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.