Sonos Digital Music System

Launch price £700.00

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Stuff says

Still the king of multi-room music, and now much more affordable. The Sonos is a pleasure to use, sounds great and looks stunning. We like

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Stuff.tv hot buy

The Sonos Digital Musical System first graced Stuff’s hallowed pages way back in August 2005. Although new wireless streamers were flooding into our office back then, this mysterious white box still seemed ahead of its time and quickly garnered five stars.

But the hi-fi landscape has changed much since those innocent days. The Yamaha MusicCast is still one of its main competitors, but cheaper multi-room systems like the Philips WACS700 and wireless bridges – including the Squeezebox 3 and Roku Soundbridge – are providing some stiff music streaming competition.

Plummeting price
So, is Sonos still the hottest thing in wireless hi-fi? You bet. Thanks to recent upgrades – you can now buy the cheaper, amp-free ZP80 Zone Player and two controllers as the BU130 bundle for £700 – it’s now even within the grasp of the financially challenged, who could previously only admire it from afar.

The main difference between the Sonos approach and other wireless systems is that it doesn’t have a hard disk. Instead, it’s designed to be hooked up to your PC and Mac and feed on the music already on your home network.

The brains of the system is the ZP100 ZonePlayer, which serves as both a 50W amp and wireless distribution hub. Our test kit had two of these babies, one of which needs to be hard-wired to your computer. Thanks to Wi-Fi, the other can be placed anywhere. And if you live in a replica of Buckingham Palace, you’ll be pleased to hear that up to 32 ZP100s can be supported.