SONOS - PLAY:3 Wireless Speaker for Streaming Music (Small) - Black

Product Description

The smaller, sexier, tuck in a corner and blow out the roof, all-in-one player. Wirelessly stream your entire itunes library, favorite music services, and thousands of radio stations from around the world. Versatile enough to put anywhere and still fill the room with sound. Set up simply, and expand until every room in your home is packed with music. All playing a different song in every room or the same song in perfect synchronization. Control it all from your Android iPhone or iPad using the free Sonos CONTROL app.

Product Details

• Color: Black


• Brand: Sonos


• Model: PLAY3US1BLK


• Published on: 2011-06-28


• Released on: 2011-06-28


• Original language:
  English


• Dimensions: 8.60" h x
  9.50" w x
  12.30" l,
  7.70 pounds
  

Features

• The most versatile Sonos speaker with 3 custom drivers and dedicated amps for rich, room-filling sound at any volume


• Wireless speaker streams music directly from your iTunes library, online music services and free Internet radio


• Powerful wireless network delivers HiFi sound without dropouts


• Start with one, then wirelessly expand with more to any room in your home


• Sonos App on your smartphone, tablet or PC gives you control of all your music in one place

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

599 of 615 people found the following review helpful.

Sonos 101 and the Play:3


By Captain Latte

Here's the problem with Sonos. Most of these reviews are worthless for a new customer as they have no concept what the various components do, how they fit together and what they should get! In fact, I will say that Sonos could significantly improve the messaging of their products. Think about it -- is a new customer going to have any idea what ZonePlayer or Bridge means. Even their website is quite confusing for someone new to all of this stuff. For example, they sell a ZonePlayer120 and ZonePlayer90, which have vastly different functionality. Sonos should just get rid of their marketing folks and hire some people from Apple to fix the messaging confusion. My advice for folks who want to learn more about Sonos is to find a friend with one or go to local stereo shop. Fortunately, the folks on the tech-side of Sonos know what the heck they are doing and why I give this 5 stars!

OK, I just bought a new Black Play:3 along with the Bridge. In a nutshell, here is probably all you need to know:

- Why... The Play:3 is essentially for folks who want to listen to their digital music through a high-quality speaker system that is wirelessly connected to sources of music. Typically, the music is coming from your computer's library (e.g., iTunes) or some internet service such as Pandora or TuneIn (internet radio). How do you control all of this -- by using one of their nifty free apps which run on iPhones, iPod Touch, Androids, iPads (with more to come).

- The Play:3 is your speaker component where sound comes out of. The only connection to worry about is AC power. The beauty of this is that you can move your speaker anywhere in your house at will just as you would with a clock radio.

- The Bridge is a little white box that connects to your WiFi router. It functions to stream music from the source to your Play:3 speaker, wherever that may be. Sure, you don't really need this $50 box as you could plug your Play:3 into your router, but then you defeat much of the purpose for getting a Sonos (wireless portability).

- Sonos makes setup of everything about as easy as possible. If you have a firewall (e.g., at workplace), then things become a little more complicated (you're best off just calling tech support instead of wasting hours figuring it out, which I know many have done).

- I decided to copy my entire iTunes library to a network (NAS) drive and just have Sonos access this. Essentially, I have a portable 500GB Western Digital USB drive connected to my Apple Airport Extreme base station. It is ridiculously easy to setup. The advantage of this is that my music is always available instead of needing my computer to be turned on. Also, much of disk space on my Macbook Pro is used for photos and videos. I should say that another reason I did this was because I am running Mac OS Lion, which is not yet supported by Sonos (but this will be addressed very soon).

- The nice thing about Sonos is that I can easily expand my system later on. For example, I can buy another Play:3 so that I can setup the two in stereo. Or I can create multiple zones in my house (e.g., bedroom, living room) with each Play:3 playing different music at the same time.

- The main limitation of the Play:3 is that there is no line-in jack. This means you cannot connect an outside audio source such as a CD player. And because of this limitation, you cannot configure it using an Apple Airport Express to stream from your iOS device using Apple's Airplay technology. The Play:5 system has a line-in if you really some of these features. Personally, I would love to see Sonos come out with a cheap little white box that just has some line-in audio jacks (including optical). This box could address some of the Play:3 limitations as well as offering an easy way to connect the Sonos system to an Apple TV.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with my purchase and will likely buy another Play:3 shortly to further enhance my system. It just works...and sounds great!

184 of 207 people found the following review helpful.

Not even close to Sonos 5 (play:5)


By Stephen Gibson

I had 3 Sonos 5's (now called the play:5) and I wanted to add 4th. The play:3 came out so I decided to save the $100 or so and go for the play:3 after reading all the reviews of it. I had the unit exactly 30 minutes before deciding to return it. It's not even close to the 5's. Volume is control is jumpy, not linear like the 5's, power is about half of 5's and once the volume is over 50% the sound starts to get real tinny.

Bottom line is if you don't have anything to compare the play:3 against you may be perfectly happy with it, but if you have any 5's in the mix you will be disappointed. I'm a huge fan of sonos but the play:3 just doesn't cut it and is way too expensive for the sound quality.

81 of 92 people found the following review helpful.

Easy set up and works like a charm.


By Bearcat

We were looking for something that would allow us to play music remotely with the ability to change music without having to get up every time we wanted to hear something different. Normally we have a Tivoli radio in the kitchen for FM and we also hook an ipod touch up to it for Pandora. Not the most convenient thing to do to have to find the ipod and cable and sometimes the FM stations were hard to get it clearly. We just got the Sonos Play 3 yesterday and I have got to say we are blown away by the convenience, ease of setup and sound quality.

Keep in mind you have to buy the Sonos Bridge if you want to use it wirelessly. I also bought the bridge and hooked it up to our router. I put in the setup cd and everything was running smoothly in less than 10 minutes. Easiest setup for a gadget in a long time. I then downloaded the Sonos Ipad app, then signed in to my Spotify and Pandora accounts and I was streaming effortlessly in 5 minutes. Controlling the songs from the Sonos software was really easy and I could change songs and even change the volume easily. Overall I am so impressed with the Sonos Play 3 we are going to get another for our nursery. I am a gadget geek and this is the most impressed I have been with a gadget in a very long time. Highly recommended.

Update: I have ordered another Play 3 in white for our nursery and expect delivery this week. Once it arrives and I have set it up and tested it I will update this review with thoughts on how a multiple zone speaker set up works.

Update 2 August 17: We have had the additional Play 3 speaker in the nursery for over two weeks and it works like a charm. I mainly use the Ipad app to control the speakers while at home and it is really easy to switch between the two speakers/zones and make seperate playlists, control volume seperately, etc. It could not be easier. Also, I now have added the Sirius/XM service and I can stream any of those channels with ease. I can be playing NFL Radio down in the living room while the nursery has classical music playing and it all goes off without a hitch. VERY happy.

Update 3 January 10, 2013: I have now had the Play 3 speaker for almost 1.5yrs. It still sounds just as good as the day I got it and I have not had a single problem. We run the software on our macbook air, iphones, ipads, android phone and android tablet. It has run flawlessly from all sources and the software has been solid as a rock. If you have the money this is the one to get. I recommend this to all my friends and family looking for a wireless audio solution. It is that awesome.

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