Sonos Playbase review

Our Verdict

If you can afford it, the Sonos Playbase offers almost everything y'all want in a soundbase, particularly large audio and ease of employ.

For

• Big-fourth dimension bass
• Clear vocals
• Room-filling sound
• Piece of cake to set and utilize

Confronting

• No HDMI
• Expensive

Tom'due south Guide Verdict

If you can afford information technology, the Sonos Playbase offers virtually everything you desire in a soundbase, particularly big sound and ease of use.

Pros

• +

  Big-time bass

• +

  Articulate vocals

• +

  Room-filling sound

• +

  Easy to set up and use

The Sonos Playbase is now discontinued, only when it launched Sonos' have on the soundbase (a soundbar intended to go nether your Tv stand) didn't disappoint.

With enormous bass, clear vocals and skillful ease of employ, the Playbase even outdoes Sonos' impressive Playbar soundbar. If you lot have $700 and want a simple and great-sounding way to improve your Television's audio, the Playbase is among the all-time soundbars yous tin buy — at least, it was for a while.

Our Sonos Arc review rates Sonos's first soundbar with Dolby Atmos with an Editor's Option award. The Arc is the company's side by side-gen home entertainment hardware with a refreshed design and all-new interior hardware. It sports xi loftier-performance drivers, 3 tweeters and 8 custom elliptical woofers.

With the Sonos Arc on sale for $799, the Playbase is discontinued. But y'all tin can yet get one refurbished, in which case you could notice this Sonos Playbase review helpful in your purchasing decisions.

Design

The Playbase is on the minor side for a premium soundbase. At 28.6 x 15 ten 2.3 inches, it'due south less wide and deep than the 42 10 16.5 x three.v-inch ZVox 770. Despite the smaller size, the Sonos has plenty packed in: six midrange drivers, iii tweeters and one woofer, and each driver has its own amplifier.

Available in all white or all black, the Playbase doesn't exactly look similar whatever other speaker in the Sonos line — several of the others feature gray elements like speaker grills — but its streamlined aesthetic will fit in well with an existing arrangement.

The Playbase has minimal buttons and inputs. A unmarried LED in the front end provides status through color (white for on and green for mute, for example). There's also a touch-sensitive push for play and suspension; areas to the right and left of the play button control the volume. Most of the functions are handled through the Sonos app, or, once you've ready it up, your Telly remote.

On the dorsum, yous'll find a place to plug in the ability string; an optional Ethernet port (the unit also does Wi-Fi, which could be plenty unless you're streaming uncompressed sound); and an optical digital sound connection.

Different some higher-stop soundbars, like the $700 Sony HT-NT5 and the $500 JBL SB450, the Playbase lacks HDMI. This may be an issue if your Tv doesn't have equally many HDMI inputs as you want, or if it doesn't support optical digital audio.

Performance

Sonos' Playbar has been the soundbar/base to beat in terms of movie and music performance for the by few years, and the Playbase exceeds it in all areas.

Bass performance was phenomenal for movies. When Medico Strange'south machine crashed, the booms and thuds shook the floor — without a subwoofer. The bass also adds resonance to dialogue when you're watching movies or TV shows, making David's debates nearly his mental wellness in Legion easy to understand.

Sonos' Playbar has been the soundbar/base to beat in terms of motion-picture show and music performance for the past few years, and the Playbase exceeds it in all areas.

The orchestral arrangements in Doctor Strange swelled with vivid horns and strings, while the crowd noise in the groundwork of the UNC-Kentucky basketball helped make the feel more than engaging.

More than: Best Bluetooth Speakers for Home or On-the-Go

The Playbase's strengths in home theater too translate to music. The bass breaks on Jidenna's "Long Live the Chief" rattled the room, while Rihanna'due south vocals on Time to come's "Selfish" sounded full and clear. The audio-visual guitar on Big Star'due south "Thirteen" was sharp and realistic.

The unit filled my living room with audio, and it can get plenty loud for virtually viewing situations.

Setup

The Playbase is easy to ready and use — a key qualification for a proficient soundbase. It's intended to become nether a TV stand up, and non to be mounted on a wall. If y'all don't take a place to put information technology under the Tv set, the Playbar would be a meliorate choice.

In that location's fiddling to do to physically connect the Playbase to your TV: plug the speaker into the wall and connect the digital optical audio cablevision to your brandish. The rest of setup happens in Sonos' app. While there are quite a few screens to run through, from connecting to Wi-Fi to detecting whatever other Sonos speakers you have, most people should have no problem getting the system fix up.

More: Sonos Play:5: Sound Centerpiece

The unit of measurement doesn't come with a remote, but information technology can learn how to use your existing Tv set's remote to control volume. You can also control the volume with the app or with the touch on-sensitive buttons on the front end of the unit.

To make the Playbase sound its best, you'll want to run Trueplay, Sonos' room-modeling effect. The speaker will play sounds and you walk effectually your room waving your phone around. It feels quite silly, but the sound improvements are well worth information technology. The bass was richer and the sound field wider later on I ran Trueplay.

If the Playbase itself doesn't create an immersive enough experience, y'all can use Sonos' Play:one speakers as left and right surrounds. You tin as well add a Sub, but only the almost fanatical bass lovers will need more than than what the Playbase outputs. And, of class, you can group together Sonos speakers in other rooms for multiroom sound.

Bottom Line

The Sonos Playbase impresses with its large bass, clear vocals and room-filling power. It'due south piece of cake to set up and utilise, and sounds great whether you're playing movies, Television shows or music. In other words, it hits all the things you want out of a soundbase.

Y'all pay for the privilege, though, and yous tin become good sound and more features on cheaper models. The $500 JBL SB450, for example, comes with three HDMI inputs, and the Playbase has none. But the SB450 and like soundbars don't offer the overall experience that the Playbase does.

If you have other Sonos speakers and can beget the Playbase — and your TV supports optical digital audio — information technology volition assist consummate your home sound system. If you already have a Playbar, y'all don't need to upgrade; the Playbase sounds better, simply not enough to warrant a change.

Photo credit: Sonos

Michael Gowan covers soundbars, TVs, portable speakers and other audio- and video-related topics for Tom'south Guide. He's written nigh music and engineering science for more than twenty years for a raft of publications including Wired, Men's Periodical, PC Earth and Macworld. When he'due south not reviewing speakers, he's probably listening to 1 anyhow.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/sonos-playbase,review-4297.html

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