Publish the dates when products will become 'legacy'

“five years after we stop selling them” is not sufficient commitment. Five years is too short for those customers who buy just before you stop selling them.

This is premium priced kit. The £349 connect has less hardware in it than my £50 Blu-ray player. The £499 Connect Amp apparently has been replaced with a more expensive £599 model.

It seems Sonos want me to throw away hardware that can perfectly well play 16-bit 44.1Khz audio. What does the new hardware offer? Last time I checked it doesn’t support HD audio. This doesn’t seem good for the environment.

Have you considered a post-end-of life subscription for a couple of years?

A while back I had problems with my Sonos. I tried and liked Bluesound but didn’t want to replace the whole system so when Sonos started working again it went on eBay. Now faced with a whole system upgrade I can start with a clean slate.

So at a minimum, new hardware should be able to play hi-def audio and have 10 years of updates. Or a serious price cut if you’re no longer a premium hi-fi player and a more mass-market/short lifespan kind of thing.

Got the same email today and I have 4/5 units that will be legacy.  I recently traded up my connect for a new port but suspected the time was approaching where this may happen.  The new port has improved sound quality slightly and I have a fairly high end processor/amp/speaker set up for my hifi. Happy with that.

If I understand things correctly from May my system will no longer update, which is fine for me as I don’t use voice or streaming services, some internet radio (rarely) but main use is streaming my ripped cds around the house from my network drive.   Seems like this functionality will be unaffected.

Some of my Sonos kit is over 10yrs old so I think, given the rate technology moves, that the software update support has been pretty good.  The pain for some people will be the potential cost of updating kit in one go that they have built up over many years, but the need to update very much depends on how you use your system, I guess.

Pain indeed, especially if the old kit and the new kit don’t play nicely together. This is the kind of thing I’d want to phase in over a few years.

The 30% discount also seems dishonest seeing as they’ve increased the prices, especially for the Connect:Amp.

After the Brexit vote in 2016 the pound fell 15% against the dollar and other currencies. Sonos’ response? Increase the price by 25%. So it’s gone up from £399 to £499 instead of around £460.

Not satisfied with that, it seems they’ve discontinued the Connect:Amp (so, when does support end?) in favour of Amp with a price tag of £599. Sure, it has more power but it’s a multi-room system, not everyone needs to crank up the volume in every room.

So the trade-up price is very nearly £420, around 8.5% cheaper than the £460 it would have cost after the previous hike reflecting exchange rates. So after 10 years of technical progress, that’s the best they can do? Imagine swapping a 2009 laptop for a 2019 model and only getting about 8.5% more “bang for buck”.

The above calculations assume Sonos don’t withdraw the trade-up offer at 4 months’ notice (who can trust them now?) Without this offer, we’re talking about a serious price hike.

Thanks for the reply but are you seriously saying that if I spend £1800 on a 5.1 setup it will last for 5 years only and then will be obsolete.  Have Sonos gone utterly insane? 

People might accept that timescale for a £200 Bluetooth speaker but not the price point you chase.

Spot on stueys. This is meant to be premium equipment … it’s certainly priced that way. I bought it expecting to keep it until the hardware broke, which would hopefully be a 15 year+ proposition. This is a symptom of the world we live in. So wasteful.

Keep in mind the statement about them having a history of supporting older devices for a lot longer than five years, this was before they become a public company. Now they have the pressure of trying to drain every cent out of every customer they have as a publicly traded company, this announced 5 year policy is the policy you’re buying into.

Obviously you’ll get a bit longer if you buy a Sonos component that doesn’t get a refresh this year (i.e. a Gen 3 Play 5) so they continue selling your model. But you’re gambling with no way of knowing in advance.

My Play 5 was purchased in August 2015 which is LESS than 5 years from May 2020. How long before Sonos forces an unwanted upgrade for my Play 1's which were purchased around the same time? 

Sonos has lost a lot of credibility. Actions speak louder than words and Sonos' actions over the last several years are saying loud and clear that Sonos DOES NOT value its loyal customers and has no intention of supporting its products for a minimum of five years.

Our commitment is to support products with software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, so you’d need to have bought that 5.1 setup today, and have us stop selling it tomorrow. And even at that, when the device goes into legacy mode it’ll continue to work as it has been. The only change is that over time, eventually services will stop working on it.

For a home theater system, the TV connection would keep on working long into the future without any software modifications.

I think that’s a little unfair. Sonos has supported their product line for a very long time already. Their past behaviour at least makes it reasonable to believe you’ll get the minimum of years support they are now promising you. The question is five years enough, especially if you’re considering invested thousands in new “modern” components? For me, it’s a resounding no. Although I’ve been unwinding my Sonos setup ever since I saw their investor filings warning this was coming, so I’ve already been getting off the train. I only have one “legacy” Play 5 in my network now, 18 months ago I had four. 

I mainly have Play 3s that will be becoming legacy soon enough, but they are already in the process of being replaced with another branded product.