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The best Sonos speakers for your home setup

The best Sonos speakers for multi-room audio nirvana, no matter your home.

06 October 2022

Sonos is the undisputed master of modern home audio. But how do you choose from the best Sonos speakers on the market?

The American brand pioneered the kind of seamless, stylish, multi-room speaker system that has gradually replaced the traditional hi-fi setup for many people.

UPDATE: We have updated our best Sonos speakers guide with the fantastic Sonos Sub Mini. We have been lucky enough to have it in our Sonos setup for a while now and it's added a brilliant bass layer to our music and movie watching.

The brand has quietly-but-assuredly releasing a steady stream of brilliant speakers that meet a range of needs.

When you buy a Sonos product you know it’s going to tick a number of important boxes: it’ll sound great, look great, be a doddle to set up, and work with any other Sonos gear you might already own.

The company has been in the business for 20 years now, and it can be tricky to keep up with all of its speaker products.

Here, then, are 11 Sonos speakers we love, comprising the core range and some additional Sonos-platform products that deserve to be treated as part of the group.

Best Sonos speakers

The Sonos One represents the brand’s multi-room audio ideal. It’s compact and stylish, yet packs a deceptive aural punch. The One’s rounded-block shape is designed to slot in anywhere around the house, from a kitchen worktop to a living room shelf to a bedside table. You can pair two Sonos Ones together for stereo sound, or team those two with the Sonos Beam for a full surround sound set-up. Add in Alexa and Google Assistant integration, and you have a smart speaker in every sense of the word.

In our tests, the Sonos One works exceptionally well. It's a mainstay in our kitchen, with the Alexa compatibility working well. We did find that we still used the app, though, especially now that BBC Sounds has been integrated so seamlessly.

If you aren't a 'voice' fan, then we recommend the Sonos One SL - a slightly cheaper speaker that has the same components but omits voice functionality (it doesn't have a microphone). It’s for those who just want great multi-room audio, with none of the voice-activated gimmicks of the Amazon Echo generation.

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While the Sonos Beam lives in the company’s Home Cinema category, it’s such a superb and multi-functional all-round speaker that it deserves a place on this list. This is a compact soundbar ostensibly designed to bolster the sound of your TV while largely staying out of sight. But the sheer quality of its sound output - courtesy of four full-range woofers, three passive radiators, five Class-D digital amplifiers and one tweeter - together with its voice assistant compatibility - make it a natural with audio of any kind.

If you shop around you can still get the 1st Gen version of the Beam but we would recommend the 2nd Gen. Its internal speakers have been re-jigged with five separate arrays, compared to the three in the first Beam. Not only does this mean improved sound, it also has the ability to blast through Dolby Atmos, something that was sorely missing from the first version of the Beam. With this addition, the Beam is not just a brilliant Sonos speaker but, at its price, one of the best Dolby Atmos speakers around.

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Originally this speaker range was called the Sonos Play:5 but with a redesigned CPU and a new monochromatic finish, the Sonos Five was born. It's the big-hitter of the Sonos speaker family, and the centrepiece of any multi-room Sonos system. It’s the most powerful speaker in the range, with three custom-designed woofers delivering rich bass and a sealed architecture that eliminates reverb and echo. Sitting it lengthways will offer your stereo sound from a single speaker, but standing it up switches to mono. You can then pair it with a second unit for a formidable classic stereo set-up.

It also has a 3.5mm jack so you can plug it up to a record player and away you go (which is exactly how we have set up the Five that we had for testing).

If you are looking for a Sonos setup for your TV then look elsewhere at the soundbars. This one is really meant for audio, but boy does it do that job beautifully.

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One of the best - and certainly cheapest - Sonos speakers around. This is a portable speaker that will integrate nicely into your Sonos setup but take it outside and it will also act as a Bluetooth speaker. Automatic Trueplay means that the speaker adapts to whether being inside or out and you get around 10 hours' battery life on the thing. Compared the Move, this is a small speaker but one that packs fantastic sound within its small frame.

Read our Sonos Roam review for more on this fun speaker. And if you fancy one that's a little cheaper and completely voice assistant free then, just like the One, there is an SL version of the Roam which comes without a speaker.

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We are big fans of the Sonos Sub Mini, the newest Sonos on the block. It offers a meaty amount of bass but doesn't have anywhere near the footprint of the full-fat Sub. That doesn't mean it's tiny, as it still measures 9 inches in diameter and 12 inches in height. But plug this Sub Mini into your current Sonos setup and you will be rewarded with deep rumblings, crisp beats and much more.

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The Sonos Arc is a stunning soundbar which is at the top of Sonos' now burgeoning soundbar range. It offers Dolby Atmos, voice control with the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and thanks to HDMI eARC, it's very simple to setup. This is a full-fat soundbar - with 11 digital amplifiers, 8 woofers and 3 tweeters - which has been made for TVs but even when the screen is off, there are plenty of audio options available.

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Pick up the Sonos Sub (now in its 3rd gen) if you’re looking to add a little extra low-end rumble to your audio set-up. While it’s a hefty bit of kit at 16kg, the Sub is also surprisingly slim and can be oriented either upright or laying on its side. The Sub integrates seamlessly with any other Sonos speakers, whereupon its twin inward-facing speaker drivers add a whole new dimension to your music. Add it to a Beam and a pair of Ones, and you have yourself a high-quality wireless 5.1 surround sound system.

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8. Symfonisk bookshelf speaker

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View now at Ikea View now at Ikea View now at Ikea View now at Ikea View now at Ikea

The Symfonisk bookshelf speaker sees Sonos team up with Ikea to produce a compact speaker that can be positioned or mounted almost anywhere.

You can even screw it to the wall and use it as a (very small) shelf. Perhaps the most appealing thing about the Symfonisk bookshelf speaker, however, is that it offers a bone fide Sonos experience for less than £100.

It’ll hook up seamlessly to your other Sonos products, while pairing two together proves to be a highly affordable way to get a fully fledged stereo system up and running.

The speaker is now in its second gen, which proves that Sonos continues to see a lot of love in its hook-up with Ikea.

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True to its name, the Sonos Move can be used pretty much anywhere, courtesy of a battery and IP56 water resistance. Not only that, the Sonos Move adds Bluetooth connectivity so you don’t need to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot to get the music pumping. Just stream straight from your smartphone. Like many other Sonos speakers, the Move also supports both Alexa and Google Assistant.

If you want a smaller portable speaker, then you should be looking at the newest Sonos of the bunch, the Sonos Roam. This one is a little too burly for our liking.

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As its distinctly Scandinavian name should tell you, the Symfonisk table lamp is the product of a collaboration between Sonos and furniture giant Ikea. And what an inspired team-up it proves to be. The Symfonisk is both a stylish table lamp and a high-quality Sonos speaker, providing the ideal 2-in–1 for homes or rooms where space is at a premium. These being Sonos devices, you can pair them up for stereo sound and integrate them with your existing Sonos speakers.

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The Sonos Ray is the newest Sonos we've tested and we were utterly impressed with the results. The Sonos Ray is the most cost-friendly soundbar Sonos has produced and it's been made to get people away from using their TV speakers. So much so that even if your TV is 32 inches, the Ray will sit in front of it and not dwarf the thing.

It may not offer Dolby Atmos but the sound is superb from the Sonos Ray and it is one of the best-lookin soundbars around.

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