With great smart speakers come great responsibilities, and among them many questions, such as: Which speakers are best for you? What is the difference? Do I need wires? Do I need more speakers? Where do you even begin?
They say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and when it comes to Sonos, that’s especially true. The Sonos wireless home ecosystem is one of the easiest and loudest ways to add music to any room in your home. With its excellent remote control app, compatibility with dozens of the most popular music streaming services and support for the latest technologies such as Alexa, Google Assistant and AirPlay 2, it’s a great system that just keeps getting better. But with a wide range of speakers and other components, it’s not always clear to decide which device(s) you should buy.
This is especially true when looking at the company’s Play:1 and Sonos One speakers. They look very similar, and you’ll find that there are a ton of other similarities as well. But the new Sonos One has its own extra features that make it worth considering if you’re looking to update your Sonos system. Read on and we’ll cover all the key features of these wireless speakers, so you can choose the right speaker for you.
Price
If you were choosing between the Sonos One and the Play:1 based solely on price, it’s an easy choice: The Play:1 costs $149, a full $50 less than the Sonos One. If all you care about is adding a Sonos speaker to your home for the smallest possible investment, the Play:1 clearly has the upper hand. Although if budget is your biggest concern, definitely check out the Ikea Symfonisk Bookshelf speaker. At just $99, it’s the new value king in the Sonos universe.
Moreover, there are excellent reasons to spend the extra $50 on the Sonos One, but since this category is all about price, the Play:1 takes it.
Winner: Game:1
To shape
Sonos Play:1 Image used with permission of the copyright holder
This is by far the hardest category to judge because these two wireless speakers are quite similar. That’s no accident: The Sonos One is essentially the Play:1 with added technologies that have matured since the Play:1 originally launched in 2013. The physical dimensions are nearly identical, so wherever you can find a place for the Play:1, the Sonos One will fit just as well easy. However, the Play:1 has a built-in threaded speaker mounting hole on the back that can accommodate a wide variety of speaker mounting hardware, allowing you to place it anywhere you have access to a power outlet, giving the speaker an edge in versatility.
The Sonos One uses touch-sensitive controls that you can touch or swipe, while the Play:1 uses three physical buttons. Both let you play/pause, adjust volume, join speakers to a group, and skip tracks. These last two options are a bit easier on the Sonos One with a simple swipe left or right, while the Play:1 requires multiple presses of the play/pause button. The Sonos One also has a control to mute the microphone (more on the Sonos One’s voice features later).
The last significant design difference is the metal speaker grill that protects the drive units of both speakers. The Play: 1, whether you buy it in black or white, always uses a brushed stainless steel grille. In contrast, the Sonos One has less contrast. Both black and white models are dressed in a monochromatic grille that matches the color of the cabinet for a more subtle look. Both products are moisture resistant, which means they can withstand additional humidity in the bathroom, but cannot be directly exposed to water.
For its superior versatility in placement, we give this one the Play:1, but we admit that if wall or stand mounting is not important to you, this category is a tie.
Winner: Game:1
Sound quality
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Sonos is notoriously tight-lipped about specs like power and frequency response for its speakers, making it difficult not only to compare them to speakers made by other companies, but even to other Sonos products. As such, we are left to our own senses to make qualitative assessments of these two products. What we do know is that the Sonos One and Play:1 have almost identical components from a driver and amplifier standpoint.
Listening to them side by side reveals only the tiniest sound differences, and if we were to try to qualify them, it would be to say that the Sonos One sounds a little fuller than the Play:1. But we’re talking about slight differences that you’d only become aware of after comparing, as we did, over hours of listening. We don’t think most people will hear any difference, and it’s too close to call.
Winner: Undecided
Features
Dan Baker/Digital Trends
We have finally reached the category where there is no competition. The Sonos One is far more than a wireless speaker, it’s also a full smart speaker and a very good one at that. The Sonos One initially shipped with support only for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, but this year the company added the ability to use Google Assistant instead. Switching between the two is easy enough — you can do it in the Sonos app — but you can’t run them simultaneously. We won’t go into the litany of things you can do with these two assistants in this comparison, but as far as the Sonos products themselves go, the Sonos One gives you voice control over your music on any Sonos speaker in your home, smart or not.
A smart speaker only works when it’s listening, but there are times when that’s not what you want. Sonos claims that tapping the microphone icon on the Sonos One is a guarantee of privacy: if the microphone LED is not on, it means that the microphone has been physically turned off by the speaker assembly.
Sonos One also comes with Apple AirPlay 2, Apple’s latest standard for wireless multiroom audio. You might be wondering why a Sonos product needs AirPlay 2 at all, given that Sonos’ wireless multiroom technology is among the best we’ve ever used. Still, there are two very good reasons to care about AirPlay 2.
First, Sonos announced that in the near future, changes to iOS will prevent a remote app from accessing local music on your iPhone or iPad. In fact, the “on your device” source that Sonos users are used to seeing will no longer be displayed. The solution to this, according to Sonos, is AirPlay 2, which will allow you to continue playing music from your iOS device to the Sonos system, albeit not through the Sonos app. If your Sonos system doesn’t have at least one AirPlay 2-compatible product (like the Sonos One), you’ll lose this feature entirely.
Second, AirPlay 2 is an amazing way to harness the power of your Sonos speakers to enhance the sound of any video playing on your iOS device. Want to hear that Netflix movie playing on your iPad with something with a little more energy? Simply open your AirPlay menu and select your Sonos One. If you have several Sonos speakers, they can all receive the same AirPlay feed, as long as they are grouped with Sonos One.
As we said, there’s no competition, and these extra features more than justify the higher price of the Sonos One.
Winner: Sonos One
Conclusion
You might think Play:1 is our winner, since Play:1 won two of the four categories and tied for third, but as is sometimes the case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Given its impressive capabilities as a smart speaker and the inclusion of AirPlay 2, we think the Sonos One is the better all-around wireless speaker. While we definitely took a few points off it for the lack of a threaded speaker mounting hole, it’s far from a deal breaker. In fact, the Sonos One is so good, even at $50 more than the Play:1, we think the only reason people should buy the Play:1 is if they already own a Sonos One (or maybe the Sonos Beam, another company’s smart speaker product) and are simply looking for an inexpensive way to add more speakers to their home.
Two other small points to consider: First, if you want to pair your speakers in stereo, you’ll need two of the same type (two Play:1 speakers, two Sonos Ones, etc.), because Sonos doesn’t allow stereo pairing for separate speaker models.
Second, if you’re not really interested in owning a smart speaker but are worried about the Play:1 not having AirPlay 2, you might want to buy the Ikea Symfonisk Bookshelf Speaker ($99) or the Ikea Symfonisk Table Lamp ($180) . Neither are smart speakers, but both have AirPlay 2. Whether you buy them separately or as an add-on to older models, they’re a great way to future-proof your Sonos setup without inviting Alexa or Google Assistant into your home.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn