Review on Sonos Bridge for Sonos Wireless Network - Discontinued by Manufacturer | Find Availability and Alternatives by David Sidman

BRIDGE as the rating applies to both products. I just bought a house and wanted to hook it up for audio around the house. As I looked at Revain's multi-room systems, I realized it wasn't going to be cheap: the cost of the speakers, the controllers, PLUS the cost of running wiring throughout the house. When I saw the SONOS PLAY:1 and BRIDGE promotions, I found their wireless solution to be cheaper and with better speakers. Below are the pros and cons that made me choose the Sonos system. NOTE: Sonos BRIDGE is NOT required to use PLAY: 1/3/5 etc. See INSTALLATION section of this review. BRIDGE is primarily used to extend Sonos wireless range at a lower cost than add-on speakers. PRO HiFi. The speakers sound better than the wired multi-room systems I've tested for under $500. - resale value. Wired speakers won't add much resale value to your home. So why spend $1,000 just to keep an audio system if you're selling your property or moving? Thanks to wireless connectivity, I can take my expensive speakers with me to my new home. freedom of movement. With a wireless connection, you can take your speakers anywhere in your home. For neighborhood parties, I could even plug speakers into an outdoor power strip and stream music from home. Or take it outside in the backyard. They're waterproof, but I wouldn't use them as permanently installed outdoor speakers unless you pack them in a protective case. WLAN NOTE: Each SONOS component is its own WLAN client and repeater. Sonos Wireless is a private "mesh" wireless system that is separate from your home Wi-Fi. What does that mean for you? It routes music over its own wireless network, leaving your home WiFi untouched. This has an additional benefit as I will explain below after the installation note. Most Sonos components (PLAY:1 is NOT included) have 2 network ports. That means you can plug the component into the network jack and use the second on the speaker to connect your laptop. INSTALLATION: First technical talk. You must connect 1 Sonos component to your home network (any PLAY speakers, soundbar, bridge, etc.). For example, you must connect either the BRIDGE or the PLAY:1 to your network using a network cable. This turns this component into a wireless access point (or, as consumers commonly refer to it, a "wireless router"). All other Sonos components can now communicate wirelessly with this connected device. No other Sonos component should be connected if it is within wireless range of the connected Sonos component. If a component in your home is too far from a networked component (e.g. your garage), you can connect it to your network with a cable if available, or set up your Sonos BRIDGE (or other Sonos speaker) wirelessly . somewhere between the connected and the garage speaker. A BRIDGE or other speaker amplifies the connected speaker's WiFi and extends the range to what's in the garage. Every Sonos component is both a wireless client and a wireless access point/repeater. Each component interacts with each other in a mesh network. Think of a spider web. Any part that is touched will vibrate the rest of the network. Aside from talking about technology, think about this: One person (person 1) is in the corner of the house. When he screams, the person in the garage (person 2) cannot hear person 1. The only way to talk to Person 1 is to pick up the phone (talking over a wired connection or connecting a remote Sonos component to a wired network). or when Person 3 stands between them (when the Sonos component is physically between both speakers) and relays information back and forth (which the Wi-Fi mesh does). So with each Sonos component/speaker, Sonos' wireless range expands. Sonos Wireless Mesh lets you humorously put multiple speakers in every house in your neighborhood and suddenly everyone's house is playing the same music. Try it with Bluetooth speakers. You could not. Wi-Fi Mesh TIP: If you have an Android device, you can google "Android devices on SonosNet" and it will bring up instructions on how to use the Sonos wireless network ("SonosNet") to connect your device. Android phone/tablet. This allows you to use your mobile device further away from your home WiFi. This has disadvantages and advantages that are beyond the scope of this review. I have decided not to use SonosNet for my tablets. NOTE: Sonos BRIDGE is NOT required to use PLAY:1. Simply connect the PLAY:1 to a wired network (e.g. router) and you are good to go. You still control it with the Sonos app from your mobile device. Once the PLAY:1 is connected, you can add other Sonos components to the system. NO BRIDGE is required for this either. This is only necessary if you want to extend your $50 Sonos wireless range to a larger part of your home or garden, rather than buying another $100 PLAY speaker - small in size. BRIDGE is about the same size as Apple TV/Roku/WD TV Live. Easy pairing. To pair other Sonos components (or with the Sonos Controller app), simply press the play/volume up button on the speaker and the same combination on the other speakers. When pairing with a BRIDGE, press the pairing button on that component. - Led. The bright LED can be turned on and off via the Sonos app. Easy to sync music. You can use the free Sonos app for Android, iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod), Windows phone, Mac/Windows laptop/tablet (not a Windows Store app yet, sorry) to control speaker playback: It's easy, you can choose which speakers to pair or connect divide them into groups. Grouping speakers allows you to play the same music on those speakers. You can have up to 32 separate groups. You can also control each speaker individually via the app. Each group's volume is controlled by the Sonos app. So if speaker 1 volume