' recent app struggles – which remained an initial setup gripe in my testing – it's otherwise great to see Sonos succeed with a single-box soundbar solution that truly sounds exceptional.

Sonos Arc Ultra: Price & Availability

The Sonos Arc Ultra is on sale now – review stock arrived later than the product's late-October shipping date, unusually – and you can grab the single-box solution for £999 in the UK, $999 in the USA, or AU$1799 in Australia.

Considering that the original Sonos Arc launched at £799 / $799 / AU$1399 – but was price-bumped shortly into its on-sale life to £899 / $899 / AU$1499 – that's not a giant leap for a soundbar with a lot more audio grunt to its name.

In the same breath, however, do consider that many multi-box soundbar competitors – including the superb Samsung HW-Q990D – have recently dropped in price to a similar or even lower asking price. And that true surround sound prospect from positional speakers may appeal even further if you're not mated to Sonos.

Sonos Arc Ultra review: What's New?

The Arc Ultra is fundamentally different to the original Arc – as the newer Ultra squeezes 14 speakers inside, arranged across seven tweeters, six mid-woofers and one 'Sound Motion' woofer. The earlier Arc model has eight woofers and three tweeters. Further catering for not only the high-end with that more significant array – useful for dialogue and vocals – but also a stronger focus on bass output shows the Ultra's upgraded position clearly.

The Arc was no stranger to three-dimensional sound output, with virtual Dolby Atmos surround achieved in a 5.0.2 output – that being five speakers catering for the front soundstage (centre, left and right stereo, side left and right), two upfiring for height, and while no sub is specified (hence the '.0'), any centralised bass would deliver a low-end equivalent to the centre – just lesser than sub-bass frequencies.

The Arc Ultra, however, upgrades that to a 9.1.4 output, arranged across nine front/side channels, four upfiring height channels, and one integrated woofer. You can still upgrade this by adding a sub (I have a Sonos Sub 4 also on review) and a pair of rear speakers (Sonos Era 300), but the channel arrangement remains fundamentally the same – it's still 9.1.4, just the crossover for low-end frequencies will be adjusted and the true rear channels will pick up an adjusted share of output.

As I say, to look at it's a case of spot the difference between the Sonos Arc and Arc Ultra. Interestingly, despite featuring more speakers, the Ultra is actually smaller overall – by around 1cm less tall, 0.5cm less deep – but measures a significant 117.8cm across, making it an ideal fit for the best 65-inch TVs. It'll be more than happy with 55-inch ones, too, or even going the other way there's no lacking in sound projection to handle 75-inch tellies and above.

Sonos Arc Ultra review: Design & Setup

When it came to setting up the Sonos Arc Ultra, the truth is it temporarily infuriated me. This might not be the experience everyone will have, but the Sonos app – sparse in its new look – located the soundbar and supposedly had it paired, but then wouldn't continue the setup. That therefore required a hard reset, before pairing would commence again – but then the app didn't like my Wi-Fi connection (possibly a specific new phone issue), despite router restarts and entering the correct password 10 times. Fortunately, as I also test the best phones as part of my job, I was able to fish out a recent Samsung handset, install the Sonos app on that, then get everything working. Phew.

Since everything has been connected from then – and there's an HDMI cable included in the box, so it'll play nice with an eARC connection – it's been really robust in its connection. I can use my TV remote to adjust the volume, so for day-to-day viewing, movies and music you needn't dive in and out of the app for the most part. Sonos does really need to get the app side of things back into check, clearly, but if you can forgive its current status – and, as I say, it's not always essential to engage with here – then the Arc Ultra is perfectly amicable.

Where the app does present significant worth, however, is with the Trueplay Tuning – which the Sonos site says has been rebranded Quick Tune, but it's definitely not called that in the app at present – to measure a room's reflective qualities and adjust the sound profile accordingly. You can also manually further tweak bass and treble on a simple EQ slider (+/-10 apiece), enhance the height level (+/-10), apply loudness, select speech enhancement (off/low/medium/high), switch Spatial Music processing on or off, and if a separate subwoofer is connected, toggle its output level (+/-15).

