Sonos Five review

Finder score: 3.5

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Alongside the fancy (and very appealing) Sonos Arc, Sonos also recently upgraded two of its other speaker components, with a new-generation Sonos Sub and a slight remix of the Sonos Play:5 into the simpler-sounding Sonos Five.

Like the Play:5 it's a standalone wired or wireless speaker with a focus on music streaming. Audio output is (as you'd expect from Sonos) very good indeed, but it can't help but feel like the smallest possible upgrade from the Play:5, and one that could have perhaps benefitted from more of a feature bump at launch.

Design

Design

• Black or white all over
• 3.5mm audio line in socket

• Read our full review of the Sonos Five's design

  It's easy enough to pick that the Sonos Five is a Sonos designed product, because one of the hallmarks of its speaker designs has been subtlety. You're not beset with lots of shiny logos, bright LED screens or flashing lights with the Sonos Five, which uses a single blinking light to indicate status where it's needed but otherwise blends into the background. If there's such a thing as a speakery-looking speaker, then the Sonos Five is it.

  Mind you, it's not really much of a visual departure from the design of its immediate predecessor, the Sonos Play:5, so if you were looking for some kind of new design, you're going to be disappointed. The biggest change here is that the entire unit – black or white – carries the same colour tones throughout the speaker body and grille, which does again help it blend in with your existing home décor more easily.

  Then again, there's a lot that Sonos got right with the Sonos Play:5 that carries through to the Sonos Five as well. As a standalone unit you can place it horizontally or vertically, and it can stand on either "end" of the speaker box with feet to accommodate this, so you don't have to fuss about correct orientation. That's also how Sonos suggests you use it if you were going to use a pair of Sonos Fives as surround speakers grouped to a Sonos Arc or Sonos Beam. Sonos only provided a single review Sonos Five, so I couldn't test out how well that works, although it does feel like it would be overkill to use as powerful a speaker as this that way.

  The top of the Sonos Five has a touch-sensitive controls for volume and play/pause that are identical to those that you'd find on any Sonos product. At the back there's a pairing button for Sonos' app-based installation, a standard Ethernet port and a 3.5mm input jack for external audio sources. While there's an obvious focus on using Internet-based music sources for your audio needs, it's a nice inclusion on the Sonos Five to be able to hook up local music inputs in a purely physical way.

  Speaking of all things physical, while the design is relatively subtle, you can't say that for the actual physical body of the Sonos Five. At 203x364x154 mm it isn't small, but it's the 6.36kg carrying weight that makes the most impact. It's very much designed as a speaker that you'll install in a fixed position in your home and office and leave where it is.

Installation

Installation

• Simple setup in theory
• No voice assistant to configure

• Read our full review of the install process for the Sonos Five

  Unless you're planning to connect with a wired ethernet connection, the Sonos Five doesn't need much more than a position to sit and a power point nearby. Once you've picked out where it's going to live, you have to then switch to the Sonos App for actual installation and configuration.

  Like the recently released Sonos Arc, the Sonos Five runs on Sonos' newer "S2" platform, so if you've got an older Sonos setup already in place, you'll need to upgrade to the newer platform in order to configure the Sonos Five itself. There's only a small subset of Sonos' speaker offerings that are S1-only, but if you're planning to use those you'll have to run two Sonos systems in parallel that can't in fact see each other at any time.

  One of the benchmarks of the Sonos experience is that it should be very simple to add any Sonos component to your network. Sign in with your Sonos ID, tell Sonos that you're adding a component and then tap the pairing button when instructed to do so. The Sonos Five will chime, and in theory it'll then configure it as part of your overall Sonos network.

  At least, that's the theory, but unlike the Sonos Arc, I hit some notable issues getting the Sonos Five recognised at first. Sonos has shifted its S2 Sonos app out of beta, but there's still some bugs to be ironed out. It took me a few tries before the Sonos app would recognise the Sonos Five at all. When all you can do is hit a chiming pairing button and try again, this can be a little frustrating.

