Sonos S2 up: everything you need to know

[What Hi-Fi?]

The release and new features coming with the Sonos S2 platform - and the older products that aren't compatible.

Sonos S2 up: everything you need to know : Read more

 

[roo_bruce]

Having bought a Connect:Amp (Gen 1) for £400 4 years ago (now legacy), and two sets of Sonos Play 1's in pairs around the house, this S2 upgrade fiasco continues to leave a huge amount of dissatisfaction with our household, after many months of bad noises coming from Sonos.
The comedy final solution: Two apps from May!?
Their next generation of products will need to be mind-blowingly beautiful and sound phenomenal because Sonos will need to attract brand new customers. This previous customer won't be investing any further and I may not be the only one.

 

[lbaltz]

I agree with roo-bruce. Sonos tried to walk back their disastrous roll out of this news back in January, but all they really did was pretend they had reconsidered screwing over their users. Sonos cares not one bit about their customers or dealers. They care about one thing: Money.
They are deserting so many Sonos owners and forcing them to pay up or live with a bifurcated system if they ever want to add products for which they may well have already invested thousands of dollars.
Sonos dealers who assist clients in making the upgrade via the Sonos Trade Up program actually pay full dealer cost for the equipment, sell it to the customer at a loss (after shipping) and then Sonos graciously gives the dealer a discount on future purchases to make them whole. Wow!!! That's SO generous!!!
Their supposed "green" philosophy is laughable as they've even stopped accepting returns of the products they've made obsolete, because hey, recycling those products costs them - you guessed it - MONEY.
Do yourself a favor. Ditch Sonos now. Or, just get ready to start over again whenever S3 comes along...

 

[10basetom]

The only new product from Sonos that would excite me is a wireless Atmos speaker system that has enough bandwidth to support Dolby TrueHD and no perceivable lip syncing issues.

 

[hackenbacker]

I agree with roo-bruce. Sonos tried to walk back their disastrous roll out of this news back in January, but all they really did was pretend they had reconsidered screwing over their users. Sonos cares not one bit about their customers or dealers. They care about one thing: Money.

No business can survive on thin air. Yes, you need to support your existing customers, but the only way you can continue to do that is to keep selling new products.

Sonos products are still great, but the truth is they've been held back by being first to market, and whilst they can sell to existing customers looking to expand their systems, it is getting more difficult to compete with other systems for entirely new ones.

They need to be able to offer new features, and that means a new architecture. On the other hand, they are the only manufacturer that has a defined minimum support for discontinued products. They are still allowing you to use the existing software on supported hardware, and it will continue to be supported as best they can.

The fuss being made over this is rather excessive when it's pretty much impossible to buy a mobile phone that has more than 2 years of support before being turned into a virtual paperweight despite costing 2x - 3x more than a Sonos device.

 

[carj]

Pretty straightforward for me. Mosst of my products are either old Connects on old Play 5s.
To replace them with new models would cost me 3 grand.
I'll stay on S1 and will never buy a Sonos product that is not compatible with S1.
When they give up on that I'll give up on Sonos.
Deezer in the car, on my portable speakers, CD and vinyl everywhere else.
Ciao Sonos.