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The Sonos Play does a great job of blending portability, usefulness in the home and just being a good-old speaker with Sonos' signature sound quality holding it all together.
The Good
- Excellent sound quality
- IP67 rated
- 24 hour battery life
- Love the replaceable battery
The Not So Good
- Fairly expensive
- No power adapter included
Need-to-knows
- The most affordable way into Sonos’s portable range
- 24 hours of battery life from a 35Wh replaceable battery
- Compatible with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, AirPlay 2, and Spotify Connect
- Warm, weighty and comforting sound profile
Living with a tech YouTuber is, I’m reliably told, a real pain in the backside.
That’s a direct (almost) quote from my girlfriend, which is usually offered when I’ve ripped yet another smart speaker out of the kitchen and replaced it with something she’s never seen or interacted with before.
That’d be almost acceptable, if the new one wasn’t nearly always worse than the already-a-bit-rubbish-one it replaced. Which is often the case.
A couple of weeks ago, the Sonos Play entered our kitchen and replaced the (big) HomePod that had occupied that space for a number of months. Would it too be a potential relationship-ender (I’m overdoing this a bit now, but you get the point)?
Well, my nearly-four-year-old is already chatting away to it (cute, and equally slightly scary when you think about the world he’s growing up in). And for the first time in a long while, I’m not sure I’ll be swapping this one back out.
Shop the Sonos Play below!
Shop the Sonos Play below!
At a glance
| Feature | Sonos Play |
|---|---|
| Price | £299/$299 |
| Battery | 35Wh, up to 24 hours playback |
| Water Resistance | IP67 (dust-tight, waterproof to 1m for 30 mins) |
| Drivers | 2 × angled tweeters, 1 × midwoofer |
| Amplification | 3 × Class-H digital amplifiers |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect |
| Voice Assistant | Alexa, Sonos Voice Control (Google Assistant optional) |
| Microphone | Hardware mic switch included |
| Charging | Wireless charging base (included); USB-C backup (18W+ PD brick required, not included) |
| Weight | 1.3kg |
| Dimensions | 192mm height |
| Colours | Matte black, matte white |
| Battery | User-replaceable |
[IMAGE: Sonos Play on its wireless charging base in a kitchen setting]
What is the Sonos Play?
The Sonos Play is Sonos’s take on a proper portable, battery-powered speaker. Not their first, granted, but the specs and pricing are compelling.
It costs £299/$299, has an IP67 rating, 24 hours of battery life, and everything you’d expect from a Sonos speaker in terms of build quality, app support and whole-home integration. It sits on its wireless charging base in your kitchen during the week, does the multi-room thing beautifully, and then comes out into the garden on a Saturday afternoon without missing a beat. And if you live in the UK, it won’t be bothered by that ‘spot of rain’.
I’ve spent a lot of time with Sonos gear — my Sonos Era 300 review is a good place to start
Here are the headline specs that actually matter:
- £299/$299 – not cheap, but comfortably the cheapest way into Sonos’s portable range
- Up to 24 hours of playback on the 35Wh battery
- IP67 – dust-tight, waterproof up to 1m for 30 minutes
- 1.3kg and roughly the size of a tall water bottle (192mm)
- Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect
- Replaceable battery – yes, really
- Matte black or matte white finish
That replaceable battery line is worth lingering on. Sonos has had a bumpy few years on some fronts, but baking in a serviceable battery on a £299 portable is the kind of decision that earns a lot of goodwill. Hopefully.
Sonos Play design: built like a tank
If you’ve ever picked up a Sonos product, you already know what I’m about to say. The Sonos Play is stupidly well built. It has that dense, reassuringly heavy feel that tells you the internals aren’t just rattling about in a cheaply-made speaker enclosure. There’s a lovely matte finish to admire, clean physical buttons on top (play/pause, skip, volume, group/ungroup), a dedicated Bluetooth button, and a hardware mic switch for anyone who doesn’t fancy a microphone in the kitchen listening to arguments about what to have for dinner.
There’s a small LED cluster on top for connection, battery, mic and mute status. No fancy display, no RGB – no gimmicks. This is Sonos, remember. It looks like something that belongs in a proper grown-up kitchen.
And then you pick it up. That’s the trick, really. It sits on its wireless charging base looking every inch the traditional Sonos in-room speaker, and the moment you want to take it into the garden you just lift it off and take it with you. No cables, no fuss, no “hang on, let me find the Bluetooth speaker and turn off Sonos”. It just works.
If a fixed premium speaker is more your thing, my Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro review is worth a read
Small niggle: the wireless charging base is included, but the USB-C power adapter isn’t. You’ll need an 18W+ PD brick of your own. A minor gripe, but worth mentioning.
