SONOS units don’t have a power button, they are designed to be powered 24/7.
One of the most stressful events in any unit’s life is Power ON. In addition to current surges in some components, Power ON begins a temperature cycle. The unit will start at ambient and warm to operating temperature. At Power OFF, the cycle completes as the unit returns to ambient temperature. After a fixed number of cycles the unit fails. This is never specified to the public, but it is a design consideration. Premium products tend to survive more power/temperature cycles, but this is not guaranteed. Turning a unit ON and leaving it powered for months is only one cycle. There are other failure mechanisms, some are hours since manufacture or operating hours, but the most significant failure mechanism is cycles. It doesn’t seem fair, but some parts fail sooner if they are not used.
We need to balance power consumption with environmental cost. Part of the environmental cost is disposing of a unit at end of life. I don’t have the hard data to to intelligently define the crossover point into “too many” power cycles. Typically, I purchase quality products, never power cycle them more than once a day (less If I don’t need them that day) and I get decades of use. “Modern” products, such as cellphones, annoy me because they become technically useless before wearing out. Part of this is due to the pace of technology and part due to manufacturers having difficulty with the business model of “buy once, use forever” because it eventually crashes.
Thanks ! This is helpful information on electronic devices in general. I’m finding that the Sonos devices, even in “sleep” mode remain quite warm and consume a certain amount of electricity. I’l stick with the power off solution and hope the extra wear is acceptable. Thanks again for the info!
+1
While marginally increasing the cost (both purchase and initial and final environmental), I think that the standby power requirements could be reduced. If the product’s useful life is long enough, there will be a net environmental benefit.
One thing you may want to think about is the startup surge with 12 units all coming on at the same time. That is likely to make any surge related startup problems a bit worse.
You can burn a lot of power for the cost of replacing an out-of-warranty unit.