I must also give a shout out to the Sonos Arc Ultra's physical design (hard as it is to shoot in dwindling UK sunlight) because it's undoubtedly one of the best-looking soundbars that I've set eyes on. The curved metal surface looks very high-end, the subtle Sonos logo is so delicately integrated front and centre, and the status light can be hidden through settings if you don't want any illumination – something home cinema enthusiasts will no doubt appreciate. Different colours signify different connections/problems, however, so I find it a useful visual reference.

Why, however, the Bluetooth button is hidden behind the soundbar – when there's a volume slider up top – is really beyond my comprehension. I suppose that, clearly, Sonos wants you to use Wi-Fi for multi-room rather than Bluetooth at all! I've used Bluetooth for getting some browser-based streams on my phone to the soundbar, though, and the connection is unquestionably solid, with no drop-outs.

There's also one significant caveat I must raise as to whether the Sonos Arc Ultra will be the soundbar for you: there's only one HDMI port. That means you can plug an HDMI cable into a TV's ARC or eARC slot and it'll handle sound effortlessly (yay). But there are no further ports, therefore no HDMI passthrough option (boo), as many other high-end soundbars offer, sometimes even into the multiples – and that might mean surrendering a 4K/120Hz slot on your TV as a result.

Those of us with multiple current-gen consoles – I'm yet to get my PS5 Pro – won't want to do that, especially if only two of your TV's HDMI ports are the 2.1 standard (which is the typical norm). This was a bugbear with the earlier Sonos Arc and it was widely expected the Ultra would 'fix' this – but, alas, it wasn't to be.

Sonos Arc Ultra review: Sound Quality

If you know the single HDMI port is perfectly fine for your setup then you'll certainly have no qualms about the Sonos Are Ultra's sound quality. Because, as one-box solutions go, I think it's arguably the best-sounding soundbar without the need for any bells or whistles extras. I've got the Sub 4 also connected, but I've toggled that off for portions of listening in the interest of balance. As a Sub 4 'speed review': it's brilliantly bassy, less fingerprint prone than previous models, but still bloomin' expensive.

The first thing that's clear about the Arc Ultra is how bass-capable it is without the need for a separate sub. I've loaded the bassiest of 4K Blu-rays that I own, Tenet, which has a notoriously bad sound mix – and, lo and behold, the bass smacks hard. But the Ultra isn't a one-trick pony: surprisingly the sometimes less-than-intelligible dialogue here punches through, with the Speech Enhancer option further coming to the rescue.

Dolby Atmos soundtracks certainly deliver a wonderful frontal soundstage that has height and width, with some great left-to-right bouncing of SFX – ricocheting bullets a clear example – that give a heightened sense of immersion. No soundbar with virtual processing is a match for a separates system, of course, as there are no speakers placed behind the listener here – but as confident three-dimensional output goes, I'm impressed by the spread of sound.

There's a great clarity to the overall delivery, the Arc Ultra never sounds stretched nor imbalanced at any volume level, dialogue doesn't sound flat nor sibilant. I did my dues and listened to plenty more with better sound mixes, but of course – from a weekend binge of The Diplomat on Netflix, to the latest sensation The Penguin on Sky/Now, and some stronger 4K Blu-ray options, with Bladerunner 2049 being a particular impressive outing.

This being a Sonos, it would be remiss to not feed it a variety of musical sources, of course, as many will be lured to this product because it plays nice with other Sonos multi-room products. My brother owns an Arc, Five (for the turntable addition) and Move 2, where I often am over and listening, and the Arc Ultra is steps beyond each and every one of those. Whether you're into rock, pop, ambient, acoustic, classic or whatever – the breadth of the Sonos Arc Ultra is never in question.

Sonos Arc Ultra review: Verdict

I think the Sonos Arc Ultra is arguably the best-sounding single-box soundbar solution on the market right now. Big statement indeed, but I've found the five-star audio and decent height and width through virtual surround processing to be impressive.

As an upgrade over the original Arc the bigger bass profile, clearer vocal presentation, and broader soundstage all make it worthwhile. Most people won't ever need to add a subwoofer to this setup, thanks to the enhanced bass, but you can – the Sub 4 (also in for test) is mighty, but also mighty pricey.

