Sonos PLAY:3 Pro Reviews

Sonos has at last built a wireless music box for the less well-off - and built a rather good one too. The Play:3 is physically small enough to be easily sited in any lounge, office or bedroom but produces a big enough sound to act as a primary stereo. The facility to pair units up as stereo speakers and use your smartphone as a remote is the icing on the cake.

At the end of the day, music isn't rational -- it's experienced as if it had the power to communicate directly with our emotions. The repulsion you feel when hearing that Friday song is immediate, there's no processing -- it's only later, after that initial jolt of arm-flailing nausea that you comprise an appraisal. Sonos combined with a music subscription can slake that emotional jones in an instant with millions of tracks ready to stream around the home -- "every song on Earth," if you will. With Sonos, I haven't felt the need to pirate a single track in the last four years. I'm happy to pay $10 per month so that I never have to hunt, download, test for quality, and then hunt again for songs, albums, or compilations. This goes double for the less tech savvy members of my family. Clearly, Sonos isn't for everyone. Sonos CEO John MacFarlane is the first to admit that AirPlay is great if you're a college student who needs to fill a single room with sound. But if you're a home owner, with multiple family members holding a variety of musical tastes, well, there's nothing quite like a Sonos. And the Play:3 makes for a fantastic new product in the company's flexible wireless audio lineup.

The Sonos Play:3s deliver seriously good sound in a small package with an unparalleled feature set not seen by any other speaker company I’ve tested. They’re a bit pricey but when you consider your other options, they’re actually affordable.

The new Play: 3 finally makes Sonos (relatively) affordable – and quality is great.

The Sonos Play:3 is a really impressive network music player that is ideal for music fans with smaller homes to fill with sound. Though the need for a separate Bridge unit bumps up the price a smidgen, for £300 you have an incredibly flexible music system that lets you choose from among millions of tracks as well as the contents of your locally-stored music and iTunes library.

While it doesn't sound quite as good as the larger Play:5, the Sonos Play:3 delivers a superior streaming-audio experience that you can control from any iOS device or Android smartphone.

The Play:3 is an excellent multi-room option and brings the Sonos system slightly closer to the realms of the common man's bank account; worth saving up for? We think so.

The Sonos range has just opened-up to a whole new swathe of buyers. A £249 price tag may not make the Sonos Play:3 an impulse buy, but buying a Sonos system isn't the imposing prospect it once was. With sound quality better than you might expect of its small stature, this is a cheaper, less conspicuous alternative to the B&W Zeppelin Air.

The Sonos Play:3 sounds great, is easy to setup, and will happily sit in you kitchen or on your bedside table replacing that digital radio that doesn't do anything apart from play what's being broadcast now. If you were thinking of getting a DAB radio and have a smartphone, don't. You should buy this instead.

At $299, the Play:3 (in league with a free controller app and compatible mobile device) makes the Sonos experience affordable for a greater number of people. As evidenced by my other reviews of Sonos products, I’m completely sold. My guess is that when you hear a Play:3 of your own and imagine the musical joy it will bring to your life, you will be too.