Sonos Play review: Possibly the perfect flexible home speaker

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?