The Arc Ultra does come with caveats, however, namely that if you want HDMI passthrough then you're out of luck – and the single HDMI eARC slot here could be a deal-breaker for some. If you're not mated to Sonos, then plenty of multi-box alternatives offer truer surround for a similar asking price – such as the less elegant-looking but altogether more immersive Samsung HW-Q990D.

Overall, setting any app debacle issues aside, the Sonos Arc Ultra will be a five-star soundbar purchase for many – thanks to its epic sound quality. For others, however, those above caveats will hold it back from would-be perfection. Still, no other Sonos sounds better than this – the Arc Ultra is a major upgrade that I want to enjoy everyday.

Also consider

Still fixed on the idea of a Sonos but don't actually need a 'bar so big or bassy? Consider the original Sonos Arc as a step-down option, or, if you've got a TV that's 55-inch or smaller, then the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) does a decent job – and many in residential areas will find it the more amicable match.

If you can't live without HDMI passthrough and want separates included in the box then the subwoofer- and rears-included Samsung HW-Q990D is an unbeatable surround sound proposition that's in particular the best soundbar for Samsung TVs (thanks to also using the telly's speakers for even greater height – a Samsung-only feature though).

There was no shortage of anticipation before Sonos launched its headphones, but the reception has been a little muted. As the company looked to challenge the best headphones out there, it created a great set of 'phones, but launched them at a high price and against strong competition.

It appears that the public reception to the Sonos Ace hasn't quite been what was expected, according to a report from Bloomberg. It tells us that around 200,000 pairs of the high-end headphones have been sold – much lower than anticipated.

The answer – if the source is accurate – would be to cut the price by $50, so they would retail at $400 instead. In the UK, that’s likely to land at £400.

What was surprising when the Sonos Ace launched is that the company pitched the headphones so high in price. As a newcomer to the market, Sonos went right in to compete with the likes of the Bose QC Ultra and the trendy AirPods Max, most likely to highlight its audio pedigree, regardless of the fact it was launching its first set of headphones.

According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, we might not just be looking at a price cut: he also reports that Sonos might be considering an even more premium model (dubbed the Sonos Ace 2) which would then come in at $450 again.

It's said that some employees at the company are doubtful about the plan and I can see why: if people aren't falling over themselves to buy your current headphones, then moving them further up the scale might not help.

How good are the Sonos Ace headphones?

Our resident headphone expert Mike Lowe is a big user of over-ears and said that these were some of the most comfortable headphones he's used. He appreciated the performance they offered. However, he found out that they aren't great for travel – the case isn't good enough considering the price.

It's also a slightly strange proposition: Sonos is attempting to establish itself as an audio brand rather than the multiroom brand it was when it burst onto the scene. While the company continues to launch speakers that all work together harmoniously, the original offering of being able to play what you want where you want is now far from unique.

The Sonos Ace offer a neat, connected, feature that plays to a wider ecosystem and that's something called TV Audio Swap. It allows you to move the sound from your Sonos Arc to your Ace headphones, but it doesn't work on all the company's soundbars.

Add to that the troubles that Sonos has experienced with its app, which has angered users over the last few months, and Sonos does seem to be travelling along a rocky road right now.

Having just announced a new soundbar – the Sonos Arc Ultra – there's no shortage of activity over at Sonos at the moment, but a price cut could do something to smooth things over with potential customers.

Poor Sonos can't catch a break. The speaker company redesigned its app in May this year, and since then, it's been a bit of a sad time. The app caused a number of complaints from Sonos' loyal fan base, with several features missing and while improvements have been made over the last five months, the troubles don't seem to be over just yet.

The latest reports from Reddit (picked up by 9to5Mac) highlights an issue with Apple Music integration on the Sonos app, which Sonos has confirmed as a "problem" on its service status page.

The issue has meant some Sonos users have reported not being able to access their Apple Music library, while others were signed out of their Apple Music accounts and couldn't sign back in.

Sonos has said: "We've identified a problem with Apple Music on Sonos and are working with them on a fix. You may not see all results while browsing Apple Music on the Sonos app until this is resolved."

