Just a quick first impression on the Sonos Play. Yours may be different based upon your room and hearing.
Testing as a Stand-Alone speaker
- Don’t right off the bat, make a comparison to a Move2. The Move2 will always out-shine the Play.
- Set the Play up and listen to a few of your favorite test tracks. Be sure to turn on TruePlay tuning.
- After a few minutes of listening the Play will adjust to the room acoustics.
- After a while (in my testing) you’ll enjoy the Play for what it is…a portable speaker that performs better than the Sonos Roam series.
- I sat about 8 feet from the speaker which exhibited a stereo effect depending upon the track.
- There is low-end…again depending upon the track.
- Overall (IMO) in terms of frequency response the Play has decent vocals but may be a bit bright for some.
- A/B testing against the Move series (in my case the Move2). Suffice it to say the Move2 wins hands-down.
Testing as a Stereo Pair
- The Play produces a pleasant sound stage with good separation.
- I have a vintage track I use by the O’Jays that moves instruments from left to right and one byte will silence the right speaker. The Play did justice to the track.
- I was very impressed with the highs, lows and mid-range.
- The Brightness I mentioned earlier was much less which was an improvement (IMO)
- As a stereo pair the Play competes very well against a single Move 2 (if not slightly better for overall sound)
Bluetooth Grouping with another Move2
- The feature worked as promoted by Sonos
Airplay 2
- No issues
Wi-Fi Discovery
- My setup is Wi-Fi 7
- Plays were set two (2) feet from my router and choose 5Ghz