Technology is at its best when it makes things simple, and Sonos’ family of wireless, multi-room speakers are a textbook example. Born in an era when multi-room audio was the exclusive preserve of expensive bespoke installations, Sonos’ vision of a wireless future changed everything. Anyone could set it up, it sounded great, and while it certainly wasn’t cheap, you didn’t have to remortgage your house.
Sonos One review: What you need to know
The One is Sonos’ first smart speaker. On paper, this seems like a match made in heaven – the simplicity of voice control partnered with Sonos’ brilliantly simple, flexible multi-room music system.
To make this happen, Sonos has taken the innards of its compact Play:1 speaker (click here to read our full review), and added an array of microphones, which allow smart assistants to give you hands-free control of your music and more besides.
The interesting thing is that Sonos isn’t tied to one particular service. Amazon’s Alexa is supported out of the box and with Google Assistant is coming sometime in 2018 the Sonos One is ready for a truly hands-free future.
Sonos One review: Price and competition
At £199, the Sonos One’s retail price is exactly the same as the not-so-smart Play:1. Given you get voice control thrown in, that’s a pretty tempting offer. Can’t you just buy an Amazon Echo device instead? Sure, but you’ll need to be content with dramatically less refined sound quality, and you can forget about Google Assistant support.
If you already have a few Sonos speakers, or need the room-filling talents of Sonos’ more potent Play:3 or Play:5 models, then it’s worth remembering that you can add Alexa’s voice control to any Sonos system simply by buying an Amazon Echo device and adding them via the Sonos skill. Grab an Echo Dot for around £35, and you’re sorted.
If you simply can’t stand the idea of Sonos for some reason, and aren’t bothered by voice control in the slightest, then Samsung’s R1, R3 and R5 family of multi-room speakers is also another decent option.
Sonos One review: Features and design
As ever, it’s hard to fault the design. The One feels weighty and solidly-built, and the styling is simple and unfussy. The physical buttons of Sonos’ other speakers have been replaced by touch-sensitive ones embedded into the top panel and, in addition to the play/pause button and volume buttons either side, a further button allows you to toggle the in-built microphones on and off, with a white LED signifying when they’re active.
Four rubber feet on the One’s underside ensure it doesn’t scratch or slide around on whatever surface you put it on. Meanwhile, there’s an Ethernet socket at the rear (in addition to the built-in Wi-Fi, naturally) and the L-shaped power cord plugs in neatly to the socket hidden on the speaker’s underside. If you hate cables and clutter, then it’s fair to say that there aren’t many mains-powered speakers that look neater than the One.
The only sticking point for some people will be that, like the rest of Sonos’s family, the One is exclusively available in monochrome – you get to pick from black or white. Rose gold is off the menu. Sorry.
Owners of Sonos’ Play:1 speakers may also be mildly aggrieved that the One’s styling doesn't make for a perfect match. Where the Play:1 sandwiches a silver speaker grille between either white or black trim, the One is all-black, or all-white.
And while we’re on the subject, you can’t pair a Play:1 with a One to create a stereo pair, despite the fact that they sound near-identical and are very similarly proportioned. Well, not yet, anyway. Sonos hasn’t confirmed whether it’s going to do something about this in the future, but watch this space.
The only other slight disappointment is that Sonos has removed the threaded speaker mount from the One. It’s perhaps understandable given the focus on voice control but still, it would be a nice to have.
Sonos One review: Sound quality
The Sonos One does not sound like a small speaker – it has dramatically more energy and impact than you’d expect from such a tiny footprint. It doesn’t unearth the deepest bass, so you’ll need to shell out for the Sonos:Sub if you’re a total bass fiend, but what’s there is highly impressive. Even on its own, the One does a fine job of filling a large open plan living space, and reaches anti-social volumes without getting flustered.
And crucially, the One’s balanced, refined sound doesn’t just sound great with any genre of music – it also blends seamlessly with other speakers in the range such as Play:1 and Play:3, so the same crystal-clear sound follows you from room to room without any jarring changes in tonality.
Sonos One review: Voice control
If you were naturally expecting the Sonos One to replicate all of the features of Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo products, however, then you’re in a disappointment. You can ask Alexa general questions about the weather, nearby shops and services, and set alarms, but you can’t use any of the voice call, drop-in or messaging features, and you can’t ask Alexa to read eBooks, set reminders or receive notifications.
And, at the time of writing, Alexa can only control a limited number of music services. Currently, you can ask Alexa to play artists, albums and specific tracks from your Amazon Music library or Music Unlimited services, as well as any radio or podcasts on TuneIn, but support for Spotify voice control isn’t coming until the end of December. Once that materialises, though, you’ll be able to request music by genre, year, playlist name and so forth, which should prove useful.
If you were hoping for support for the other music services supported natively by Sonos, such as Tidal, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Bandcamp and others, however, then you may be waiting some time. Until Alexa, or eventually Google Assistant, support them natively, you’ll have to make do with using the Sonos app.
The variety of Sonos-specific commands might be restricted currently, but they do come in handy. You can skip tracks and adjust the volume in specific rooms (“Alexa, set the volume to 2 in the kitchen” or “Alexa, skip to the next track in the living room”), or mute and unmute rooms already in a group (“Alexa, mute living room”). There are limitations, however. You can’t ask Alexa to add another room to an existing group – you still have to do that manually with the app. And even though Alexa can pause playback from unsupported services such as Tidal, it’s unable to resume playback, which is mildly irksome.
If you're getting the feeling that Alexa doesn't really add that much to the Sonos experience right now, then you're probably about right. Until Spotify support arrives, Alexa simply feels like more of a bonus than an essential part of the Sonos One's toolset. Come the arrival of Google Assistant in 2018, Alexa may end up taking a back seat – or you may decide to sever ties completely. The great thing about the One, unlike Amazon or Google's smart speakers, is that you will eventually be able to make that choice.
Sonos One review: Verdict
If you’re sold on the idea of a smart speaker, but you’re a bit of a stickler for superb-sounding audio, the Sonos One fits the bill nicely. It looks great, sounds stupendous, and you can easily add a second speaker for stereo sound, or use it to form part of a slick multi-room system.
The real clincher here, however, is that the One isn’t tied to any one smart assistant. So, regardless of whether you prefer Amazon or Google’s way of doing things – or potentially want the best bits of both – the Sonos One will ensure that great quality sound is only a voice command away.