SONOS is an innovative technology company that created the wireless HiFi system, which found an optimal listening position in the audio world. Its wireless technology and capabilities deliver music from virtually any music source, whether in the cloud or locally, making it a fan of fanatics. Its simple setup still has great appeal, but be aware that if the sound system is not good, everything else can be said to be white. Fortunately, SONOS did not disappoint us. The audio effects created by its products Play:3, Play:5 and Sub are all convincing. The Sonos Playbar, which sells for $699 (about RMB 4,342), is the newest member of the family. With this product, Sonos has established a foothold in the home video market. Can the Sonos Playbar be the best audio and video companion in the living room? Let us find the answer.
If you want to briefly describe the Sonos Playbar, you have to say that it is a very cool product. Its size is 3.35 × 35.43 × 5.51 inches (about 8.5 × 90 × 14 cm), just right under the user's flat-panel TV. We also actually tested the size of the product, using a 42-inch and 47-inch TV at the same time, the results are very good, the size is very suitable. The exterior of the Sonos Playbar is wrapped in a black speaker “outerwear†with long, cyan edges embedded on both sides of the speaker, and a pair of color-matched buttons on each of the sounding mesh holes. These are the Sonos standard volume adjustment buttons. And the mute button, there is an LED power light on the right, which is similar to the design style of Sonos Sub. The long metal edges are made of extruded aluminum with an embedded infrared receiver and infrared repeater strips in between, with a notch on the underside of the power supply, two Ethernet interface and Toslink port. In general, its manufacturing process is impeccable, the specifications of each opening are very uniform, and no flaws are visible in the human test.
In addition to providing a good visual contrast, there is a small Sonos trademark, and the other parts of the larger aluminum edge are nine sound-driven heat sinks. The nine vocal drives consist of six 8 cm conical aluminum midrange loudspeakers and three 2.5 cm dome-shaped titanium tweeters, with the midrange loudspeaker powered by neodymium magnets and each Each speaker has its own digital amplifier. The speakers are placed in a particularly hard and fully sealed plastic at a 45-degree angle, which is the key to optimal listening, whether the Playbar is mounted on a wall or placed flat on a TV cabinet. Provide better sound imaging results. Of course, the accelerator inside and the 800MHz Power PC CPU work together to determine the positioning of the Playbar and adjust it in turn, so that the perfect sound can be output.
The Sonos Playbar isn't really a groundbreaking industrial design, but it's undeniable that it's definitely better than a regular bar. That being said, its size is suitable for almost any color TV, but it is very recognizable. Every savvy visitor will notice the product and ask about it, at least in the course of our testing. the result of.
Sonos has always been very proud of how easy it is to install your system, and Playbar is no exception. In order to test the ease of installation, we deliberately found a girl who is relatively uncomfortable with digital technology products to install Playbar and a Sonos Bridge. The results showed that it took less than five minutes to complete. That's right, installing the Playbar requires just plugging in the power cord and the Toslink cable, then connecting the other end of the cable to a TV or other audio source, it's that simple and easy.
After the installation is complete, the Playbar will prompt the user to press the boost button of the TV remote control, which allows the Playbar to find the appropriate IR code. Once this is done, the volume of the Playbar can be controlled later using the user's TV remote control. In addition, if the Playbar does not directly recognize the user's remote control, the Sonos software will direct the user to press the volume adjustment button and the mute button so that the correct code can be recorded and added to the Sonos server's list. In this way, future customers will not need to repeat these exceptions. The ease of this operation is often difficult to implement, but Sonos researchers have made the infrared remote control pairing operation as simple as possible.
During the test, although the Sonos controller software is very concise and easy to follow the tutorial, there are some minor difficulties in pairing the Playbar with the Bridge. However, remove the Bridge so that it is a little further away from the router, and then reset the router quickly to fix the problem. Next, just click on the join button on the Bridge and the mute and boost buttons on the Playbar. Once the Playbar and Bridge are successfully connected, it takes ten minutes to index 40GB of music on the connected external hard drive via the USB interface, during which time the user can enter login information for the streaming service. In total, it took less than half an hour from a new machine that was not disassembled to a complete audio and video system.
There is a small hint about the setup issue. During the test we were forced to connect the Playbar directly to a set-top box because it didn't start when our particular flat-panel TV was set to HDMI input. At this time, the Sonos Playbar lost the audio being played by the push TV. If we want the analog surround sound of Sonos to be turned on, we can only exchange the connection between the PS3 and the satellite TV box. This is very inconvenient and violates the simple use of Sonos. Of course, for some users, their TV sets are not so limited, which will not cause problems, but this is indeed something that needs to be carefully considered before everyone chooses to spend $700 on the Playbar.
In the previous Sonos review, there were also issues related to Sonos desktop and mobile controller applications. Since their major overhaul a year ago, the user experience has remained basically unchanged. There are three control panes on the slightly larger screen, the leftmost one shows all the connected Sonos speakers, the middle pane shows the audio track queue, and the tracks played on the currently developed speakers, the rightmost pane shows The audio source available to the user. At the top of the interface are volume, EQ, play/pause, track control, and a generic search box. In addition, there is a button at the bottom of the interface to clear the current queue, which saves it as a playlist, plus a sleep timer and an alarm setting.
