Pairing a Play:1 with the new Sonos One

So for those who question the appearance... think back to when Sonos offered the Play:1 Tone... a Play:1 speaker in all black or all white, not unlike the Sonos One.

This picture has a Sonos One and a Play:1 Tone in it. Can you tell which is which? :)

I will concede that there are differences in the speaker elements (a version of this picture that I took with flash made that a bit more evident, especially in the tweeter), and thus the audio output could be different. However, I would be surprised if the difference were significant enough for most people to notice. I've had my Sonos One and Play:1 grouped together in the same room and couldn't tell that there was any major difference in the audio between the two speakers. I would be more than happy to have a stereo pair of these two speakers.

It's hard not to have some sympathy for this request to be honest.

If you'd bought a 5.1 Sonos system using Play:1's for example then making it voice compatible by swapping one of the Play:1's for the voice enabled Sonos One would be very attractive. Personally, I think Sonos have missed a huge opportunity here. Even if you just had a simple stereo pair of Play:1's you might be more tempted to buy a Sonos One over an Echo Dot if you could replace one of the Play:1's. This might even encourage people to use the spare speaker to expand their system further.

Instead I think a lot of people are feeling a bit disappointed that you can't do this, and this instead makes you less likely to dive in. Especially with the standard price of an Echo Dot, the discount voucher, and the very early stage of the integration currently on offer. I'm not sure I'd even want a stereo pair of Sonos One's in the same room. It's just going to be confusing for Alexa, especially with Alexa's lack of ability to know what room it's in. If Amazon add this (let's hope they do) then how confused is that going to get with two Alexa devices in close proximity, let alone 5 in a surround setup.

The latter is more of an Amazon problem, but I'm not sure that Sonos have thought through properly what happens if/when Amazon do add room support properly to Alexa. If they allowed the new speaker to pair with Play:1's then they'd open up a pattern for the 3 & 5 speakers too, where they could release a voice enabled Sonos Three and Five for example to integrate into existing systems.

To be fair to Sonos, the whole voice assistant thing is very embryonic right now, and a lot of the problems they have are down to this, but there is some serious work required to make this properly usable in all but the simplest single room Sonos systems...

Oh how i wish i had seen this thread before i stumped up £199 on the Play One! Hoped to add it to my Playbase surround system in the lounge. As it wont pair with the 1 I can't use them as the surround speakers! I have a Play 3 and 1's throughout the house but want the One in the lounge to use Alexa. So frustrating.

Super disappointing.

Totally disappointed that you can’t create a stereo pair wit one and play one, feel let down.

Hardly believable this is a hardware issue. The syncing process of the pair is done at software level.
I have a 5.1 set (Playbar + 2 Play:1 and one Sub) and I wanted to swap a Play:1 with a Sonos One and use the other Play:1 in the kitchen/bedroom. Now I'm avoiding Sonos One, as I'm disappointed with this marketing trick.

Sonos hear me: I'll never buy two Sonos One for my 5.1 configuration (and I was very excited about Sonos One).

So... an interesting thing happened yesterday... No, I wasn't able to pair my Sonos One and Play:1 together... but this has apparently reached the top within Sonos, as indicated by a tweet from Sonos' CEO: https://twitter.com/Patrick_Spence/status/922953675756187656

This is not a statement that this will be done, of course, but to see that our voices have been heard and that it's being considered is certainly positive. 🙂

Can’t read the tweet can you post it please

Been a major fan of Sonos and this as really left me feeling like I should send it back! Come on Sonos sort it!