Go ahead and gift it. It’ll be fully functional. 

Its sad that people think this of the discount program: those few weeks of madness when it was originally rolled out have left this “bad memory” on the internet that many (here and on reddit) still think the old devices are bricked. The wording on the web site really needs to make it clearer, evidently.

I don’t think confusion can fully be blamed on Sonos.  There are plenty of discount programs where you are required to turn in your old device in order to receive a discount on a new one.  This used to be the case for Amazon products, not sure their program is still active.  This is definitely still the case with mobile phones.