Sonos Amp: This is the best Sonos music streamer by far (even if it’s not right for everyone)
No one does multi-room audio better than Sonos, but its wireless speakers are limited when it comes to stereo. The Sonos Play:5 is a great speaker, for instance, and you can link two units together to create a $998 stereo pair. But if you buy a $599 Sonos Amp, you can use any conventional loudspeakers that spark your fancy. And perhaps more than two.
Sonos is coming full circle here, as its very first retail product was a small amplifier dubbed the ZonePlayer 100. That was succeeded by the ZP120, which was later renamed the Connect:Amp (now discontinued). The new Sonos Amp is light years ahead of those products, both in terms of specs and performance. I still have a ZP120 at home, but I haven’t used it in years because it’s so underpowered, delivering just 55 watts per channel.
The Sonos Amp isn’t aimed at casual music listeners. That market is better served by Sonos’s wireless speaker lineup: The Sonos One smart speaker, the simpler Play:1, and their big sibling, the Play:5. The Sonos Amp is designed for audio enthusiasts who want to blend the music-streaming convenience and multi-room audio capabilities that Sonos is so well known for with a high-end amplifier and conventional high-performance loudspeakers. The Sonos
