Sonos - One SL Wireless Smart Speaker - Black

## Setup If you’ve used the Sonos app to setup other Sonos speakers, you’ll find the process to be very familiar. First, place the speaker where you want it in your home and connect the power. Open the app, go to Settings and select System > Add Product. The app will then scan for new speakers and walk you through the setup process. At the end, the Sonos app will also install the latest updates to the speaker, so there is a bit of wait until you can hear the sound from the new speaker. ## Sound Quality If you already have a Sonos One or Play:1 speaker, you’ll find the sound quality on the Sonos One SL is exactly the same. The only difference is the lack of microphones on the SL. As is typical with Sonos speakers, the sound quality is superb with great bass. Highs, mids and lows all come through clearly and make for a very enjoyable listening experience. One speaker can fill a medium-sized room easily and likely even a large room. The Sonos One SL can be paired with another Sonos One (but NOT a Sonos Play:1) for stereo sound or grouped with other Sonos speakers around your home for simultaneous play. ## Features No voice assistant: The main reason for buying this particular speaker is likely the omission of a voice assistant. This isn’t just for privacy-minded folks: if you already have an Echo device in the room you plan to use a Sonos speaker, you can save some money and forgo having a second voice assistant in the same room. Or, perhaps you just want a second speaker to create a stereo pair with another Sonos One speaker that already has Alexa. AirPlay 2: Although this speaker has no virtual assistant, it still has some of the benefits of the Sonos One, one of which is AirPlay 2. This allows you to easily stream music from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to the speaker without going through a Bluetooth pairing process. While playing music, simply tap the AirPlay icon on your iPhone and select the speaker. Humidity resistance: You can’t go splashing water on this speaker, but if you plan on placing this in the bathroom, the extra humidity from the shower will not be a problem. ## Summary The main difference between the Sonos One and One SL is that the latter lacks microphones and the voice assistant. The Sonos One SL still has the great sound quality your expect from Sonos, as well as AirPlay 2 functionality.

I owned a SONUS 5 when it first came out I was a bit worried about buying a SONUS 1 because I was afraid it would not meet my expectations. For this reason I bought two SONOS 1 SLs and stereo paired them. Wow so much better than my original SONOS 5. Everyday I am blown away by how nice these sound and look.

I Was In The Market For Speakers, (Quarantine & Need Music, LOUDLY) & After Reading Many Reviews & Weeks Of Research I Settled On Sonos One SL & Im Very Pleased, I Also Purchased Open-Box, Yep & 1st Best Buy Purchase & As A Young Woman, During A Pandemic, ✅✅ Satisfied Boxes. The Speakers Are Loud, Voice/Sound Clear, No Muffles, Connecting/Set-Up To WiFi Easy. Its Nearing Month Since Purchase & Exactly DOP Will Buy 2nd Sonos Speaker.

Bought these to mount on wall. Wanted to go with a clean look against the wall. Sonos perfect like always.

These two speaker were purchased as a gift and shipped to California. However, I have three of their speakers and enjoy them very much.

Simple to set up and the sound is amazing from such a compact unit. I didn’t expect this big of sound from it. Super impressed. Bought 2 and have one in the bedroom and one in the kitchen. Thinking of buying another pair for each of the other bedrooms. Makes for nice listening throughout the entire house while cleaning without having to blast the main living room stereo just to hear it back in the bedrooms.

