Sonos Play:3 – Mid-Sized Wireless Smart Home Speaker for Streaming Music, Amazon Certified and Works with Alexa. (Black)

I've been using the Sonos Play 3 for a couple of weeks now with a Sonos wireless bridge and I have to say it is quite a remarkable system. I never give 5 stars, but I have never been so impressed with a technology system before. Very simple to use, well designed, and the controller app for PC and IOS is excellent. The Play 3 sound quality is quite good for a small set of powered speakers. The major benefit of the Play 3 is the easy portability of the system. I can move it to the porch or garage and within a minute the system is linked (you can easily tell its status - when the white led stops blinking, it is connected) and can use my ipad or iphone to control what I want to listen to. The ease of set up with the bridge is quite good. The system uses a simple auto-connect process to add devices to the Sonos network where, after being prompted by the application software, you press a button on the Sonos device and it automaitcally searches for a Sonos network to join. This is similar to the easy connect process many new wireless routers use to add devices. No passwords, but secure.The Sonos wireless bridge does not use a standard wifi network, it creates its own proprietary wireless Sonos network which cannot be seen by standard wifi devices. I believe the Sonos uses some of the channels in the 2.4GHz range. I have not seen any interference issues with my existing wifi network.You should do the initial set up from a PC or Mac, not a mobile device. I tried to do the initial set up from my ipad but when I added the app to my PC, the devices weren't recongnized and I had to reinitialize the system. To be fair, the Sonos app warned me that it is recommended to initialize the system from the pc app, so I don't consider this a problem - it was no big deal.The design of the components is very good, not cheap or cheesy looking, and the ease of use is excellent. One's reaction is that this is the wireless music system I'd expect to see come from Apple in terms of robustness, design, and ease of use. Although my first reaction was that the system seemed to be a bit expensive, the Play 3 is not much more than a set of of higher end powered PC speakers, and when you include the Sonos functionality, my assessment changed to thinking it was actually a good value.The system integrates easily with iTunes library and seems to support almost any media library. I've only really started to explore this aspect. Setting up music queues and playlists is trivially simple. The biggest drawback is that it is addictive - since getting the Play 3, I've added a Play Connect to my existing stereo amp and speakers. I can play to and from the Sonos system with my stereo now. This is really cool - I can play different streaming radio or music library tunes on the different Sonos devices in different rooms, or the same, or whatever the heck I want to do - all easily controlled from the Sonos app. I'm just seeing how soon before I justify another Sonos component. It's clear there is a very complex technological base for the Sonos system, both hardware and software, but that complexity is well hidden behind a simple to use interface for the user.Sonos may not be the "cheapest" system for home music, but it is the best. I did a lot of research before purchasing and no one else nailed this application nearly as well as Sonos. It just does this, but it does it exceptionally well. Over the years, we've made a significant investment in our music library and I view the Sonos as a great way to unlock the value in this investment by making it easy for me to enjoy my library wherever I am in the house. Kudos to the Sonos team for a job well done.

I have a Sonos system already with two ZP120's and two ZP90's as well as an iPod dock and to unpack and have Pandora playing on my Sonos Play 3 was 12 minutes. The large majority of the time was a software update and carefully cutting away the tape at the top of the package. Like all Sonos components, the set-up is easy and fast. Friends of mine have been blown away by how good my speakers sound running Pandora, internet radio and my iTunes library and I am not sure I understand WHY either-just that it is. Sonos sounds great.Positives: This item is not very big but produces big sound with full bass. I am a slight audiophile and cannot imagine being able to get much better sound out of a box that size. Great mids and excellent detail on the highs. I have it in a bedroom that is medium sized and of course it fills up the whole room with more than enough sound. I cannot imagine someone not being happy with this quality of sound given the size of this box.Easy to set-up and melds beautifully with your other Sonos components.Ability to meld with a 2nd Play 3 to form a more robust sound.Great sized footprint-not too big not too small.Only one wire-and that's the power plug. That gets you basically unlimited music from your library or online streaming as well as a robust and beautiful sound.Negatives: The item is average looking and not extremely attractive-but then again it's just a boxNo connections on the back except an ethernet port. No line in and certainly no option to power additional speakers off of this unit. Literally, there are NO other connections on this item and most "Dock" like speakers have a line in. What this means is that if you want to use it as your speaker for your DVD player, DVR or a music player not connected wirelessly with Sonos, you are not going to be able to.Not cheap. The comparison I can think of off hand is the Bose Sounddock-which obviously does not have the wireless capability that this item has-and the Sounddock is more expensive than the Play 3-so considering all that can be done with this Play 3-it's probably priced about right but there are no giveaways here.Summary: I am thrilled with this item and will now probably look to get a Play 5 for a larger room downstairs and get rid of my ZP120 down there. The Play 5 does have a deeper more full sound but it's $100 more and has a much larger footprint. Also, I will probably get two Play 5's and then I can use them as stereo or move them around the house easily and still connect to my Sonos network. If you have a space where you don't need/want a lot of wires and don't have a lot of space for speakers with a ZP120 or ZP90 with an amp-this item is for you. In small to medium rooms, this will give you the sound you want. An extremely impressive product that I cannot speak highly enough about!