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I’ve been a big fan of the Sonos Move over the last few years with it being a great home speaker that can also ben taken on the go, but it’s a pricey speaker that is also quite large, and on the flip side, the Roam just doesn’t pack the punch I’d want from a Sonos speaker and that’s why the new Sonos Play might be the one for most people.
The Play is a lot smaller than the Move 2 and comes with a new removable handle, making it much easier to just chuck it in a big and take it on the go. It weighs less than half the amount of the Move 2 at 1.3kg as well. It has that same wireless charging base, and it also the same 24 hour battery life which can also be used to charge a device as well. It’s rated for Waterproof at IP67 which is improved on the Move 2 and means you can feel even more confident taking it to the pool or camping and such.
The physical differences are that the buttons are all physical, so there’s no slider for volume which have been common on all of the recent Sonos devices, and there’s no USB-C charger in the box either although I’m sure most people have one of those at this point.
Just like the Move 2, it can be used with Wi-FI to connect to the rest of your Sonos system but can also connect to devices over Bluetooth as well, and this time you can connect it to Bluetooth right out of the box which is a no-brainer. It can also do line-in over USB-C and then share your connection to the rest of rest of your Sonos speaker.
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On the inside, the Sonos Play is basically an Era 100 with two angled tweeters, one mid-woofer and three Class-H digital amplifiers, which means it has really great sound quality for the size. I was frequently going between the Move 2 and the Play over the last few weeks and I’d often struggle to tell the difference between them which is a big testament to the Play.
The Sonos Play can take advantage of Automatic TruePlay so that it can re-align its sound depending on what’s around it and it does sound fantastic out of the bo and never needs to be adjusted.
Sonos has had a tricky few years with its latest app, but it really has turned a corner and everything is feeling a lot more stable again, and it feels like we can move forward to new products (such as the Play) and features that put it ahead of the game again. I’m glad I’ve stuck with it because I absolutely love all of my Sonos products and how they talk to each other, and it’s great to see them going well again.
The Sonos Play feels like that perfect balance between portability whilst still providing audio quality that is far beyond other portable speakers of this size, and whilst it’s still on the pricey side, it’s absolutely worth it just to know you’re buying one portable speaker that can work as a home speaker and you won’t be rushing to get anything else in the near future.