Sonos Play sound quality: that chunky Sonos signature
Inside the Sonos Play we’ve got three Class-H digital amplifiers, two angled tweeters doing the highs and the stereo separation, and a single midwoofer handling the mids and bass. There’s automatic Trueplay tuning, too, which means the speaker listens to the room it’s in and adjusts EQ accordingly. You can also tweak bass, treble and loudness manually in the Sonos app.
How does it sound?
In a word: brilliant. Because of course it does. This is Sonos, remember.
The Play has that unmistakable chunky Sonos signature – warm, weighty, confident – without any of the harshness you sometimes get from compact portables being pushed hard. I cranked it up to max volume for a stress test, and nothing went wrong. No distortion, no sharp edges in the top end, no wheezy bass pretending to be bigger than it is. It just kept going.
You’re not going to fill a warehouse with it. But for a kitchen, a bathroom, a medium-sized garden or a pool party (not something we do often in Leamington Spa, admittedly), it’s more than enough.
Portability: the winning element
The Sonos Play isn’t really competing with a UE Boom or a JBL Charge. It’s competing with the idea that you need two speakers in the first place – a nice one for the kitchen, and a portable one for the garden.
The Sonos Play is both. IP67 means it can definitely get wet. And dusty. And dropped. Without any problems whatsoever. And 24 hours of battery means you’re not going to run out over a long Sunday entertaining family.
Let’s not forget that the Play slots straight into any Sonos ecosystem, too – which remains the best multiroom speaker setup out there. But if you don’t need that, it’ll work quite happily as a Bluetooth or AirPlay 2 speaker, too.
Looking for something to pair with it? Here are the best headphones I’ve personally worn and reviewed
That’s a pretty complete package for £299/$299. I struggle to name a direct rival that does all of that as cleanly as Sonos.
A word on the home assistant side of things
I opted for Alexa on the Sonos Play. And here’s an honest, industry-wide observation: we’re all still waiting for voice assistants to fully catch up with how quickly everything else in consumer tech is moving.
Curious how Siri stacks up at home? My Siri at home review covers exactly that
Alexa remains the most responsive of the bunch for me, and still leads on smart home integration; doorbells, cameras, lights… all slots in cleanly. It handles the daily stuff (egg timers, weather reports, “is this celebrity still alive” questions) reliably, and from what I’ve seen of Alexa+ so far, the next generation looks properly exciting. More natural conversation, actual colloquial understanding – it could revolutionise AI home assistants.
We’re not quite there across the board yet, mind. I had one of those moments recently where a timer went off on the Sonos Play and it took a couple of attempts to cancel it from two metres away. I’ve had the same experience with Siri and Google Assistant over the years. None of them are that good. Yet.
For now, the Sonos Play is as good as the assistant you pair it with. And if you’re pairing it with anything, Alexa is still the one I’d reach for.
Who should buy the Sonos Play?
If you’re already in the Sonos ecosystem, this is a no-brainer. Stick it in the kitchen, take it into the garden, use it as a bathroom speaker when nobody’s around, drop it on the side of the pool (if you’ve got a pool).
For £299/$299 you’re getting the cheapest way to add a brilliant, portable Sonos speaker to your setup.
Wondering how Sonos compares to Apple’s offering? Check my HomePod review
If this is your first Sonos speaker, I’d argue it’s also the one to go for. It’s the most flexible speaker in the range. It’ll work happily as a fixed in-room speaker for as long as you want, and the second you decide you need portability, you just pick it up and walk away.
Get involved in the comments – are you in the Sonos ecosystem already, and which home assistant are you leaning on right now?
Wrapping up
The Sonos Play is the speaker I’ve been waiting for Sonos to make. It solves the one problem that has always nagged at me about committing to a proper speaker in the kitchen — the moment you want to take it outside, you’re either tethered to the wall or reaching for a lesser portable alternative.
At £299/$299, it’s not cheap. But for the Sonos faithful it’s a straightforward buy, and for anyone looking for their first Sonos speaker it’s arguably the smartest entry point in the entire range. Fixed or portable, it’s excellent either way.
4 Comments
Excellent breakdown. The way you explained this makes it so much clearer. Thanks for sharing!
The replaceable battery is also a huge plus, not something you see often these days.
Geometry Dash Lite
The Sonos Play really does seem like one of the most flexible options in the lineup, especially for people who want both home audio quality and portability without juggling separate devices. I like the point that it works just as well as a permanent room speaker as it does for moving around the house or outdoors. For someone entering the Sonos ecosystem for the first time, that versatility probably makes it an easy recommendation. After reading tech reviews like this, I sometimes switch over to eaglercraft a lightweight sandbox game that runs directly in the browser.
One feature that really stands out is the replaceable battery. It’s becoming increasingly rare in modern devices, so it’s great to see a design that makes long-term use and easy maintenance possible.
Octordle