Sonos Play:3 review

The Play:3 wireless speaker measures 5.2 x 10.5 x 6.3 inches (132 x 268 x 160 mm) and weighs 5.7 pounds (2.6 kg). I can easily lift it with a single stretched hand. The bigger Play:5, by comparison, measures 8.50 x 14.40 x 4.80 inches (217 x 365 x 123 mm) and weights 9.15 pounds (4.15 kg). To achieve its smaller size, the Play:3 is limited to a single Ethernet and power jack on the back compared to the Ethernet pair, headphone, line-in, and power jacks found on the Play:5. However, unlike the bulkier Play:5, the Play:3 also includes a standard 1/4-inch, 20-thread socket for easy placement on the wall using a standard satellite speaker wall mount.

Naturally, the Play:3 had to scale back the individually amplified drivers as well; just three -- one tweeter flanked by two 3-inch mid-range drivers -- compared to the five drivers found in the Play:5. Notably, the Play:3 lacks an amplified subwoofer, relying upon a passive, rear-firing bass radiator. That makes the Play:3 more sensitive to placement unlike the Play:5 with its powered 3.5-inch bass driver (more on that later).

In addition to wall mounting (via standard third-party mounts), the Play:3 can be set on a table horizontally or vertically. While small rubber feet along the bottom and left side (only) indicate which direction is down, it's easy to reverse orientation, especially when placing the speaker vertically (flipping it upside down in horizontal mode blocks the mute and volume controls) -- not that this made any noticeable difference to the sound.

Placement of the Play:3 is more flexible than the Play:5 thanks to its smaller size. In my own house, I was able to slip the Play:3 horizontally into the gap between the ceiling and my kitchen cabinet -- a crevice too small for the Play:5 -- liberating the counter space once occupied by the Play:5. I placed another unit on the floor in the corner of my office. The angled side (now bottom in vertical mode) of the unit meant that the music was aimed upward into the room. The smaller Play:3 solved two placement issues I had with Play:5 without having to resort to a wall-mount. Your mileage, will of course, vary.

Sonos is synonymous with ease of use and nothing changes in that regard with the Play:3. Current Sonos owners already have a SonosNet -- a secure AES-encrypted, peer-to-peer wireless mesh network -- in their house so adding the Play:3 is dead simple. Just press the mute and volume up button simultaneously on the top of the Play:3, and select "add a Sonos component" from any of the free Sonos controllers for Android smartphones, iOS devices, Macs, or PCs; or the dedicated $349 Sonos Control. Voila, you've just added sound to another room in your house.

First time Sonos owners must bridge the SonosNet to their home network in one of two ways. The easiest (and cheapest) way is to run a cable between the router and the Ethernet jack on the back of the Play:3. Unfortunately, not everyone's home is wired for Ethernet thus limiting speaker placement to the same room as the router. To solve this, Sonos sells a $49 Bridge that connects to the router, freeing up placement of all your subsequent Sonos speakers. Either way, after the SonosNet is up and running you must install at least one Sonos controller to activate the Play:3 on the network. Simple in practice but difficult to explain to Ma and Pa McLuddite at retail.

Two Play:3 speakers can be setup as a stereo pair, assigning one speaker to the left channel and the other to the right. While this feature has been available for awhile, pairing two Play:5s, impressive as it sounds, is overkill for most homes. The smaller and cheaper Play:3, however, makes the perfect stereo solution for larger rooms. In fact, you can purchase two Play:3s for the price of a single B&W Zeppelin Air resulting in a substantially better listening experience..

Sonos is making a pretty bold claim with the launch of the Play:3: "Stream any music on Earth." While that sounds hyperbolic, it's actually fairly accurate. Sonos streams music from more than 100,000 free internet radio stations and dozens of subscription music services including Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, last.fm, Deezer, and more depending upon your country. It'll also stream the obscure music collection you amassed during that year abroad at Saint Martins. So really, if a song's been digitally recorded, Sonos can stream it over the internet or off your hard disk.

iTunes users will be happy to know that Sonos works seamlessly with your iTunes library and playlists. Otherwise, Sonos also supports any music library stored on a NAS supporting SMB/CIFS. All Sonos devices can play MP3 (compressed), WMA (compressed), AAC (MPEG4), iTunes, Ogg Vorbis, Audible (format 4), Apple Lossless, Flac (lossless), WAV (uncompressed), and AIFF (uncompressed) formats.