The Sonos One SL is a nice quality product with a great deal of design consideration. Its a sleek and unobtrusive package, with a nice silicone base for non-slip grip on almost any surface. I chose to place this speaker in the kitchen, as we love to listen to music while cooking and preparing meals. Out of the box, you get the speaker, a power cord and a minimalistic instruction guide. The power cord is molded to match the bottom of the unit, which is another nice attention to detail. Once plugged into the unit, it's not going anywhere and won't be accidentally pulled out either, as it enters the unit at 90 degrees from underneath the speaker. Plug the speaker in, and download the Sonos App. I have another Sonos product, so already had the app installed. Once loaded, go to settings, system, add product. The app walks you through the process of setting up the speaker. When the speaker is ready, you will be asked to 'tune' your speaker. The app provides a video for you to follow and start the tuning. This was new to me, I didn't have to do this with the Sonos Amp that I have with my Sonance speakers. And I'll admit, I failed on the first try! The video shows a young lady waving her cell phone around the room in an up and down motion. I did the same. It must have been somewhat half heartedly, as I was told by the app to retry using a much more 'animated' motion. Long, sweeping up and down motions are required to make the tuning work properly! Not just sweeping your arm up and down in a 2ft range! Lesson learned, second time was a charm. I'm sure the kitchen was a little challenging, with the refrigerator noise in one corner and chatting in the other corner, but as soon as the speaker tune was set up, it sounded good, but really, really bassy, especially at low levels. I was originally going to review the speaker with 4 stars due to the bass, especially at lower volumes. I couldn't see any way to change the EQ instantly in the app and was a little disappointed. However, after asking a friend who has what appears to be about 73 Sonos speakers around his house, and a little research online, I found that if you go to Settings/System/Choose your Speaker and scroll down, there is an EQ option under 'Sound' - there you can adjust the bass and treble to your liking. This really helped the speaker come alive, and not just sound like a wall of bass until it was turned up louder, where the mids and treble take over the bass more. The first song played is my 'goto' when testing new speakers: Disturbed's version of 'The Sound of Silence'. I choose this song because it has a great musical and vocal range, with soft, sweeping vocals accompanied by soothing piano, elevating to strong rock vocals punching through a backdrop of louder, more dramatic music. The Sonos One SL performed flawlessly, punching the bass notes and accentuating the mids and highs. It really fills the room sound, like a warm blanket enveloping you! I can see me adding more of these speakers to my original. Presumably, 'SL' is a designation for 'Sonos Lite' as it doesn't have a microphone for Google or Alexa integration, but it still delivers the same sound qualities of the Sonos One, and the previous Sonos One accessories work with the Sonos One SL. You can also pair Sonos One and Sonos One SL to create a stereo sound field. The Sonos One SL can also be used as home theater surround sound speakers. The SL also introduces Apple Airplay 2 and capacitive touch controls on top. There is a pleasing, single LED on top, a play/pause button and then 4 dots to the left and right of it. Those are your volume up and down touch points, but if you slide from left to right, through the play touch point, you skip to the next track and alternatively from right to left, skip to previous tracks. And being in the kitchen, humidity resistance is a nice feature to have, to be able to use it without concern near a steaming stove. Listening to some classical music while writing this review, the sound is compelling, warm, vibrant and clear, with great definition no matter what volume you have it at. I've really enjoyed using the Sonos One SL so far!

I was planning to use one of these in my living room/great room to stream from (Google Play, SiriusMX & Amazon Music). With any new speakers/headphones I generally start by listening to Boston's first album and Pink Floyd's DSOTM, as I know what I'm listening for in each. I placed the Sonos One SL on top of the Grand Piano in our living room and began to set it up. This will take longer than it does with other speakers that you cast to, as you must use the Sonos App to cast to the speaker, although you can send to it via BT and Apples Airplay 2 directly. Which at first bothered me, but their app does allow you to access many other streaming apps from their app, so it's a one stop shop as an interface to your Streaming services. I setup a Sonos account and added: Amazon, Google, Play, iHeartRadio, Pandora and SiriusXM. But Google Play and Pandora, kept disappearing after set up. After so research I found that you have to have a US/Canada address to use them with Sonos. Once I updated my account with a complete address all worked like it should have. I then tried to add a Voice service for Google and Alexa, and neither would stay saved. When you finish setting thisks up and adding your product they suggest you "tune" the speaker based on room acoustics with Trueplay. I found this made a big difference, but you have to make sure your room as as silent as possible. After about a 1/2 hour I'd completed setup (what I could get done). On to the Music. The highs in Boston's Foreplay/Long Time were nice an crisp and airy, the mid bass was good but the low end was disappointingly thin. Now I'm in a big room and this is a fairly small speaker. Anyway I move on to DSOTM, and I'm again impressed by the midrange and highs but not so much by the low end, it's trying, but not quite being successful. One of the other things I noticed in PF's great Gig in the sky was the lack of stereo separation, when I expected sounds to swirl thay didn't and were sometimes lost. This brings me back to the reality this is a single mono speaker, to get true stereo you need two, and there is a special set up for that. But overall this single speaker just could not fill my living room adequately. It occured to me that I could compare this Sonos One to My JBL link 500 (about twice the price). so I set them both up with the same music, at the same time, muting one then the other. I was somewhat surprised by what I found. But not surprised that the JBL had better bass and true stereo, but it's mid range was quite mellow, lacking the Sonos's dynamics, and the Sonos highs we much more dramatic and better paired with it's mid range; so except for the JBL's bass being deeper and louder the Sonos was much tighter overall, no doubt in my mind anther speaker would have made this a fair fight which Sonos might have won. So to be fair I moved the Sonos One SL to my, much smaller office, and re-tuned it (it asked me if it had been moved - talk about speakers getting smarter) to it's new space. The bass sounded much better here, but still was on the thin side, but for the money they sounded excellent. This brought me back to reality, I could have spent 2.5x on a Sonos Play and gotten better sound, or 2x and gotten two Sonos One's. But at the time is was the economics of one, with the ability to upgrade later, which is a nice option. I do wish the Sonos app could be a complete unifier, and include iTunes, but that's probably more of an Apple thing. They do allow you to find other music you have on your network (music servers and such). You can directly connect the speaker via Ethernet, so for the price they are very flexible, but mono, but you know that, and if you want Stereo you need another. Something I'll probably get in the near future. As this is a great smart speaker for the price, I'm just not sure where I'm going to use it.