All of these features are available in the mobile app, but are located in the menu and are not directly available. For example, if the user wants to adjust the bass and treble settings on the "playing" screen of the mobile app, he needs to click on no less than 5 menus to enter the desired control interface. It's hard to say that this is a perfect user interface, and there are actually many operations that can easily annoy users.
Needless to say, the multi-pane interface of the desktop and tablet controller app is much better than the mobile phone version of the interface, because it can directly carry out more control operations, such as the user can easily pull and put the song into the queue, you can enter The different levels of the menu also control the queue and the tracks being played. Although the controller app has some incomprehensible, most users can quickly get familiar with and use the interface quickly in one or two days.
It seems that Sonos has just started to support every kind of music service, but the new streaming media platform seems to be released at least a week later. That's why Sonos has its own Sonos Labs feature that allows users to test new services as they become available. The functionality provided by Sonos is rarely mentioned, although there are often new things that need to be tried, but it is also a surprise to suddenly discover a new music provider.
I’ve talked about Playbar’s sound effects before, but it’s hard to repeat it. The sound of the Playbar is really superior to other bars, especially when playing music. This is a versatile speaker that works great for any type of sound we've lost, whether it's a heavy bass from Jay Z's The Black Album or a guitar solo from Phish. The bass is very tight and the vocals are very clear. Similarly, Playbar also excels in audio playback on TV and movies, providing superior analog surround effects. Overall, this is the most improved of all the TV speakers that have been heard.
Can it replace your home stereo? The answer is still worse. Generally speaking, listeners who only use casual games will not find that the sound output of the Playbar will not have any problems, but if you think that this new Sonos can provide sound depth and stereo distinction like a set of desktop speakers or stereo systems, then it may be Will be disappointed and return. After all, the Playbar is just a sound bar, which can only bring some sound effects to the user's original TV speakers, or give users a convenient way to enjoy music, instead of a complicated stereo system, nothing more.
Playbar's home theater performance is supported by a unique pair of features, nighttime sound and voice enhancement. The nighttime sound effects are mainly for those late-night TV fans, but they don't want to affect neighbors. Turn it on, the audio dynamic range from the speaker will be reduced, some soft sounds like dialogue will become louder, and the loud sound like a blast will become milder. This feature is great for watching movies, but we found that this feature makes the sound of the talk show sound harsh. In general, we still prefer the audio effect when the night sound is turned off.
On the other hand, voice enhancement is a popular feature for watching TV. It can weaken the bass, add gain to the center channel, and reduce the gain of competing channels, increasing or decreasing certain frequency ranges. In actual use, this feature excels because it makes the sound sound fuller and clearer, especially when watching news or ESPN on TV interviewers. This good feature can only be noticed when it is turned off, because when it is turned off, the user suddenly finds that the sound in the screen seems to be weakened and blurred.
In general, the arrangement of the nine drives makes the entire room full of sound, although Sonos is not willing to talk about the wattage of its products, but the Playbar really can increase the volume, and when we adjust the output volume to the maximum, To find any sound distortion. I have to say that if you are looking forward to Playbar for your next family party, then you will not be disappointed.
Despite the many features of the Playbar, we have to mention that when it is paired with the Sonos Sub, it creates an extremely high-quality listening experience. The Playbar has all the basics. In addition to the lack of a subwoofer's low-end punch, we sometimes ignore this feature, especially when watching movies. After all, the six 8-cm drivers don't bring rumbling bass that is comparable to the cinema level. This is not to say that the Playbar itself does not bring good home theater audio effects. This means that if you add a match with Sub, it will be more perfect. If you don't have Sub, the experience will be significantly reduced. In fact, by using a pair of Play:3s as satellite speakers to create a true 5.1 surround system, home audio and video sound can be greatly improved, but adding Sub is the best way to really make up for the Playbar sound wave gap.
Sonos Playbar's ingenious production is a sound bar with good sound quality, but the high price of close to 700 US dollars (about 4,339 yuan) does have some flaws, it is difficult for users to buy. And with Sub, the use of real can bring a really good home theater sound experience, but this investment will increase to 1300 dollars to 1400 dollars (this is not the other 50 dollars of Sonos Bridge), which is about to enter with Vizio Compared to the wireless subsystem, the sound bar in the market is indeed very expensive.
Vizio's products are also highly rated. It can deliver music via Bluetooth, has a pair of satellite speakers, and can provide sound quality close to Sonos. It costs only $329 (about RMB 2042), but choose Vizio. Users will not be able to get the Sonos controller's integrated music streaming solution, Playbar's powerful and well-designed hardware, and the succinct settings only available from Sonos. It seems that although the Playbar may not be a lot of money for the consumer, it does provide a great user experience. If economic conditions permit, its performance will never disappoint users.
Brilliant Electronic Systems Technology Co., Ltd. , http://www.yichen-flashlight.com