Retired Sonos Staff

Meet Sonos Five, studio-quality sound

Studio quality sound

Sonos Five delivers the same great sound as the Play:5, with updated internals including increased memory, processing power, and a new wireless radio. Six Class-D digital amplifiers are perfectly tuned for Five’s acoustic architecture to power the three tweeters and three mid-woofers.

The custom-designed woofers deliver rich bass while the sealed architecture eliminates reverb and echo. This ensures faithful playback of vocal frequencies in addition to rich bass without distortion, even at high volumes.

One center tweeter and two precisely-angled side tweeters create a crisp high-frequency response.

This all creates a wide stereo soundstage that directs sound to the left, right, and center from one compact speaker. You can amplify the experience by adding another Sonos Five as a stereo pair in either vertical or horizontal orientations, or bring it to the next level with a Sonos Sub.

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Some more details on Sonos Five:

Simple to set-up. Plug Five into power and bring your phone up to Five to automatically pair and securely transfer WiFi credentials using near-field communication (NFC).
Analogue line-in. With 3.5 mm jack for connecting another device, bring sound to Sonos from anything with a standard audio connection.
Flexible Orientation. Enjoy great sound with a standalone Sonos Five horizontally, or pair two Fives in the upright position for incredibly detailed stereo separation. A pair of Fives can also be used as surrounds for a Sonos home theater speaker.
Control your way. Control Sonos Five with your voice when paired with a voice enabled device, the Sonos app, your favorite music service’s app, or AirPlay 2. Capacitive touch controls for play, pause, skip tracks, adjust the volume, and group rooms just by tapping or swiping the top of the speaker. LED indicates status, and mute status.
Tune with Trueplay. Trueplay puts the speaker-tuning capability of the pros in the palm of your hands, adapting and optimizing the sound of the speaker to the unique acoustics of the room. iOS device required.
Dimensions. The dimensions are (H x W x D) 8.03 x 14.33 x 6.06 inches (203 x 364 x 154 mm) and Five weighs 14 lbs (6.36 kg).

Pre-order today on Sonos.com in black with a black grille and, for the first time, white with a white grille for $499 US (€579 EUR).

We’ve announced details for the Sonos Arc and new Sonos Sub. You can also check out our blog for some great stories.

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S

sjw

Local Superstar

I hadn't seen that Verge link when I posted so am surprised that it is an identical listening experience to the Play 5 Gen 2 but can't be stereo paired with it.

J

John B

I'm sure if they can find room for mics in a Play 1 there is room in a Five.

I just think it was a choice they made - a strange one for me that you need another device (grouped or close by) to use Voice control on their latest product - especially considering the Arc has it.

I am also surprised that the Five doesn’t have built in voice control. Rightly or wrongly, I read the ‘other device’ not to mean another Sonos speaker but an Echo Dot / Google Mini. I guess you are referring to both possibilities when you say ‘grouped or nearby’? Which is fair enough.

I actually prefer using Dots with my current gen 2 Play:5s, and would not swap for built-in voice control. Not everyone will feel that way, I’m sure.

J

John B

I don’t know about you guys, but I use my Play:5 2nd gen mostly for airplaying music from my mac/ios device and very frequently the sounds stutters, pauses for few sec. and resumes, etc. This happens almost every time I rearrange the queue in iTunes or add a song to my AM library. There are no such issues when using the Sonos apps.

I wonder if the new radio in the Five will fix these AirPlay issues… It’s definitely not a reason to switch, but if you are buying now, I think it’s better to get the new one.

Playing from a device has always, by its nature, been the least robust source on Sonos. That was true of ‘on this iPhone’, and is true of Airplay and Android ‘on this mobile device’. That isn’t to say that everyone will have problems with this, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with the radios. The only problems I ever had were occasionally with ‘on this mobile device’ and I hardly ever use that because all my local music is on my network.

The problem is the wireless ‘hop’ from phone to router, which is absent if you use a NAS or streaming service.

S

sjw

Local Superstar

Yes, I was covering use by Sonos (could be in another (physical) room but grouped) and also local Dots etc.

M

mikegt

Contributor II

Wonder if this means a price reduction on Play 5s which are out in stores now? That might be the way to go for me if there is no sound quality difference…

cheers

R

rwrgeo

Renowned Enthusiast II

Wonder if this means a price reduction on Play 5s which are out in stores now? That might be the way to go for me if there is no sound quality difference…

cheers

I was wondering about this. Advantage is will play nicely with legacy devices stuck on S1, disadvantage is potential for it to be EOL’d sooner than the new version.

T

toby wenham

Literally just purchased and setup my first play 5 gen 2 when I heard there was a gen 3 out very annoying. Don’t know whether to return it but then again doesn’t seem to be that big a jump. Thoughts ?

Did you get a discount on the Gen 2, or is there a price difference between the Gen 2 and Gen 3?

it was a bit cheaper than retail price of gen 2. In uk gen 2 retail is same as gen 3 I think. Just wondered if the new version is significantly different or whether actually best to keep gen2. Tbh I sort of prefer the white/black combo of gen2.

Was going to say the two big reasons to swap are the extra longevity of the Five over the Play:5 Gen 2 and the new all-white colour scheme. If you prefer the older colour and you got a discount, I’d stick with what you have.

Thanks going to stick with gen 2

A

Anders L

Contributor I

Will Play Five pair with Sub gen. 1?

melvimbe

I'm sure if they can find room for mics in a Play 1 there is room in a Five.

I just think it was a choice they made - a strange one for me that you need another device (grouped or close by) to use Voice control on their latest product - especially considering the Arc has it.

I am also surprised that the Five doesn’t have built in voice control. Rightly or wrongly, I read the ‘other device’ not to mean another Sonos speaker but an Echo Dot / Google Mini. I guess you are referring to both possibilities when you say ‘grouped or nearby’? Which is fair enough.

I actually prefer using Dots with my current gen 2 Play:5s, and would not swap for built-in voice control. Not everyone will feel that way, I’m sure.

I don’t disagree with that statement, but Alexa now has a feature where you can set a default speaker for an echo, meaning that the echo hears you, but Alexa will respond through a different Alexa enabled speaker. This is different from a prefered speaker, as it’s not about streaming music, but Alexa’s actual voice response. It would have been a nice feature to speak to the echo dot right next to you, but hear the voice coming from your Five. You can do this sort of thing with the Arc, Beam, One, and Move.

The other factor is, if Sonos ever develops their own voice assistant, it will be a big miss for the Five. Seems like Sonos would have to develop their own puck listening device to make it useful.

Danny

J

John B

Will Play Five pair with Sub gen. 1?

There is no Play Five. There is the Sonos Five. (It's déjà vu all over again.)

The answer is yes.

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