Sonos Five (read my review - see at sonos.com) is the one speaker that I could easily recommend literally to anybody, my eyes closed. Get your ears checked if you don't like the sound it delivers (semi-serious...).
In summary, here are my top picks for the best Sonos speakers:
- It's no secret that I LOOOOOOVEEEEEE the Five (read my review - see at sonos.com). It's by far my top Sonos piece.
- It delivers fantastic sound and a great, simple design that is ideal for the modern home. The Five is your best bet for music lovers if you're looking for high-quality audio. This speaker combines great sound with a sleek design that you can place just about anywhere in your home.
- I even recommend it over TWO PIECES of One to the vast majority.
- The One (read my review - see at sonos.com) would be my second pick due to its quality for the price.
- I like how this speaker is effortless to set up, and its battery-powered design means that you can put it in any room without having to worry about the wires.
- The Arc (read my review - see at sonos.com) would be my top soundbar pick.
- To read more about this, check out my write up on Sonos Arc vs Beam Gen 2.
Also see the Sonos speaker recommender at https://www.sonos.com/en-us/business/sonos-recommender
Let me tell you something right off the bat.
The sound quality performance you'll end up getting from a speaker will always depend on your room acoustics - particularly room dimensions and speaker positions.
The impact of the combination of these two is actually so strong that in most cases, it doesn't even make sense to utter a single word on sound quality without speaking of them.
This is also why it's not unusual to see completely different reviews of the same speaker.
In one case the speaker might be placed in a sweet spot inside the room and hence the user might be satisfied. In other cases the same speaker might be ill placed and hence user might even have returned it.
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The point most people miss here is that it mostly isn't even about the engineering behind the speaker itself. It's about where you place the speaker inside which room.
So, in order to solve this problem, I've partnered with Acoustics and Audio Engineering PhD Andrea Cicero from AC Acustica and created Soundton - a simple, 2D, browser accessible online speaker placement calculator.
With Soundton, now there's a way to figure the sound quality of most speakers before you buy them.
Read more about its working principles at soundton.com.
The end colormap provides you the locations with the best (green) and worst (red) acoustics.