The long, winding road to the Sonos Play takes us first through some unpaved paths, then to well-paved streets, which lead to wide open highways, at which point we run over a set of tire spikes, skid off the road and hit a tree at high speed, totaling the car in the process.
Now the vehicle is repaired, and we’re slowly inching our way onto the highway onramp, ready to hit those high speeds again.
Excuse the strained metaphor for Sonos’s business over the past decade or so, but every product announced and released since the disastrous May 2024 launch of the Ace headphones and its accompanying app overhaul has to be viewed through the lens of a company far less ascendent and far more humbled than it otherwise would be.
I’ve reviewed every consumer Sonos product since the Play:1 in 2013, and while they haven’t all been perfect, they’ve all earned their place in the smart speaker market. Even the troubled Roam, which was riddled with Bluetooth-related bugs, had its share of fans.
Moreover, the larger and more weather-resistant Move found a spot in many homes’ living rooms and backyards in spite of its hefty price and imposing physical size and weight.
