Disappointing

Dear Sonos,

I’ve been a loyal customer of Sonos since the first generation of players were released over a decade and a half ago. My extended family are loyal Sonos users, and in our combined properties we have purchased dozens of players over the years. Sonos has been hands down best home stereo product since the advent of digital CDs. We have never hesitated to recommend Sonos as the only solution when it comes to home audio. Over the years, we’ve applauded Sonos’ advances in hardware and software.

However, the recent spate of onerous firmware updates is now making the system unusable.

In recent months, I have had two forced software updates prevented me from using my system for hours. This happened because my phone updated the app when at work. Then I would get home to find out that the new app was incompatible with the player firmware. The last update was especially insulting, when it forced me to confirm my email address. (As if that is what I want to do when I am preparing for my dinner guests to arrive and the !@#$ing stereo isn't working.) Another “feature” of these updates is that no TV’s work while they go on. So, the stereo and the TVs are offline for the hour that Sonos figures out how to update a dozen or so players.

These updates offered no features that I ever plan on using. (In my book, Sonos has been feature complete for 10+ years with the exception of not allowing the export of playlists to an external file.) However, I understand that Sonos is trying to offer new features to bring in young new users. Fine. Except…

A stereo system that doesn’t play music immediately when you want it is useless. (Never, ever, should it force an update.)

Second, relearning the radical new layouts of the user interface is extremely confusing. My parents, also loyal Sonos users, are in their 70s and are now being forced to relearn how to play their music. They will never, ever, ever use any of the new features. So, why would you force that on them? The new layout is not intuitive. I was trying to add rooms, find my music library, etc. Took me about 15 minutes to figure it out.

This reminds me terribly of the horrible changes Microsoft made to their OS and Office Products, where for decades they offered few real features, but instead moved buttons around, turning every upgrade into a training exercise.

Sonos used to be a high-end audiophile product. Clearly, Sonos has talented engineers and a great vision. I hope the product management team changes this recent course, and gets back to driving the original theme of ease-of-use. Get back to being great Sonos.

Thank you,
Peter Hunter