What does the future hold

I’m rather optimistic about the future.  Sonos is still support all of it’s original ZP players and have stated they will continue to support as long as they can.  I consider the trade up program to be a positive since it’s a nice discount  to replace something I rarely use anymore.

Sonos has shown that they will add new features to exiting products if they can.  Alexa and GA integration are good examples.    Sonos came out with 3 new products last year (Move, SL, Port) plus 2 with ikea and 3 passive speakes with Sonance.  Good reason to believe there will be more products released next year.  Sonos just bought the voice assistant company Snips, which seems likely to mean they’ll be coming out with their own voice assistant in the future, filling in gaps to control Sonos that Alexa and GA don’t do.

Yes, I’m optimistic too. All the Sonos original Players are still working for me. It’s appears to only be the old controllers and older accessories that are not quite standing the test of time. 

Over a comparable period, I seem to have set aside more phones, tablets and video products, than Sonos products. 

This is just technology marching forward and I guess we just have to try to keep up with it, if we wish to continue with the road ahead. I find that so much better anyway, than just standing still and trying to use some of the older 'out of date’ products.

I’m actually thinking now of selling-on my older Play:1’s and replacing them with the newer speakers, as I think the newer ‘Ones’ sound better and they have a few more features that I’m now finding useful.

So I will just keep advancing forward with the technology. 

That popped in my mind too when I saw that the Ones and One SL were on sale.  All my  Play:1s are doing surround sound duty, so there isn’t much to gain expect aesthetic appeal.

Until the trade-up deal my Sonos were in trickle-down mode and when I got a new bigger one the smaller one went to a location I was too cheap to fill with a new one. (1 → 3 → 5)

While the new stuff is good I don’t see enough difference (for my use) in a Play 1 or One, or the Gen 1 and 2 5s to be worth replacing the old one.

Some interesting points of view that have made me think a bit more.

My main point however was that as it is almost certain that older equipment will progressively become obsolete is it better to sell it now while it has some value. Prices on eBay are still good for things like ZP120’s but appear to be softening slightly whereas the 30% trade in deal is hopeless. Why would one accept £150 trade in on a £500 amp when £250 is easily achievable on eBay. To make a trade in worthwhile it would need to be at least 60%.

The fact that trade ins are being offered is the surest sign that Sonos knows much more obselescence is around the corner; the bit I am not sure about is how soon to jump before being left with a load of useless equipment. 

Personally, I think Sonos will be much more circumspect about obsoleting player hardware than is assumed in some of these threads. By ‘obsoleting’ I mean rendering them inoperable rather than simply not adding features. Without wanting to downplay the disappointment felt by their owners, the devices obsoleted so far (CR100, Dock) have been niche, non-player products with easy workarounds.

Once the first player products are obsoleted, it will be a major red flag for purchasers of new equipment. They’ll know that instead of purchasing a product they can expect decades of use from (as I expect from my audio products), they’re instead buying something ephemeral.

Note that there is no hard technical reason why Sonos needs to obsolete any older players. It’s quite feasible for older players to continue to operate using versioned protocols, as is the case in many distributed systems. The older players won’t suddenly stop being able to stream music or to participate in Sonos protocols: it would be Sonos’s choice to stop them. 

Fair comment, but after the CR100’s were rendered obsolete it took a while to work around it. In fact no solution was ever found to substitute them. Eventually I came to terms with having to use an iPad and also purchased (on Sonos’s recommendation) an Amazon Fire 7. I was told that the Sonos App could be pinned open so as to always be available. This turned out to be incorrect and in fairness to Sonos, they did reimburse me for the unit. As I said in my opening post the iPad has now been rendered obsolete as it is unable to support the latest Sonos updates and Sonos have also told me that my Desktop has probably less than a year left to support updates. 

All I am left with now is my wife’s iPad air 2 which would seem to be good for while but its day will certainly come. 

I do admire the positivity of members here but because of the CR100 issue, I am not convinced Sonos are at all circumspect and remain sceptical about the reasons behind trade ups!

Note that controllers present a rather different problem from players. A controller has to work with the full current range of players and new features.

That’s not to say that I’m uncritical of Sonos’s inability to provide separate, ‘legacy’ versions of their controllers for use on older controller devices and OS versions, even if some features are unavailable. However, to some extent there are low-cost third party options that fill this gap, such as Sonopad.

I interpreted the trade-up programme as being about sales generation rather than preparing for obsolescence. If there is any player obsolescence in future, I’m certain it would be accompanied by a similar (or better) trade-up programme, so I have no intention of obsoleting any of my devices.

Thank you, your last paragraph has set my mind at rest, at least for now

To clarify, the trade up program isn’t 30% value on the item your trading in, but on the item you end up buying.  So if you bought a playbar, you’d get 700*.30 = 210.  A Sonos One would be 200*.30 = 60.  I believe you can also use this on speaker sets.  So depending on what you are buying, what you could sell for, as well as ebay’s fees and shipping costs, the best choice financially is going to vary.  Personally, I don’t want the hassle of having to sell on ebay, so I’d even pick trade in even if it’s remotely close.

I think the other thing to consider is...if not Sonos, what else? Talking about getting selling off your Sonos as a solution doesn’t make sense unless your willing to just not have multiroom audio anymore, there needs to be something you move over to.  I don’t think there’s a perfect system  out there from what I’ve seen.  Denon, Bose, Bluesound, etc...all have their weaknesses and concerns about how long they will support their smart products.  I would think Amazon and Google are going to do better, but we still don’t know how long they will support their products and the sound quality is generally not as good.   Perhaps a more stable system would be have a more ‘dumb’ amp/speaker  system with Alexa or GA just for control, since dots and mini’s can be had for cheap.  Of course, that has it’s limitations as well.  Again, not a prefect system.