Contributor I

Why is Connect more expensive than Play?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
April 28, 2012
179 replies
75917 views

I just got my first pair of Sonos units - two Play:3's for the kitchen and bedroom and I absolutely love them. I'm not a huge audiophile, but the convenience and total plug 'n play nature of Sonos is what attracted me to it.

Of course the next thing that occured to me was how to get this connected up to my stereo.

What I don't understand is why the basic Connect is $349 while the Play:3 units are $299 each. I mean if anything it seems like a Connect is just a Play:3 without the speakers and amp? Why does it cost so much more for fewer features? Seems like the guts of the connect should be a $99 unit - I meant he appleTV is $99, and it does way more (At least in terms of technological capability - video/etc) than the connect.

To be honest I've been drooling over Sonos for years - and I know the quality is very high, but the expense of the units has always put me off. It wasn't until the Play:3 that I felt like there was enough bang-for-the-buck to justify diving in... I'm probably going to get at least 2 or 3 more Play:3's for elsewhere in the house, but it's going to be hard to justify the Connect until the price comes down further. It's still cheaper to just put a Play:3 in the same room as my stereo - it's small and powerful enough to just sit near my existing speakers.

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3

3PedalMINI

Lyricist III

Horsepucky! Sonos doesn't give out this kind of information, so you have no way of knowing this.

Not trying? *ahem* :rolleyes:

Sonos sells in Best Buy, Target, etc., and is marketed as easy to install. With their trend towards self-contained units sold in big box stores (which, "coincidently" coincided with their explosion in sales from 1M units sold in the first 6 years to 2.5M in the last 2), I highly doubt their current business plan is to cater to installers.

Hmm, well i guess me being one of my regions largest sonos dealers and custom installers and the ability to see future sonos products under NDA and getting to talk with some of the high ups at sonos means nothing, i guess they are blowing numbers out their rear? i doubt. :rolleyes:

jgatie

Hmm, well i guess me being one of my regions largest sonos dealers and custom installers and the ability to see future sonos products under NDA and getting to talk with some of the high ups at sonos means nothing, i guess they are blowing numbers out their rear? i doubt. :rolleyes:

First of all, you shouldn't be talking about any NDAs (that's kind of the point of the NDA).. Second of all, if custom installers make up 65% of Sonos sales, I'll eat my shirt. Third of all, I seem to remember a mod posting a warning about custom installers having too much of a commercial presence on what is supposed to be a USERS forum. Did you not get the inference?

buzz

Grand Maestro

We don't mind installers and dealers hanging out. The experienced installers can offer their perspective and we can help the new installers be better installers. However, we do not allow dealers and installers to solicit business.

3PedalMINI,

"NDA" means "Non Disclosure". SONOS is touchy about this. Simply mentioning that you have one will decrease the likelihood that you'll receive another.

E

Evohass

Answer the question, are all your Zoneplayers in the same room? Because if they aren't you're probably not even going to hear the delay introduced by the AV receiver.

I can only speak for me, living in an open-plan house, where I CAN hear it when the Play 5 and 3 are out of sync with my stereo. However, that rarely happens. Normally they are all in sync. The only time things really were out of sync was when I had hooked up the Connect to my iMac. That caused serious delays for a while. After a recent update I no longer get those delays (I now have a Play 5 in the study so the Connect has gone downstairs to the HT where it is hooked up to an AV but where it never needs to be in sync with anything else).

To come back to the original point: it is very easy to spot music being played even slightly out of sync in an open-plan house!

E

Evohass

True. Anyone who prefers a surround DSP instead of direct mode for a 2-channel signal is not really interested in sound quality, they are interested in using as many speakers as possible. This is fine if one likes simulated surround over stereo, but one should not mix this opinion into a 'purist' discussion of sound/amplifier quality.

There was a time I would have agreed with you, and I still do to some extent, but there are circumstances where having dsp is "better". One such is my HT where the front speakers are really too far apart (there is a fixed screen between them) in relation to the listening position. This is not always a problem but with some music you just get a better sound stage when the centre-speaker is active as well.

E

Evohass

...
Now if the sonos team had jumped in at some point and explained the connect is expensive becase... "we have to do a lot of processing to make sure the music sounds great going into your system, and we don't have to do that with the play 3 because we control the amp and the speakers... etc etc" well that would make more sense...

Do you mean to say you prefer advertising over a $100 reduction in price?:)

T

timc23

Lyricist I

As someone who is looking a purchasing a Sonos system for whole house (probably 3 kids rooms - bedroom, dinning room, shed!), the only bit of the pricing which seems odd is the Connect. Which is how I came across the thread in the first place.

I'm looking at the various options for value / utility / longevity / openness / connectivity options etc. Be a shame if this odd pricing was the sticking point.

I think that the PLAY:3 price is low balled to increase market penetration. As unit volume increases, the manufacturing costs will decrease and allow some profit. SONOS used this strategy on the original ZP100 which was initially priced very low, considering the manufacturing costs. The ZP100 was priced at a fraction of the cost of anything remotely competitive in terms of function. This was a gutsy, high risk strategy that worked.

That seems to be in line with Sonos now selling into a different market segment - ie high volume rather than the near custom integration market - and hence selling with a lower margin. Connect will always be low volume. But still grates...

jgatie

Therefore, if the connect was cheaper, more people would purchase them. Absolutely no doubt in my mind on that.

And Sonos would not make as much profit as they do when selling less units at a higher price. It's not a question of the number of sales (I bet they'd sell millions of them at $10, why not lower it to that???), it's a question of overall profit, and Sonos knows a heck of a lot more about their profit margin than you or I.

To end the agument - Someone needs to open up a Play 3/5 and a ZP80/ZP90/Connect and see what hardware is in them. I am certain that the network/computing hardware would be identical for compatibility and cost reasons.

You would lose that bet, and I don't have to open them up. To whit: The Play:3 networking hardware is dual-band 2.4/5 GHz, the Play:5 is 2.4 GHz only.

Majik

You would lose that bet, and I don't have to open them up. To whit: The Play:3 networking hardware is dual-band 2.4/5 GHz, the Play:5 is 2.4 GHz only.

It would also suppose that the retail price is fundamentally based on the cost of the components in the system.

Of course that is a totally bogus supposition, as are the arguments that are based on it.

Cheers,

Keith

jgatie

It would also suppose that the retail price is fundamentally based on the cost of the components in the system.

Of course that is a totally bogus supposition, as are the arguments that are based on it.

Cheers,

Keith

Exactly. Though I do find it funny that we have two separate threads going right now; one that says if the Connect really performs as they say, it swould be priced with the $5-10K streamers from Linn and Naim, and another thread which says $350 is too much because the cost of manufacturing is low.

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