Sonos unveiled the all-new successor to the company's flagship, Play: 5 wireless speaker.
The California-based company has recently redesigned the big Play: 5. The updated design has a sleeker case, new internals, and the sound experience is even better than before. It will be released in the United States on Nov. 20, and the pre-orders started. It will be available in other countries on Nov. 25. It has a price tag of $500 and comes in two color options: matte black and matte white.
It has a button at the back for setup. The speaker has other controls such as play/pause, volume, and track. They are all capacitive touch buttons that automatically adjust for the Play: 5's orientation. At the back, it features a 3.5mm input jack, giving a flexibility to play anything via the speaker if Sonos' app is not functioning properly.
The black front speaker grill contains over 60,000 individual holes drilled into the polycarbonate. Sonos has designed six drivers (three tweeters and three mid-woofers) in-house hidden inside a matte-finished shell, The Verge reported. The speaker's lightly rounded lines give it a fresh contemporary appearance that makes the old boxy model look very outdated and boring.
Play: 5 sounds rich and full at any volume. Sonos' latest speaker can outperform everything else in the company's stable. It has plenty of low-end power and a realistic soundstage, even when the user is using it in a single speaker configuration. The sound is generally pretty clear and balanced across frequencies, provided that the speaker is in the right place and EQ it according to one's taste.
The company has managed to eliminate old annoyances and complaints by making its entire system wireless, ditching the need for any ethernet connections or extra hardware. Sonos' app remains an impressive central hub where you can tap into your music libraries with Spotify, Sound Cloud, Google Play Music, Radio, Tidal, and other services. Personal files are easily accessible, too.
The speaker is designed to work in two vertical orientations and one horizontal position. An accelerometer inside tells the speaker's software in which of the three possible orientations it is sitting, and optimizes the playback accordingly. It can be paired with another Play: 5 to create a traditional stereo experience.
The Play: 5 have one additional enhancement, a software trick called Trueplay. It allows users to tune the audio output of the speakers just by tapping a button in the Sonos mobile app for iOS. Also, they will be able to use it for Sonos' other all-in-one Play speakers at launch. It includes the Play:1, Play:3, Play:5 gen1 and Play:5 gen2, according to Gizmodo. Trueplay will make it into Android eventually.