There's no mention of when the fix might appear, and it seems to have been a problem since the afternoon of 15 October, meaning it's been a couple of days that some users have experienced the Apple Music outage.

I personally have a Sonos system at home and I'm an Apple Music user, though I have not experienced any issues so the problem doesn't seem to be affecting all users.

The company did also announce a new flagship soundbar earlier this week in the Sonos Arc Ultra, alongside the fourth generation Sonos Sub, so it's not all bad news.

The Sonos Arc Ultra takes design cues from the Sonos Arc, but ushers in a slimmer case and moves controls to the rear, out of sight. It's also the first product from Sonos to debut the transducer technology from Mayht, a company Sonos acquired in 2022, which Sonos is calling Sound Motion.

The Sonos Arc Ultra and Sonos Sub 4 are both available to pre-order now, costing £999 / $999 and £799 / $799, respectively. They will launch on 29 October.

Sonos has unveiled a replacement to its four year-old Arc – which has been considered one of the best soundbars since its launch in 2020. The new model sports a sleeker build and several big upgrades.

Called Sonos Arc Ultra, it is the company's new flagship all-in-one home cinema solution, which comes with the company's proprietary Sound Motion transducer technology to pack a staggering 14 driver units into the thinner form factor.

Sound Motion effectively reduces the size of the transducers, while also enabling larger sound from smaller components, so allows for tidier aesthetics without impacting performance. The Arc Ultra is the first Sonos device to benefit.

Its 9.1.4 array is therefore capable of providing a full spatial audio experience, whether that be Dolby Atmos or another technology, such as Apple's own multi-channel format. There is new centre channel architecture too, in comparison with its predecessor, which maximises vocal clarity. And with Trueplay tuning available (as on other Sonos speakers), the bar should match your room no matter the size.

As with the previous Arc, this Sonos soundbar comes with on-board Amazon Alexa, or you can opt for the brand's own voice control. There are also touch controls on a dedicated ledge just behind the speaker system.

HDMI eARC is provided for connectivity and Bluetooth support is included if you just want to stream from your phone directly. An audio line-in input is present, too.

New Sonos Sub 4

As well as the bar, Sonos has launched a new version of its popular wireless Subwoofer – the Sonos Sub 4.

It has been rebuilt "inside and out", with a similar aesthetic but a new matte finish and more sustainable form.

There is increased processing power and memory on board, as well as new Wi-Fi radios for better connectivity.

Both the Sonos Arc Ultra and Sub 4 will be avilable in white or black globally from 29 October 2024.

The Arc Ultra will be priced at $999 in the US, while the Sub 4 will be $799. We're still awaiting UK and Australian pricing details.

The ongoing saga of Sonos' disastrous 2024 app update continues to rumble on, but it looks like the sound experts have come up with a plan to make lemonade from lemons. The firm has a plan to earn back customers' trust and loyalty, and that could be good news for Sonos owners.

Writing on the Sonos website last week, CEO Patrick Spence announced a strategy to not just fix the app but "actively build a better Sonos experience for everyone".

According to Spence, some of the changes are already in progress; the rest will be implemented before the year is out.

So what's changing at Sonos?

Sonos says it's changing its entire approach

The biggest change is also the simplest: Sonos won't launch products until they're ready.

That means establishing "ambitious quality benchmarks at the start of product development" and not shipping products that don't meet them. It sounds basic, but the Sonos app problems are largely because the app wasn't ready to roll but launched anyway.

Sonos figured a launch-first, fix-later strategy would work. It didn't.

Sonos also says it's going to involve more customers and more diverse setups in pre-launch testing in order to identify and address quality issues. And future launches, such as app updates and replacements, will happen gradually "allowing customers to adjust and provide feedback before it becomes the default."

The firm is also extending its warranties by an extra year too, "for all home theatre and plug-in speaker products".

That only applies to products that are still under warranty, so if you have older Sonos kit with expired warranties the extension won't apply. And it won't apply to portable devices such as the Roam 2 and Move 2.

These changes are significant: Sonos is putting its hand up, admitting to having messed up and setting out exactly how it's going to ensure the same problems don't happen again.

