Sonos Five
The Sonos Five delivers room-filling scale with a warm, detailed presentation, confident dynamics and a surprisingly open soundstage from one sealed cabinet. Hi-Fi Choice highlights its composure in dense mixes, while What Hi-Fi? finds it powerful and spacious. Trueplay, AirPlay 2, line-in and stereo-pairing potential make this a compelling multi-room streaming speaker.
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Nicely Roasted
Sound Quality
87/100
Build Quality
90/100
Value for Money
88/100
Pros
Fills a room with clear, detailed sound while staying composed and distortion-free at high volume.
Creates a spacious, coherent single-speaker soundstage with expressive vocals and strong separation in busy mixes.
Excellent ecosystem flexibility, with multi-room streaming, AirPlay 2, Ethernet, 3.5mm line-in and optional stereo pairing.
Cons
Bass can be overly dominant and loosely defined before Trueplay calibration, and remains somewhat assertive afterward.
A single Five cannot provide convincing left-to-right stereo separation; two speakers are preferable for proper imaging.
No Bluetooth support, limiting quick direct streaming options.
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What Reviewers Are Saying
SOUND QUALITY PERFORMANCE 87/100
The Five is widely described as a bold, full-bodied and room-filling all-in-one speaker, with particularly strong output and an easy, warm presentation. Trueplay room correction is important: it improves balance and bass definition, while the single-box design cannot entirely replicate the stereo separation of a dedicated pair.
Bass
84/100
Reviews agree that the Five delivers substantial, full bass for a single-box speaker and retains useful weight even at low listening levels. However, What Hi-Fi? found it initially overbearing and under-defined without Trueplay, and still somewhat too assertive after calibration; Hi-Fi Choice also notes it cannot fully convey the deepest subterranean effects.
Mid
88/100
Vocals and instruments come through clearly, with SoundGuys noting that dense arrangements remain intelligible and Hi-Fi Choice praising the warmth and emotional range of voices. What Hi-Fi? finds the midrange slightly forward rather than fully transparent, but still detailed enough to communicate a singer's character.
Treble
86/100
The top end is generally controlled and clean, with HiFi.nl reporting no distortion as volume rises and Hi-Fi Choice hearing delicate tambourine shimmer amid busy mixes. What Hi-Fi? considers the upper range slightly rounded-off, favouring smoothness over the last degree of sparkle and air.
Soundstage Imaging
87/100
Its angled driver arrangement produces an open, spacious presentation for a single enclosure, and reviewers find vocals clearly placed within a coherent mix. The limitation is lateral stereo definition: Hi-Fi Choice hears little left-to-right separation on recordings that demand it, so a stereo pair remains the better choice for more convincing imaging.
Dynamics
89/100
The Five plays loudly enough to fill a room or energise a party while remaining composed, with several reviewers praising its ability to stay clean at elevated volume. It handles broad dynamic swings confidently, although What Hi-Fi? says fine harmonic shifts can become less distinct in especially dense material.
Assessments of Build Quality, Usability, and Overall Propositions.
Build Quality
90/100
The cabinet is consistently described as sturdy, well finished and engineered to damp internal resonance. Its considerable weight reinforces the substantial feel, while the six-driver layout is housed in a clean, solid enclosure.
Value for Money
88/100
At $549 in the supplied pricing, the Five is a premium all-in-one speaker, and some reviewers flag cheaper loud alternatives or a steep entry price for newcomers to wireless audio. Even so, reviewers also call it very impressive for the money, citing its strong sound, extensive streaming platform, room correction, line input and usefulness as a multi-room system centrepiece.
Reviews & Sources
Professional reviews and sources for this product's Watt'n Potatoes analysis.
Online Reviews & Mentions
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Specifications
- Amplifiers
- All six Class-D digital amplifiers have been perfectly tuned to the speaker's unique acoustic architecture.
- Tweeters
- Three tweeters create a crisp high-frequency response, with one center tweeter optimizing vocal playback and two angled tweeters creating spatial extension.
- Midwoofers
- Three midwoofers ensure faithful playback of mid-range frequencies and maximize low-end output while the sealed architecture eliminates distortion.
- Sealed Architecture
- The sealed cabinet eliminates reverberation, echo, and distortion.
- Adjustable EQ
- Use the Sonos app to adjust bass, treble, and loudness.
- Trueplay
- This software measures the acoustics of the room then fine-tunes the speaker. Supported iOS device required.
- Dimensions
- Height: 7.99 in (203 mm) Width: 14.33 in (364 mm) Depth: 6.06 in (154 mm)
- Weight
- 13.89 lbs (6.3 kg)
- Colors
- Black, White
- Finish
- Matte
- Controls
- Use the capacitive touch controls on the product to play, pause, skip, replay, adjust the volume, and more.
- LED
- Light on the product indicates connection, mute status, and errors.
- Wi Fi
- Connect to Wi Fi with any 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4 or 5 GHz broadcast-capable router.
- Voltage
- 100-240V 50/60Hz internal power supply
- Line-in
- Connect an audio device to the 3.5 mm input using an auxiliary cable.
- Ethernet
- 10/100 port for hardwiring to your router
- CPU
- Quad Core 1.3 GHz
- Apple Air Play 2
- Works with Air Play 2 on Apple devices iOS 11.4 and higher
- Power Cable I
- Length: 6 ft (2 m)
- Documentation
- Quickstart Guide and legal/warranty information
- Wi Fi
- Internet connection
- Power Source
- Nearby electrical outlet
- Sonos app
- The latest generation of the Sonos app running on a compatible device
Manufacturer's Description — Sonos
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Authorized dealers for Sonos Five
- Resolution A/V — in-store — New York City, New York, United States (website)
- Abt Electronics — online and in-store — Glenview, Illinois, United States (website)
- Acton Gate Audio — online and in-store — Cymru, United Kingdom (website)
- Addicted to Audio — online and in-store — Epping, Victoria, Australia (website)
- Adorama — in-store — New York, New York, United States (website)
- Advance Audio — in-store — Wichita, Kansas, United States (website)
- Ahead Stereo — in-store — Los Angeles, California, United States (website)
- Alen Audio — in-store — Extramurs, Comunidad Valenciana, Spain (website)
- Alex Audio Video — in-store — Sofia, Sofia City Province, Bulgaria (website)
- All That Audio — in-store — Anaheim, California, United States (website)
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