Closer Examination and Build Quality

A direct successor to the Play:5, the Sonos Five didn't change at all in terms of design. It's a heavy, blocky wireless speaker with smooth, rounded edges. Its front is completely covered in a graphite mesh grille, hiding away a total of six speaker units. With that in mind, the Five obviously has no omnidirectional ambitions, although it does a good job of filling up a room with sound. More on that later in the review. The speaker feels sturdy and robust. It doesn't have an official IP rating, but Sonos calls it humidity resistant, which implies it's safe to use in a bathroom setting.


The Sonos Five is available in black and white. I had both options at my disposal, so here you can see them next to each other.


When used as a single unit, the Sonos Five is supposed to be positioned horizontally. In that case, it's configured as a stereo unit. When rotated by 90° and placed vertically, the speaker automatically switches to mono, expecting to be paired with a secondary Five unit in a physically separated stereo pair. To cater to both speaker orientations, Sonos placed tiny, unobtrusive feet on three of its sides, giving you complete freedom to position it to your preference.


The smooth upper side of the Sonos Five has a set of there discrete touch controls. They're used for pausing and playing music, adjusting the volume, and quick grouping with the nearest Sonos speaker groups. You can also use the swipe gestures to jump to the next song (left to right) or go back to the previous one (right to left). The touch controls react quickly and precisely and are practically indistinguishable from physical controls. Where's the microphone for voice commands, you may wonder? Bizarrely, it doesn't exist on the Sonos Five even though less expensive Sonos speakers, such as the Sonos One and Sonos Beam Gen 2 soundbar (reviewed here), offer it. While I'm not personally stricken by the omission of the microphone because Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa aren't available in my country anyway, this could potentially be a dealbreaker for some users. Using a third-party voice-enabled device is a possible solution, or, should you have any of them in your home, you can issue the voice commands through your Sonos One, Move, Roam, Beam or Arc.


On the back of the Sonos Five is a 10/100 Ethernet port, 3.5-mm analog line input, the Join button, and a power connector. The power cord is of course supplied, and it's color-matched to the speaker. The Five also offers wireless connectivity. The built-in Wi-Fi card supports 802.11b/g/n wireless networks and works in 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands. I found the wireless connectivity completely reliable, so much so that I never had to resort to using a wired connection to my home network.

The speaker also supports Apple AirPlay 2 for easy audio playback from Apple devices, as well as Spotify Connect, which means you'll see it on the list of available speakers when playing music within Spotify's mobile or desktop app. Bluetooth isn't supported by the Five, which is true of most other Sonos speakers, too.