Gadgetory

hey I'm Matthew Muscovy AK from C net and we're gonna take a look at the Sonos playbar there have been rumors of a so no sound bar for a long time now but it's finally here although it's gonna set you back seven hundred dollars now on its own the play bar is actually kind of plain looking which is a good thing if you want it to blend in with your home theater rather than stand out what is unique is how short it is it's just three point three five inches tall which means it won't block your TV's remote sensor like a lot of other sound bars do the play bar is also unique and then it can be positioned either flat on a tabletop or flat up against a wall if you have a wall-mounted set up Sonos even includes two different remote sensors on the play bar so it works well in both positions you'll also notice that Sonos doesn't include a remote in the box so you're going to need to teach it to respond to commands from your TV's remote or your cable boxes remote although the setup is pretty easy around back is the Sonos is minimalist connectivity there's just an optical audio input to ethernet jacks and a power port Sonos knows that you have more than one home theater device which is why they're expecting you to connect all your devices directly to your TV first then use your TV's optical output to connect to the play bar in a lot of ways it's a cleaner solution assuming that your TV has enough inputs now unlike a lot of sound bars at this price range the play bar does not come with a wireless subwoofer although it will work with the Sonos sub which you can add wirelessly to the system even better you can add to play three speakers to the system as rear channels creating a true wireless 5.1 home theater system although altogether that ends up being a pretty expensive system but it is nice if you've already bought into the Sonos eco system and of course with the play bar you get access to so Knossos best-in-class digital music software and that means you can access all of your digital music including your personal collection and nearly every important streaming music service through Sonos controller app and the big question with the play bar is how does it sound and well it's complicated it's outstanding when it comes to virtual surround sound so from just a single speaker you really do get the impression that their sounds coming from the sides of the room even though you don't have speakers there but on the other hand without the subwoofer there's not a lot of bass here and that really shows up if you're watching action movies or especially if you're listening to bass heavy music the other thing is that the play bar does a lot of sound processing to get that really big sound and if you're an audio purist you're really going to notice that movies and music don't sound like you expect them to and ultimately that's why it's hard for me to love the play bar it's just not a speaker that I'd want to listen to every day now that's not going to be the experience for everyone and the play bar is a really nice solution if you've already got Sonos components and you want an easy way to get better sound in your living room but there are other sound bars around for the same price that sounds significantly better like the speaker craft cs3 and the Harman Kardon SP 16 so if you don't already have a lot of Sonos components you'll want to check out those first I'm Matthew Muscovy ak and this is the Sonos playbar