Full Review - Performance
One hazard of a remote control-dependent system—especially one with a power-sapping color touchscreen—is that when the remote goes down, you lose your ability to control the system from anywhere. I left the Sonos remote uncharged over a weekend and when I came back Monday, no juice. So I had to plug in again, wait for the system to recognize other devices on the system, and then kick into gear. It took about 8-10 seconds for startup—not a big deal—but not the immediate gratification I’m used to. Controlling the system via remote is a breeze. Hit the Zones button and you see a readout of what song is playing in which room along with album art when available. You can put the system into Party mode, in which each zone plays the same song throughout the house, and you can even adjust the volume level for every room as a group or individually by zone. Of course, the standard playback functions are there, too: normal, shuffle, repeat, and shuffle-repeat. The colorful display from the Sonos Controller You can also mute the entire system at once or just select one zone. That’s another caveat to the system. The ZonePlayers never power off. The digital amps do power off when they’re not playing; however, according to Sonos, in standby mode each ZonePlayer draws about 5 watts of power.
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by York on April 6, 2008:
“Yes its expensive. But this system is the BEST I have ever used (and I have bought several). There is a mistake in Digital Trends' review: You do not have to hook at least one satelite to a router. You can hook it up to any ethernet (network) outlet. Thus,...” More...