Whether that's enough to restore customer confidence remains to be seen, and of course there's a big difference between making promises and actually delivering them. But for the sake of Sonos customers and employees, hopefully this is the beginning of a new and better chapter.

When Bose launches a new soundbar you know what to expect: premium design, superb sound, cutting-edge tech... the usual. But the new £499 Bose Smart Soundbar offers something out of the ordinary and potentially very exciting too. Bose calls it Personal Surround Sound.

Personal Surround Sound is designed to connect your new Smart Soundbar to a set of Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, and to then use those earbuds as your surround sound speakers. If you live in a small space or just want to get a serious surround experience without upsetting the neighbours, this could be just the trick.

Bose Smart Soundbar: key features 

The new Bose Smart Soundbar is the replacement for the Bose Smart Soundbar 600, which got four stars in our review: despite its relatively small size it delivered an impressively big Dolby Atmos sound. And spec-wise it's very similar with five drivers: one centre, two side-firing and two upward-firing. Connectivity is decent too: there's HDMI eARC and optical input (although only the former supports Atmos), Bluetooth, Google Cast, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect.

The key features here are software rather than hardware. There's Bose TrueSpace, which analyses non-Atmos signals to produce a multi-channel audio experience; the aforementioned Personal Surround Sound; and the same AI dialogue mode as the more expensive Ultra model, which aims to make dialogue clearer during the noisy bits.

The Personal Surround Sound feature is specific to the Open earbuds because of their design: because they don't sit in your ear canals they don't completely block the audio that's coming from the soundbar, so in theory at least they should enhance the audio from your soundbar rather than replace it. Whether it's as good as Bose claims we'll discover soon enough when we get the new Smart Soundbar in for testing, but it's definitely interesting and potentially amazing. 

The Bose Smart Soundbar is available to pre-order with shipping expected from 9 October. The RRP is £499.95.

The ongoing saga of Sonos's troubled app update continues to rumble on. After briefly considering bringing the old Sonos app back before deciding against it, Sonos is continuing with its programme of fixes and improvements – and it's taken an unusual leaf out of the Fortnite book to keep customers informed. Like Epic Games does with Fortnite, Sonos has published a public Trello board showing exactly what it's got planned for the ongoing app updates.

The board, which you can access on Trello here, combines information from multiple parts of Sonos to give you a bird's eye view of the app update progress. Key sections tell you what's "on the roadmap", what's coming soon, what has recently been included in updates and what has already been fixed or implemented. The final column, "what we're hearing & working on" is for longer term fixes.

Will the Sonos app issues ever be resolved?

It does seem like the Sonos issues have been rumbling on forever, and it's certainly been quite a Sonos horribilis for the firm: the app update launched in May, supposedly as a big improvement, but wasn't exactly greeted with delight. However, after months of updates and considerable amounts of money Sonos can no doubt see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's no doubt that the app is in much better shape than when it first launched. 

The problems have been so severe that it overshadowed the launch of the Sonos Ace headphones, and Sonos also delayed the launch of some important new products including the Sonos Arc Ultra. That's the successor to the popular Sonos Arc soundbar, a key part of Sonos's product portfolio. The firm clearly feels that the situation has now improved significantly, and the Arc Ultra is expected to launch soon. We're also expecting to see a new version of the Sonos Sub, the Sub 4. 

Sonos has had a bit of a tough time in the last few months. Ever since its app relaunch in May, users have been experiencing issues. So much so that the company's CEO Patrick Spence even apologised for those issues and assured users fixes were coming.

Hopefully things are now beginning to improve, with bug fixes arriving regularly for the app, while preparations are seemingly underway for two new products. 

There were reports the two products were being delayed because of the app woes, but the most recent leak picked up by Tom's Guide, sees Arsène Lupin posting on X (previously Twitter) that Sonos has "begun preparations to launch its delayed products". 

Lupin said the products would be marketed as Sub 4 and Arc Ultra, with both coming in black and white colour options.

The latter element of that report shouldn't come as a surprise to Sonos users – pretty much all its products come in black and white, with only the Sonos Roam and Move 2 speakers available in different colours (and the Sonos One Hay edition if you're keeping track).

