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Ryan S
Ryan SAnswer
Retired Sonos Staff
May 8, 2018
Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your feedback and voice. The official answer on this topic is in the thread, but it's a bit buried at this point.

To be clear, the Sonos One can be used with all Sonos players. It can control what's playing on itself and other rooms with voice, where available. However, Sonos One will only pair with another Sonos One if you are looking to set it up as a stereo pair or as part of a surround setup, it can't bond with a Play:1.

While the Play:1 and Sonos One share a similar appearance and sound, the two are aesthetically and acoustically two different speakers. Stereo pairing the two is not possible through the Sonos app.

This comes down to the hardware in the players themselves. You're going to start seeing more differences between the Play:1 and the Sonos One when it comes to features in the future, as new things are added to the system that might not be compatible with older hardware. We strive to keep products working with core functionality for as long as possible. As we add new features, older products may have more limitations.

You might have heard recently that we're bringing Airplay 2 to Sonos on a selection of players. The Sonos One will be available as an Airplay 2 target, but the Play:1 will not be. The first Sonos players ever, the ZP100, is still out there rocking today, so don't worry about the life of your Play:1s. That one won't be an Airplay 2 target either, but you'd be able to group a Sonos One with a ZP100 and play Airplay 2 to both, just like with a Play:1. The group is different from stereo bonding.

There are some community suggestions for ways to bond a Play:1 with a Sonos One, mentioned in this thread, but they aren't officially recommended. They may work for what you're looking for, but the setup could potentially be unstable.

Thanks again everyone for sharing, and we'll make sure the team knows this is still something you'd like to see happen, but there aren't any plans to share on bonding a Play:1 and Sonos One as a pair.
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Pete UK User
Collaborator I
November 2, 2017
Bottom line is Sonos have had the field of WiFi streamed systems mostly to themselves for a decade, but Alexa is coming out integrated as part of a number of WiFi streaming competitors in the next few months, let alone the Echo and Google speakers.

So Sonos was forced to act, and had to deliver close to the price point as well. so the obvious option was to build a Echo compatible speaker BASED on their cheapest speaker.

I like playing with tech. gadgets, so I have an echo dot already and the novelty has worn off the usefulness is very dependent on how you use your system, I would say it will be terrible paired as surround sound on the TV (or even in the TV room at all) as every time it thinks it hears the key word "alexa" the sound is lowered while it tries to figure out the command, then just at the most important dialog of the film that makes sense of the 3 hours of your life invested your sound system will say "I'm sorry I don't understand that"

Buy a single Sonos One bung it in the kitchen and use it to turn the radio on when your hands are covered in cooking mess. stick to Play 1's (which may be on offer soon!) for your TV room surround sound.

or buy a single Sonos One for the bedroom so you can turn the alarm off by shouting at it...

Being of similar size and shape is an accident of expediency, these are different speakers for different purposes.
AntonioTeixeira
Listener
November 2, 2017
Admin, I love your products but when I recently bought the playbar and the Play1 to go with my original One, at no point was any information published stating that these three were not going to work together, really disappointed spent £750 under the impression I was going to have a working surround sound and now it doesn’t all work together, also why is the voice message not supported on the play1 Alexa?

Where did you state that this was not going to function? I bought the play1 to work with the playbar and the one and to also send my nephews voice messages through it and I can’t do neither, please can you tell me if these circumstances are going to change and if not why the general public wasn’t informed of this?

Looking forward to hearing from you promptly!

Many thanks
Antonio Teixeira
MarcusP
Lyricist III
November 7, 2017
Hi, it is possible to pair a Sonos One and a Play:1 but you have to use a 3rd party app. I do not want to make any promotion but there are so much threads about this topic... Looks like many of us want to do this:
https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/pairing-a-play-1-with-the-new-sonos-one-6791476/index5.html#post16164099
You can use the official Sonos app after you created the stereo-pair and it works like a "normal" one..
pagewrite
Contributor I
November 8, 2017
Oh dear - just stumbled across this forum whilst I await my Sonos One to be delivered, and realised pairing a PLAY:1 and a One is not possible. One of my stereo-paired PLAY:1 speakers developed a fault this week, and the retailer allowed me to exchange it for a Sonos One, instead. Thinking they're effectively the "same", but with Alexa built-in, I didn't forsee the problem of not being able to create a stereo pair. This is tragic news, as it will mean I now can't have stereo in the room.

PLEASE Sonos, permit stereo pairing. This is a huge backward step for me!
layhomah
Lyricist I
November 9, 2017
I too, wish to be able to pair my Sonos One to my Play1 to get stereo sound
dschroed
Lyricist II
November 11, 2017
I was just about to pre-order a pair thinking I could create two stereo pairs by combining with my existing pair of Play 1s. Just lost £400 of Sales that may have led to more. A missed opportunity.

Same here . somewhat greatly dissatisfying, as is now!

SONOS: Kindly consider a trade in program, considering your upscale margin approach, if you DO want to ENSURE consistency, don't make the customer pay for it... and allow a gradual senseful expansion of the existing user base.
I am sure that many users, as per this thread you can see, would greatly appreciate it!

p.s. The more frustrating, as I just began being a Sonos customer back in August with several Play 1 and Play 5 - which I now partially would upgrade to stereo sets on the most recent technology.
porterh
Lyricist III
November 20, 2017
This morning I bought the third party SonoSequencr IOS app and within 5 minutes I had my Sonos ONE and Play:1 running as stereo pair. It sounds great to me.
zZeNn
Lyricist I
November 22, 2017
I seriously did not thought this functionality would be missing! The only point of the one is to enhance your system, disappointed.
    VIKVIK
    Lyricist I
    November 23, 2017
    It is an ABSOLUTE shame on SONOS that it has restricted us LOYAL customers from pairing our new PLAY 1 ( 2 month old ) to New SONOS ONE for 5.1 . Today I left back the SONOS ONE speaker I had picked to buy at the UK top Retail outlet as I feel cheated that after buying so many SONOS Products which should get better actually seem I have redundant PLAY 1 , that to within one month.

    SONOS and SONOS CEO, are you LISTENING ?
    We your customers are feeling cheated .

    Do something fast ir it will be an absolute shame on your company to treat us customers so badly.

    Shame .

    Regards
    VIkVik
      cwintermeyer
      cwintermeyer
      Lyricist III
      November 24, 2017
      I understand that there are technical issues that would need to be overcome, but I think it is worth noting that I think this backwards compatibility feature would lead to more sales of the Sonos One, not less. I own a bunch of Play:1s and I would be really tempted to get a matching Sonos One for each if it could mean I'd get stereo pairs with built-in Alexa support. But there's no way I'm going to pay to replace each of my current Play:1s with Sonos Ones just to get Alexa support if I can get similar functionality by just adding an Echo Dot.

      Totally agreed. Sonos, PLEASE add the ability to pair a One with a Play:1 and to use them together in a 5.1 surround.
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