Play 5 reliability?


Badge
I have had my sonos 3s for like 5+ years now and I love them. I also recently got the sub+playbar+play1 (old style) set. Those are great also.

Ive always wanted play 5s, so i started looking into them online and found lots of issues of failure and wifi cards going out. Also,one year warranty for these seems too low in my opinion if they dont have a great reputation for lasting.

Is this still the case? Has there been any production changes at least for the wifi cards?

Amazon has 12% of the reviews at 1 star currently on the play5s. I'd like to get a pair of them, but I'm not prepared to gamble a G for speakers.

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

10 replies

I've had a PLAY:5 gen 1 for about 4 years, with no issue. I have a pair of PLAY:5 gen 1s since basically they were released, and no issues.
On Amazon UK there are 7% 1 star reviews. Most of those complain of buggy software and dropouts, which would actually have been problems with their own networks. Sonos must have sold hundreds of thousands of these worldwide. I suspect the failure rate is very low, or there would be thousands of complaints.
FWIW I have owned 4 since the gen 2 was launched, no problems.
In fact maybe tens of thousands is a safer assertion, but the argument still applies!
Unfortunately the only information available for this on the net is anecdotal and therefore not to be relied on. Only Sonos will have statistics backed data/information, and they won't publish it.

But with electronic kit most failures occur early in the use lifecycle, so as long as you live where you can avail of the warranty protection of 12 months, there is not more than the usual risk for all such investments.
People don't generally post positive reviews. As has been said about this forum, as well, it's somewhat going to a hospital, and wondering about the health of the general population. Like the news every night, it's 99% bad news, good news doesn't get reported.
Bruce, I thought of saying that but I did not, anticipating a response: why is the hospital filled with more play 5 units and very few of the kit I have?:-))
Laugh. Thanks, Kumar 🙂
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
If you want a longer warranty buy from Amazon and tack on their inexpensive 4 year warranty option. I have done that for Sonos gear given as gifts.

For your own use the Sonos 1 yer seems to cover most of the issues that come up and they will try to work with you outside of the warranty period if you haven't opened the device.
Userlevel 6
Badge +15
If you're worried, do you have a credit card with warranty extension? Kumar is correct about the failure timespans. It's pretty much first 6 months or after 60 months for electronic gear (or more like 160)
Badge +7
Can't justify Play:5s in my space, but know several people who own and love them. Of those, 1 had issues with dropping connection and (as stated above) that ended up being linked to his network, not the speaker itself.