The Arc Ultra also shouldn't be too much of a shock if you have been following previous rumours, with a soundbar codenamed 'Lasso' that looked wildly similar to the Sonos Arc appearing in leaks already.

It seems Lasso and the Arc Ultra are the same soundbar and that device will mark the first bar from Sonos that will offer Bluetooth, along with new driver technology. Lupin claims it will offer "Sound Motion technology" to give a "balanced sound that surrounds you precisely from every direction".  

As for the Sonos Sub 4, it will be interesting to see if this gets a redesign in terms of shape – the current shape has been around since 2012 when the original Sub was released.

The Sub 3 was announced in 2020, but it looked the same as the previous model. We have had a Sub Mini between the Sub 3 release and now, but a successor to the larger Sub has been a long time coming. Lupin claims it will have a matte finish, which the Sub Mini does, and it will offer "dual face-cancelling woofers".

The leak from Lupin doesn't give a release date for the products, but Sonos does have a tendency to reveal products around the trade show IFA in Berlin. That takes place next week – between 6-10 September this year – so it's possible we could see more details on the Sonos Arc Ultra and Sonos Sub 4 very soon. 

It's also possible that delay we mentioned has pushed things back a little, even if only by a couple of weeks. For now, we will have to wait and see.

Six days ago Sonos was seriously considering bringing its old app back to try and satisfy its disappointed customers while it tries to fix the newer one. But the firm has made a decision about whether or not to bring the old app back, and the decision is no.

Speaking to Sonos customers in a Reddit AMA on r/sonos, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said that he's disappointed too. "Until very recently I'd been hopeful that we could re-release the old app (S2) as an alternative for those of you that are having issues that we've not yet resolved," he said. But having investigated it, Sonos has concluded that "S2 is less reliable & less stable [than] you remember... re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better."

Why can't Sonos bring back the old Sonos app?

According to Spence, the problem is that since the new app launched in May 2024, Sonos has been updating the software that runs on Sonos hardware and in the cloud to work with it – and by doing so, they've effectively broken the old app. 

The news didn't go down particularly well with Redditors, with responses such as "so rollback the firmware as well"; "suspecting there may be some hidden (business) reasons why you don't want to regress systems to 16.1"; and "someone call the fire department his pants are on fire." 

For Spence, "If there's a silver lining here, it's that we are fully focused on getting the new software running successfully in your home."

Sonos continues to spend serious money on fixing its app and restoring missing features, with updates coming out fortnightly. Sonos says that it's had to delay two important product launches, and that the ongoing issues have overshadowed the launch of its Sonos Ace headphones too. There's no doubt that the ongoing issues, now into their fourth month, continue to do serious damage to Sonos's reputation. 

The Sonos app issue continues to cause big problems for the company. The firm has reportedly delayed two key product launches while it focuses its energies on fixing its app, and a new report says that it's now considering something previously unthinkable – bringing the old Sonos app back.

The Sonos app update was one of the biggest redesigns in the app's history, but when it launched earlier this year many users found that they could no longer access familiar, and in their view crucial, features. After initially dropping the PR ball Sonos has committed to fortnightly app updates to fix problems and restore missing features. But according to The Verge it's now considering a massive U-turn.

Why would Sonos bring the old app back?

According to the report, there have been discussions "high up within Sonos" about bringing back S2, the previous version of the Sonos app. For context, the newer version's Google Play rating is just 1.3 stars. 

That doesn't mean Sonos plans to abandon the new version of its app, and it has no plans to drop its fortnightly update schedule. But making the older one available again might take some of the pressure off as it continues to work on getting the newer app right.

As Sonos CEO Patrick Spence told investors during last week's earnings call, "Far too many of our customers are having an experience that is worse than what they previously had". 

While Spence remains committed to the new app – he's consistently said that he sees it as the future for Sonos, especially in regard to new products we haven't seen yet – Spence has also admitted that the bad publicity around the app has overshadowed the launch of the Sonos Ace headphones. It's also been very expensive: Spence says that in the near future, updating the newer app will cost between $20 and $30 million.