Note: The Mac OS X Lion update broke compatibility between Sonos systems and music libraries stored on Macs. Sonos has promised an update to fix this "very soon."

Sonos can even stream from AirPlay-enabled devices via a bolt-on solution. However, this requires the purchase of a $99 AirPort Express that you attach to any Sonos component with an audio-in connection (like the Play:5 but not the Play:3)..

So, it's small, relatively cheap for an all-in-one wireless speaker, and streams all the music on Earth. But is it any good? Yes, yes it is, very good in fact.

Surprisingly, even though the drivers are close together, the Play:3 was able to deliver decent stereo separation. Standing the unit on its side, however, centered everything (except the logo) in the second or so it took for the motion detector to reprogram the audio. According to Sonos, horizontal mode is meant to create a wider stereo response, while in vertical mode, music is meant to sound "brighter on the highs and crisper on the mids." And you know what? Although I didn't hear it during my initial hands-on, I clearly heard it when testing the units in the quiet of my own home.

I tested a pair of Play:3 speakers in a variety of rooms and orientations with all equalizer settings centered and loudness on. For comparison, I used a pair of Play:5 speakers as reference, sourcing 320kbps music streams from Spotify. It was quickly apparent that, like real estate, the most important consideration when setting up the Play:3 is location, location, location.

In general, the sound emitted from a Play:3 positioned in the middle of a room (like the press shot above) pales in comparison to a Play:3 nestled up to a wall. The reason for this has everything to do with the Play:3's subwoofer, or lack thereof. Remember, the Play:3 lacks a powered sub relying upon a passive, back-firing bass radiator. While the passive driver coupled with the active drivers allows Sonos to deliver reasonable bass in such a compact enclosure, it can't match the raw thump of the Play:5's 3.5-inch powered woofer. Don't get me wrong, the sound was surprisingly full even with the Play:3 positioned in the center of the room (about five feet from any wall). However, placing the back of the Play:3 just a few inches from the wall helped reinforce the low-end bass significantly, while rounding out the mids.

With the Play:3 and Play:5 next to each other on a center table, the Play:5 was the clear winner in every musical genre listened. The results weren't so clear, however, when I moved to the Play:3 within a few inches of the wall (leaving the Play:5 in the center of the room). Synth heavy pop tracks like "Smalltown Boy" from Bronski Beat actually sounded better on the play:3 which, in my opinion, was more capable of isolating the higher frequencies -- the Play:5 was more balanced, exhibiting a more overall softness by comparison. The Play:3 also kept things tighter than the Play:5 even as the volume rose to 75 percent. Again I preferred the Play:3 when listening to "Triangle Walks" by Fever Ray, but damn, it was close. Listening to a remastered 2006 version of "I Would For You" from Jane's Addiction clearly demonstrated the Play:5's ability to reproduce an overall richer and more nuanced sound than the Play:3. I also preferred the Play:5's more balanced delivery of "Revenge" by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse (featuring Flaming Lips) with the Play:3 spending a bit too much time in the middle-to-low frequency muck for my tastes.

Moving the Play:5 against the wall next to the Play:3 gave the Play:5 an edge across the board. There were times when the bass became overpowering on the Play:5. However, this was easily rectified by clicking off the loudness. In fact, the Play:3 with loudness on and the Play:5 with loudness off sounded nearly identical at the low end. Obviously, we reinstated the loudness when a Morningwood track "Jetsetter" came into rotation for the obligatory kick to the chest.

The final test pitted two Play:3s setup in a stereo pair against a single Play:5. Unsurprisingly, the pair of $299 Play:3s blew the $399 Play:5 out of the water, wherever the speakers were placed. While a single Play:3 easily filled my average-sized room with sound, two Play:3s setup in stereo quickly overwhelmed it (not a bad thing). Remember, you can pair two Play:5s together in a stereo union, but you can't mix and match a Play:3 with a Play:5.