Skip to Main Content

Sonos Play:5 Review

editors choice horizontal
4.0
Excellent
By Tim Gideon
& Will Greenwald

The Bottom Line

The Sonos Play:5 speaker justifies its very high price by delivering excellent wireless audio in a seamless, simple design that's expandable to serve every room of your house.

PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.

Pros

  • Powerful audio performance with seriously deep bass and accurate highs.
  • Easy setup.
  • Expandable to multiple rooms.
  • Can be used as part of a stereo pair.

Cons

  • Pricey.
  • No Bluetooth.

Sonos is alive and well in 2015, despite attempts on its life from AirPlay (which has seen better days) and Bluetooth (which is enjoying its best days thus far). Sonos thrives because it doesn't just make wireless speakers, it makes an entire wireless speaker ecosystem that functions quite well and—most importantly—delivers great sound. The $499.95 second-generation Play:5 delivers ferocious power with seriously deep bass (when the mix calls for it) and a solid balance of rich lows and crisp highs. We'd be pleased if this were simply a wireless standalone speaker, but it is part of a larger, non-Bluetooth-equipped, whole. Granted, purchasing this speaker means buying into the Sonos ecosystem, but it's hard to imagine a better-sounding building block for a wireless multi-room system, and so it earns our Editors' Choice.

Design
Available in black or white models, both of which have black front panels consisting of speaker grilles, the Play:5's ($748.00 at Amazon) look is minimal and sleek. It seems meant to blend into a setting rather than stand out. Measuring 8 by 14.3 by 6 inches (HWD) and weighing 14 pounds, the Play:5 features a single button for Play/Pause, with volume controls on either side of it—all of which are centrally located on the top panel.

Our Experts Have Tested 32 Products in the Speakers Category in the Past Year
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. See how we test.

The volume controls are capacitive—each looks more like four tiny pinholes than a button, and it's almost surprising when they work so well. From a visual standpoint, it keeps the top surface looking minimal and uncluttered. The volume levels work in conjunction with the master volume levels in the Sonos app. Furthermore, the volume controls act as track navigation tools when you swipe from one to the other. It's a simple, smart design that makes the most of the speaker's surface. 

Behind the grille, the Play:5 boasts three tweeters and three midrange drivers that are all driven individually by six class-D digital amplifiers. The back panel, where the power cable plugs in, also houses an Ethernet cable connection (to connect to your network directly) and a Join button for connecting the speaker to an already present Sonos system. There is also a 3.5mm aux input to which the speaker will automatically switch when it detects a signal (though no 3.5mm audio cable is included).

Sonos Play:5

The Play:5 has another trick up its sleeve: Sonos claims it can analyze the acoustics of the room it's in and base its audio performance on the results. There's undoubtedly some digital signal processing going on here, but it's subtle enough that purists likely won't be irked, and it will please everyone else.

The speaker can also be paired with another Play:5 to make a stereo pair, with one acting as the left channel and the other as the right. Sonos even claims the speakers are designed to work in relatively heightened humidity, so you can place the Play:5 in a bathroom and not worry about steam ruining it (the speaker is not water- or splash-proof, however).

Wireless Audio
Sonos was one of the first big names in Wi-Fi multi-room audio, and it's stayed committed to the concept. The Play:5 doesn't have Bluetooth as an alternative connection method; if you want to use the speaker without relying on the 3.5mm auxiliary input, you'll need to use the free Sonos app for Android, iOS, OS X, and Windows, and connect the Play:5 to your home Wi-Fi network. Fortunately, this is a very simple process of following a few prompts in the software and watching the indicator light on the speaker.

All music playback is controlled through the app, which, thanks to Sonos' constant development now supports a startling number of streaming music services. You can listen to music from Amazon Music, Google Play, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, Tidal, and dozens of others. The speaker also supports playing any of your locally stored music from up to 16 different storage devices on your network, and can access over 100,000 streaming Internet radio stations outside of the different apps. It's a safe bet that, even without Bluetooth as a backup, the Play:5 has you covered for your favorite music sources.

The app handles all of the aforementioned multi-room and multi-speaker setups, including configuring two Play:5 speakers as a stereo pair or playing music across multiple rooms in the house. You can have up to 32 different Sonos speakers on a single network at a time.

