How we introduced surround sound to our home | Sonos Play 1 review
Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. We bought our Sonos system 2 years ago. This is an honest review to help other home owners before they make an investment.
This post contains affiliate links, for more information look at the disclosure page
Like a lot of other first-time home renovators, we made mistakes and learned fast renovating our house. One mistake we made was plastering every room before considering the sound system and getting wires hidden/built into walls. You live and you learn!
We HATE exposed wires, so looked into a solution for a sound system that a) didn’t look hideous in the modern farmhouse decor we’ve been going for and b) didn’t require re-plastering to conceal wires.
A lot of hours (days!) research later… and we settled on the Sonos Play system and Playbar.
Honestly? We’ve never looked back.
SONOS PLAY:1 & PLAYBAR: The Pros & Cons
We bought the SONOS PLAY:1 speakers (x3) and the SONOS PLAYBAR to fit in our kitchen and living room.
In our old place the living room was pretty big in comparison to our current one and we initially had huge floor standing speakers and a Sony amplifier connected to our TV by HDMI - awesome in terms of sound quality but there were a few big problems.
The problems with our old sound system
The speakers were HUGE and wouldn't fit into our new (smaller) living room
The speakers were way too bassy and we didn’t want to pee off the neighbours
The system didn't handle voices very well, watching it hooked up to the TV wasn’t ideal
It was only a stereo system really (no surround speakers)
They just generally spoiled the decoration
So once we completed the renovation of our living room our next goal was to introduce a surround sound system that could resolve all of the problems experienced in our previous home and perhaps bring some other benefits. For obvious reasons (brand new plaster!) we avoided anything that required drilling lots of holes or wiring.
After doing some research and getting a personal recommendation from Neil’s Mum and Dad, we realised that this could resolve our problems and more.
The investigation began…
We started looking into a sound bar and two speakers to provide some level of surround sound. And although this setup is probably not going to be given the seal of approval by the audio elite, we believed it would deliver our desired results. Watching TV with great audio and the option to play music through it.
The Playbar sits comfortably underneath our TV, connected with an optical cable. Then, we have 2 Sonos Play 1s that sit either side of the sofa on adjustable Flexson floor stands.
The results : How Sonos resolved our problems
Firstly let’s talk sound quality, we both have varied music tastes and the Sonos system does deliver on a broad range of genres - metal to folk - really brilliant quality sound. The Sonos also solved our problems because…
The SONOS PLAY:1 speakers are small and great looking, compatible with our living room aesthetic and space.
No drilling required, we bought two awesome Flexson stands for the speakers to sit on, saving us drilling holes in the walls. Fully height adjustable too, bonus!
The Sonos app has the ability to reduce the bass for night time viewing, no complaints from the neighbours after 2 years owning them.
There is a setting to enhance speech audio, great for watching TV.
The system delivers on our needs - being designed for TV audio and for music audio.
The lifestyle benefits of Sonos are endless:
We love being able to play Spotify easily around the house at any time
The SONOS PLAYBAR is super easy to switch between the TV and the other speakers in our system elsewhere in the house
If we are in different rooms it's great that we can both listen to the same music
Additional speakers can be added into the system at any time easily and no wiring is necessary - it's all wi-fi driven and we can’t wait to install more upstairs
The sound quality is great, delivering on all different audio styles
….and get this, we can remotely access the speakers. One day I couldn’t hear my phone when Neil was at B&Q calling me. So he dialled in, turned the audio on LOUD and gave me the CREEPS! I immediately grabbed my phone - being alone in the house thinking we had ghosts - to ring Neil… and then he told me it was him grabbing my attention.
Crazy right? It made me laugh (after almost sh*tting my pants)…
The main downsides with Sonos
The cost of the SONOS PLAYBAR is pretty high, however a new cheaper version called the SONOS BEAM is currently available with the additional feature of Amazon Alexa
Sometimes there are some glitches between Spotify and Sonos which makes for an occasionally buggy experience but it doesn’t happen a lot
Honestly… it’s hard to think of negatives aside from that… I guess the Playbar is also quite big so you’d need to make sure there’s space in front of your TV to place it? We’re having built in alcove shelving done soon and want to create a bespoke shelf for it.
Overall
In conclusion we are really happy with our choice of sound system and think that this investment has set us up for many years of listening pleasure. It’s got the exact audio we need, it was super easy to set up, giving awesome results and over time, we’ll definitely be investing in more when we decorate upstairs.
We highly recommend it, fellow home renovators!
PS Any questions please do hit us up on email our DM.
This post contains affiliate links but I only recommend companies I have purchased from and love.
