Has anyone come across a better system?

Nope...

Not only is my Play 5 pair,with the Sub seriously good….I used to be into high end components and now don’t give them a second thought!

You just can’t beat technology

From your post on another thread, you appear to have missed the fact that your Sonos system still functions perfectly, and that nobody has been forced to upgrade.  Perhaps if you had a clue what the true situation is you wouldn’t be asking this question?

It’s a complex subject and I don’t claim to understand a huge amount about it, but Bluetooth is probably the wrong choice, mainly because it is deliberately constrained in terms of power to make it (primarily) useful for battery-powered devices.

If you’re making a multi-room system which can cope with all of the building construction types you could reasonably expect to see around the world, it’s probably not going to give you the range that you need to establish a reliable mesh network.

As to sustainability - is Bluetooth really any more environmentally sustainable than wi-fi? I doubt there’s much in it really...

Well, I tried to downgrade my Play:1 and Play:5 to S1, which according to Sonos is possible (and after resetting it) and it says, "those speakers are not working with S1, download the S2 app". So that great solution is not really working! 

And with sustainable I mean not to have a system that you need to recycle just because of outdated software although the speakers are working perfectly. I never really used the option to have different music on different speakers. So in the end I guess 2 pairable bluetooth speakers should do it. Especially since I'm afraid there will be another upgrade in 5 years again.

My personal experience is that I have (as a test) two separate installations of S1 and S2 hardware, and they all seem to work perfectly at the same time.

I’ve got four Connects and one Connect:Amp (mostly bought faulty and repaired) on an S1 network, and three Ports on an S2 network. I can control them all from one phone, simply by having both the S1 and S2 apps on that phone - so it can be made to work!

I don’t think that with tech items you can expect a product range to stay the same forever. Sonos faced limitations with the S1 range that some users cannot accept, so they had to move forward. Whether they could have done more to make S1 and S2 work together, I don’t know - but similar things happen throughout the tech world. My favourite Sony flip-phone no longer works because the networks no longer support the technology that it uses - it’s just something you have to accept!

Sure, just accept it and buy a new system for 500$...pfff

That isn’t exactly what I said! What I said is that I’m still using 10 year old Connects, with no problem.

Any system that has a CPU, memory, and an OS will eventually need updating, or to be put in to the effective ‘maintenance mode’ similar to S1. If you don’t want to pay the associated costs with technology like that, I’d recommend choosing a more standard ‘old school’ stereo system. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s a choice we all need to decide on. 

@Saem . Why were you trying to downgrade your system to S1?  Why were you not on S1 already? What generation is your Play:5? 

You still appear to have no idea what the reality is here.