[Hooch Tan]

http://www.sonos.com/s5demo

"We designed the S5 around an iPhone app.  With the exception of Griffin and a car radio headset, there aren’t really many other 3rd party CE manufacturers building devices around an iPhone app.  We made a decision a 1 ¼ ago to not only build a free iPhone app, but develop the perfect product to marry to an iPhone app."

If you are one of those rare people who own an iPhone or iPod Touch, and you have some coin to spare, you might want to look into Sonos' upcoming ZonePlayer S5.  Sure, Sonos offers other wireless music solutions for your home and even has an existing iPhone app to control their systems, the S5 is designed to make the experience easier.  Sonos has a great thing going with really great hardware, and their setup for piping music around the house is sickeningly nice, but as a non-iPhone user, I'm feeling a bit left out.  Sure, I hear that the iPhone is getting popular these days, and I am sure they want to emphasize their flashy new app, but not even a word of whether it can also be controlled through a browser, another phone (Android, WinMo, WebOS) or a remote (Harmony) is a bit depressing.  Do people really carry their phone around with them absolutely everywhere that this makes sense?

[Hooch Tan]

http://www.sonos.com/s5demo

"We designed the S5 around an iPhone app.  With the exception of Griffin and a car radio headset, there aren’t really many other 3rd party CE manufacturers building devices around an iPhone app.  We made a decision a 1 ¼ ago to not only build a free iPhone app, but develop the perfect product to marry to an iPhone app."

If you are one of those rare people who own an iPhone or iPod Touch, and you have some coin to spare, you might want to look into Sonos' upcoming ZonePlayer S5.  Sure, Sonos offers other wireless music solutions for your home and even has an existing iPhone app to control their systems, the S5 is designed to make the experience easier.  Sonos has a great thing going with really great hardware, and their setup for piping music around the house is sickeningly nice, but as a non-iPhone user, I'm feeling a bit left out.  Sure, I hear that the iPhone is getting popular these days, and I am sure they want to emphasize their flashy new app, but not even a word of whether it can also be controlled through a browser, another phone (Android, WinMo, WebOS) or a remote (Harmony) is a bit depressing.  Do people really carry their phone around with them absolutely everywhere that this makes sense?

[gdoerr56]

I have a few Sonos Zone Players along with their wireless controller in my home today and they work great. The iPhone app has come a long way and now duplicates the functionallity of their dedicated remote almost exactly. They also have desktop software which works great for controlling the whole setup.

Note that the Sonos products don't play songs from your iPhone/iPod, they play music from iTunes (or Windows Media Player) over the network and use the iPhone/iPod as the remote.

I just wish their stuff wasn't so darn expensive or I'd have more units. Of course, you do get what you pay for. I've had the hardware installed for over three years with zero problems and free regular software updates.

[caracas]

All of the Sonos kit can be controlled by either their remote, the iPod/iPhone free software or a PC/MAC piece of free software.

Plus the press release states you don't need an iPhone to control this piece of kit either, the free web browser software works also.

I don't own any Sonos hardware but I just had a demo in my local supplier with it and I was very impressed, I couldn't see the new boombox you show as it wasn't yet released but the guy at the store stated that it sounds very much like the B&W Zepellin boombox, which should be great for kitchen or bedroom or small lounge I would guess.

The only thing I could criticise them for was the ZP120 was not as loud as I expected, it was ok for a normal sized room with good speakers, but for a larger room I wold think the one without internal amplifier would be a better choice, with your own power amp.

Just my two penneth...