Under the right conditions this product works very well, as other reviewers have noted. The sound is good – not great – but on a par with that available from good docking stations or laptop extension speakers such as Bose or Bowers & Wilkins.

Just be aware of three things not mentioned in the description that may be show-stoppers for you:

1. Your music server must be connected to your router by a physical Ethernet cable. I found this out after going through the ‘easy’ part of the installation and then discovering that the sound has constant drop-outs. The restriction is explained deep in the forum section of the Sonos website, and I found it only after some searching. Sonos state there that connection to a wireless server (our primary computer is only connected wirelessly to the router) is NOT a supported configuration. I am a bit surprised by this, since my Sony Blu-Ray player, for example, can stream HD video material wirelessly with no drop-outs. Surely it is less demanding to stream audio only. For us this first point may be a show-stopper. I am experimenting with re-configurations which may make a cabled connection possible. If it does not, the performance over wireless is unsatisfactory and our unit will have to go back.

2. The computer which acts as your wireless server must be on all the time. Sonos sets this parameter during installation. It will not wake the computer from ‘sleep’ mode to begin streaming music. As an economy-minded family we are a bit leery of this provision and decided we would go to the trouble of waking up the computer ourselves if we wanted to stream music. By the way, the computer does not have to be on to listen to internet radio, which is retrieved directly from the web via the router.

3. The Sonos App which manages your music is separate from iTunes and must be updated by you – not automatically. It is yet another interface to learn, very basic and has none of the richness of iTunes. You can import songs with artwork and other metadata, and your playlists. That’s about it. No ‘genius’ mixes, no Shuffle play, no opportunity to export playlists back to iTunes from Sonos. Not a show-stopper for us but disappointing from a company which has had several years to create a smooth and effortless fit. Ideally all the music management would be via Apple’s (or other provider’s) own software with Sonos just handling the sound output. Software providers like Pure Audio and Amarra can blend seamlessly with iTunes, why can’t Sonos?

All three of these points could be remedied by Sonos if they had the will to do so. The system itself is attractive, neat, convenient and sounds good. For those reasons we would like to keep it. But had we know these points beforehand we would probably not have made our purchase. I hope they help with your decision.

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