Performance
On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the Play:5 delivers some serious thunder. Not only can this system get exceptionally loud, but the bass does not distort even at top volumes. That said, things certainly sound a bit more balanced at more moderate, sane listening levels. At a medium-loud volume, the Play:5 produces robust, deep bass. It still provides a strong sense of bass response even at low volume levels, which is rare.

Bill Callahan's "Drover," a track with less in the way of deep bass content, gives us a better idea of the Play:5's overall sound signature. The system's drivers definitely have the capability to boost the drums to unnaturally hefty levels like some bass-forward systems tend to do, but instead the drums sound full and powerful without getting boosted in the deep lows. Callahan's baritone vocals have an excellent rich presence in the low-mids that the Play:5 highlights beautifully, and compliments with a solid presence in the high-mids. The guitar strums on this track also benefit from the strong high-mid presence, and from some extra brightness in the highs. This is a slightly sculpted, but balanced, sound signature.

Sonos Play:5

On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop's attack gets plenty of that high-mid treble edge, retaining its sharp contour and allowing it to slice through the mix. This track highlights what the Play:5 is capable of on deep bass—when the sub-bass synth hits occur, it sounds like there's a powerful subwoofer in the room. This is significant because on the Bill Callahan track, many powerful, bass-forward speakers would have boosted the drums like crazy and given them a subwoofer-like presence. The Play:5 avoids adding deep bass when it isn't in the mix. And when there is exceptionally powerful deep bass in the mix, like there is on this track, the Play:5 really brings it. There's nothing wrong with powerful bass response when it's accurate, and the Play:5 sounds excellent on tracks like this.

On orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the higher register strings, brass and vocals own the spotlight—they sound crisp and articulate through the Play:5. When there is lower register instrumentation, it is delivered in a balanced manner, and the occasional sub-bass sound gets the appropriate level of presence in the mix. Absolute purists might find things a bit too boosted in the lows, but most listeners will find the overall mix well-balanced, rich, and crisp.

The main reason Sonos has stayed relevant against AirPlay and Bluetooth is the continuous improvement of its speaker lineup. Simply put, the Play lineup sound great. If you're looking for an excellent wireless speaker, but don't need the multi-zone capability, consider the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Wireless ( at Amazon) and the Bang & Olufsen Beolit 15 ($499.00 at Amazon) , or the more affordable Marshall Stanmore ($874.99 at Amazon) and Audioengine B2 ($199.00 at Amazon) . If you want to start a bit smaller and much less expensive, the Editors' Choice Play:1 ($199.00 at Sonos)  is a more compact, less powerful Sonos speaker available for under half the price of the Play:5.

For $500, the Play:5 isn't cheap, but it doesn't sound, look, or behave like a cheap system. Sonically, the Play:5 is a winner, and from a multi-room home audio standpoint, Sonos still leads the pack. That makes it our Editors' Choice.

Sonos Play:5
4.0
Editors' Choice
Pros
  • Powerful audio performance with seriously deep bass and accurate highs.
  • Easy setup.
  • Expandable to multiple rooms.
  • Can be used as part of a stereo pair.
View More
Cons
  • Pricey.
  • No Bluetooth.
The Bottom Line

The Sonos Play:5 speaker justifies its very high price by delivering excellent wireless audio in a seamless, simple design that's expandable to serve every room of your house.

Like What You're Reading?

Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.


Thanks for signing up!

Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Sign up for other newsletters

TRENDING

About Tim Gideon

Contributing Editor, Audio

Tim Gideon

I've been a contributing editor for PCMag since 2011. Before that, I was PCMag's lead audio analyst from 2006 to 2011. Even though I'm a freelancer now, PCMag has been my home for well over a decade, and audio gear reviews are still my primary focus. Prior to my career in reviewing tech, I worked as an audio engineer—my love of recording audio eventually led me to writing about audio gear.

Read Tim's full bio

Read the latest from Tim Gideon

About Will Greenwald

Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics

I’ve been PCMag’s home entertainment expert for over 10 years, covering both TVs and everything you might want to connect to them. I’ve reviewed more than a thousand different consumer electronics products including headphones, speakers, TVs, and every major game system and VR headset of the last decade. I’m an ISF-certified TV calibrator and a THX-certified home theater professional, and I’m here to help you understand 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and even 8K (and to reassure you that you don’t need to worry about 8K at all for at least a few more years).

Read Will's full bio

Read the latest from Will Greenwald

Sonos Play:5 $748.00 at Amazon
See It