Sonos Play 5_2nd Gen Defective WiFi Cards?

Just searching around and found this thread, I wonder if it is the same network card in my just failed PLAY3, just 3 years old and part of a now effectively defunct PLAYBAR without surround sound. 

see https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/playbar-has-lost-the-left-surround-sound-play-3-which-flashes-red-and-white-6833910#post16382342

Good thinking, but it is not that same component. The Play:3 uses an older wireless card than the Play:5 gen2, and is just about different in every way internally. It looks like your case is already in the right hands. As a simple test, you could see for yourself if it’s the wireless card or another wireless related issue (meaning interference, network side wireless restrictions, or something on those lines) by wiring that Play:3 into the Playbar with an ethernet cord and see if it connects. For this test, one of your other Sonos devices would also need to be wired into the network somewhere.

Thanks might try that, we tried it via connecting into the bridge but that too also failed to work, so I don’t see there would be any difference to what you suggest. 
 
either way PLAY 3 is at fault and only after 3 years, even as a not used every day system. Raises questions of reliability and quality, really poor for such an expensive product with supposedly a price for superior quality. 

Bridges are iffy for testing anything, they have power supply issues that can cause odd and changing problems that are difficult to identify. I’d power the Bridge down to avoid it being an issue and do my testing with other devices.

That’s completely anecdotal.  Only Sonos knows how widespread this really is.

I’m fairly certain that my entire statement was liberally sprinkled with terms such as “I’m not that sure”, “ I think”, “estimate”, and  “I can well imagine”. 

That would certainly indicate that it’s all from my perspective. I’m not sure what purpose your post serves?

I’ve just had my 3rd defective Wi-Fi card on a Play 5. Each time this happens, Sonos Support is great and they’ve replaced them at no cost to me. But I find the replacement process a bit cumbersome. More than anything, I’m a little embarrassed for Sonos. This is expensive equipment. What are the chances I would randomly have 3 different Play 5s with the same defect? And to boot- it’s always the same left speaker in a stereo pair. So weird. 

It’s probably even more embarrassing to Sonos. I’d bet that the vendor they purchased the Wi-Fi cards isn’t getting any further business. But as it isn’t a 100% failure rate, it’s hard to pull them all and replace them.

Despite your personal bad luck, my guesstimate is the failure rate is substantially lower than 1%, based on the number of posts here in the forums.

Here’s hoping the third one is a charm for you….but I’d also be tempted to put it on an electrical filtering device, on the offhand chance that you’ve got voltage fluctuations that are affecting it more than normal. 

I put one of there or better on all my Sonos gear, Arizona power is not kind to electronics and I’m too old and slow to run around unplugging everything at every boom of thunder.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009K79U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1080 joules mean maximum protection for your equipment. Conforms to current UL 1449 3rd Edition safety standards.

I do have a line-in connected to the Play 5 with the bad wifi card. It’s my turntable, which has a separate preamp and its own power source. Could the preamp be sending power surges into the speaker via the 1/8” port? Is that even possible, and could it have anything to do with the Wi-Fi card that failed?
 

Seems pretty unlikely to me. I’d rather not have to connect and disconnect the line-in every time I want to use the turntable...