is set to 50% and speaker 2 volume is set to 25%, decreasing the volume by 5% will reduce speaker 1 volume to 45% and speaker 2 volume to 20%. at home and it will continue to play as long as the music source is not from that mobile device (ie: if you are playing MP3s from your phone and your phone turns off it will stop playing. However, if you launched Pandora from your phone or you have told the speaker to play music from one of your network shares, it will continue to play since the source is coming from whatever device is still at home.) PARTIES: One cool feature is that once you download the Sonos Controller and Connect it to one of your Sonos speakers (which allows the app/phone to talk to your Sonos system - this prevents strangers from outside your home controlling your speakers), any device can control the playlist. So if you have guests over and each guest downloads and authorizes the Sonos app on your system, each guest can now add/remove songs from the queue. Now everyone can become a DJ. expandability. Sonos was smart. They released a cheaper PLAY:1 to whet your/my appetite and also gave away BRIDGE for free. As you use the system, you'll likely buy more Sonos components to expand your sound system, which will boost the company's sales. You can add any Sonos component to your system, and they all work in harmony. You can build a full-fledged home theater system in the same way. I know it sounds expensive. That. But it's still cheaper than hooking up the whole house to good speakers. - Alarm clock/sleep timer. You can set each speaker (or group of speakers) to play music at a specific time, day, and volume (alarm clock) from a specific source for a specific amount of time. Or you can also set a sleep timer to play music for a specified number of minutes to help you fall asleep. I like to wake up in the morning to pleasant music (like Norah Jones) and when I leave the house I don't have to worry about turning off the speakers. It turns off automatically after 45 minutes which I set for the alarm clock. - sound. The sound quality is pretty good. I'll leave you with the feedback of others to learn more about it. With the Sonos app, you can control bass, treble, and volume. My speakers play between 15% and 25% volume in every room - they're pretty loud. If you set it to 100%, the sound will be heard throughout the house and your neighbors may complain. The sound is very good even at low volume. It's definitely better than most Bluetooth speakers. If you place the PLAY:1 in a corner of the room, the sound will be a bit muffled at both ends due to the bass boost from the walls. You can fix this by adding more treble or moving the speaker away from the corner. PLAY:1 and BRIDGE are great devices. They don't look out of place in my house. I bought white. CONSI couldn't find many negatives in PLAY:1. But here are a few that have annoyed me. - Price. The Sonos system is expensive. Just look at the price of other components. Holy Moly. However, if you're outfitting your home with Bose speakers, the Sonos system is relatively inexpensive. Again, I chose Sonos because wiring the house doesn't add much resale value. I love the idea of taking my Sonos to my new home. - Sonos app interface. The app is clunky and looks outdated. It took me a while to figure out where to go and what to do (and I love gadgets/toys. I'm tech savvy!). It's not very user friendly - music sources. Not all apps can play music through Sonos speakers. You must use the Sonos app, add an approved source to it, and then you can play from that source. I wish you could redirect every sound from every device to your speakers. Possible sources are Pandora, network shares (NAS), iTunes, TuneIt Radio (built-in), iPod/iPad/iPhone, media files on your own Android/Windows device. At one point (if I remember correctly) my not-so-techy dad was able to stream his iPad's YouTube audio to speakers without using the Sonos app. I didn't have a chance to check how he did it, but I did see that PLAY:1 was available as a target on his iPad. Maybe it was played using the DLNA protocol. In any case it was great. input source. I wish the PLAY:1 had a Line In/Aux connection so you could connect any music source to it for playback e.g. B. a TV or an existing home entertainment system. Yes, Sonos CONNECT takes care of that, but look at the price of this component! However, CONNECT does not support SPDIF/optical input. If it wasn't for the Revain/Target Black Friday promotion I would be VERY hesitant to buy these expensive speakers. I bought two PLAY:1 during the promotion. So overall I'm very happy with the purchase. It's cheaper than wiring the whole house, and I can control my music from any of my mobile devices. It's neat. Reduce the price of other components, Sonos! I'm hoping that the increased competition in the market will result in lower prices - I'm not aware of any good alternative wireless HiFi solutions so far. I installed BRIDGE downstairs in a two story house. A PLAY:1 is at the top and another PLAY:1 is at the bottom. I may buy more PLAY:1s in the future. A BRIDGE is not needed at all in my home as one of the PLAY:1 can act as a wireless access point for the other. ------ EDIT 5/12/14: Almost half a year later and I'm still enjoying PLAY:1. Incidentally, Sonos is working to eliminate the need to connect any Sonos component to a wired network/router. From their blog post titled "Our Vision for Rock-Solid Wireless, Evolved" (April 17, 2014) "We found a way to deliver the full benefits of SonosNet without having a product directly connected to your router. Start with the speaker and your smartphone, enter your WiFi password and Sonos will take care of the rest." Network ports. (Thanks JOEKC for pointing out the original review error) EDIT 06/16/14: Clarified that SonosNET is a proprietary wireless network (thanks to Kerton)