  Once you've got the Sonos Five detected, you can also run it through Sonos' TruePlay audio balancing system, as long as you're configuring it on an iOS device. Sonos' position here is that the microphones on Android devices are too varying in quality for it to measure sound tones as accurately as it wants. Given the wide variety in Android devices that's probably fair, but if you're running mostly Android, it's worth doing TruePlay through someone else's iPhone if you can to make the most out of the Sonos Five.

  That's also true if you're going to move the Sonos Five around your house at all. The difference in audio quality when you run TruePlay tuning if you do move the Sonos Five is quite remarkable and easy to pick.

  One feature that you won't find on the Sonos Five is any kind of voice assistant. It's an unusual exclusion, because when Sonos first pitched the original Play:5 models it didn't incorporate the likes of Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant, but it's now been part of the lineup on devices like the Sonos One or Sonos Arc.

  Given the higher cost of the Sonos Five, and the fact that it's pitched as an upgrade on the existing Play:5, it feels very much liked a missed opportunity to add just a little functionality that you didn't find on the older speaker devices. It is at least AirPlay 2 compatible if you're using Apple devices for your music delivery.

Performance

Performance

• Great audio output
• Advantages over older models not apparent at launch

• View test results and read our full review of the Sonos Five performance

  The Sonos Five is primarily a music speaker, although you can of course opt to listen to podcasts or stream radio via Sonos Radio on it as well. There's not a significant difference in the layout of the Sonos Five's internal speakers compared to its predecessors, although it does – or I should say will – benefit from having a newer faster onboard processor than the older Play:5 models.

  Now, that's important in terms of future app compatibility, at least according to Sonos. It's the key reason why it's shifting to the newer S2 platform, but for now there's really not much different in terms of capabilities relative to older Sonos gear. What that does mean is that it's compatible with a wide range of audio services including all the heavy hitters in the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Tidal and many, many more. The Sonos app doesn't serve as a way to search or set up those services, instead relying on you pairing up an existing subscription and library setup into Sonos before streaming your music choices.

  Again, while testing out the Sonos Five I was struck by how much I missed having voice control to do this. The Sonos S2 app is fine as a music controller, but it's distinctly less convenient to navigate through multiple menus to find an artist or album to play rather than just asking Alexa or Google Assistant to do so directly.

  Still, the key factor that Sonos has sold itself on for so many years is still very much present in the Sonos Five, and that's audio quality. Testing with Prince's Purple Rain, everything from the slower intro to the agonised guitar closing section plays cleanly even at volumes that the rest of my family amply described as "ear splitting" without notable distortion.

  Aretha Franklin's Respect picked up not only her lead vocals but also the sharper tones of her backing singers and the deliberate beat of the backing track with great clarity even when across the room, and that's with only a single speaker in play. It's easy enough to see how this might be improved with a pair of Sonos Fives working with proper stereo separation.

  Sonos' own Sonos Radio is also present, allowing you to tune into radio stations worldwide, as well as a number of local radio stations. There's an obvious hit there in terms of overall audio quality, but if you're a fan of having radio stations run in the background while you get about your household life it's a solid enough alternative to the likes of TuneIn or similar, with the benefits of running on what is a much better speaker than you'd find on any smartphone.

  There is a catch with the Sonos Five, however, beyond my disappointment at the lack of voice control. While the internals have been redesigned around Sonos' newer S2 architecture, it's not as though the existing Play:5 2nd Gen models aren't S2 compatible in their own right. I didn't have an older Sonos Play:5 to comparatively test with, but without some extra hook beyond "it'll work with future features" it feels like a very hard sell to convince existing Play:5 owners to upgrade at this point in time. Even an indication from Sonos what these new features might be would be something of a selling point.

Verdict

Verdict

• A good standalone speaker

Should you buy it?

Sonos went all out for the Sonos Arc adding a host of new features and audio quality to differentiate it from its predecessors. It's not quite the same story with the Sonos Five, which fundamentally offers just a small specification bump over the existing Play:5 speakers. As such, there's not much of an argument to upgrade if you've already got one of those.

If you're looking at the Sonos Five as a standalone speaker, or as a stereo pair it's a different story. Audio output is excellent, but it does feel jarring that the cheaper Sonos One and Sonos Move speakers can manage voice control, but Sonos has seen fit to leave it out of the Sonos Five.

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Images: Alex Kidman