Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Sonos users are furious over plans to drop support for legacy products

By

Sonos hasn’t been having a good 2020 so far. In early January, the company announced that it felt obliged to take Google to court over allegations that Google had stolen its intellectual property and patented tech. Now, it faces a fierce and growing backlash from its normally very loyal customers over the news that it will end support for some of its older products in May 2020.

The decision to cease providing software updates for three major components (Sonos Connect, Sonos Connect:Amp, and Sonos Play:5 Gen 1) — some of which were sold to customers as recently as 2015 — was reported on Tuesday, January 21, but Sonos also sent out emails to all customers who own one or more of the affected products.

https://twitter.com/joemfbrown/status/1219661056131436544

It was this email that seems to have provoked the biggest response as angry customers took to Twitter and Sonos’ own user forums to complain about the decision. Their fury stems from two aspects of the announcement. First, they’re annoyed that the affected products (which currently work with all Sonos features), will eventually stop working completely after a period of reduced functionality, ultimately requiring that they are disposed of.

Many have expressed legitimate concerns around how these devices will be recycled, or worse yet, disposed of in a landfill. Although it may not have received much attention, Sonos offers a take-back option for those who do not have access to a responsible way of recycling their legacy gear.

Second, many feel that five years (the shortest amount of time some of these products have been owned) is simply too short for a product to go from supported to unsupported.

https://twitter.com/CharleeSays/status/1219667333876273152

Many are calling on Sonos to provide some kind of alternative that would extend the usable life of these devices, even if it meant losing out on more advanced features down the road. For its part, Sonos has not provided a firm time frame for when the affected products will cease working. It has, however, indicated that newer devices that share a Sonos system with legacy devices will also be prevented from receiving software updates. Sonos says all its devices in a single system must use the same version of its software.

Sonos indicated that it is possible to run its legacy products on a separate system from the newer products, but this would defeat the core benefit of owning Sonos gear — the ability to control all of the speakers in your home as a group, without needing to flip between systems to change settings.

This situation has many loyal Sonos users asking what was once an unthinkable question: Which other whole-home audio system should I buy? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer.

Software is what makes a system like Sonos so powerful, so flexible, and so easy to use. But software is also the reason why the company is faced with the need to cut off support to its older products. It’s hard to imagine that any other software-driven whole-home audio product will be immune to a similar fate.

Digital Trends reached out to Sonos for comment on these user concerns, but a spokesperson declined a statement.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Simon Cohen
Simon Cohen
Contributing Editor, A/V
Simon Cohen covers a variety of consumer technologies, but has a special interest in audio and video products, like spatial…
The Beats Pill is back, baby!
A pair of Beats Pill speakers.

In what's been one of the worst-kept secrets of the year -- mostly because subtly putting a product into the hands of some of the biggest stars on the planet is no way to keep a secret -- the Beats Pill has returned. Just a couple of years after Apple and Beats unceremoniously killed off the stylish Bluetooth speaker, a new one has arrived.

Available for preorder today in either black, red, or gold, the $150 speaker (and speakerphone, for that matter) rounds out a 2024 release cycle for beats that includes the Solo Buds and Solo 4 headphones, and comes nearly a year after the Beats Studio Pro.

Read more
Ifi’s latest DAC is the first to add lossless Bluetooth audio
Ifi Audio Zen Blue 3 DAC (front).

Ifi Audio's new Zen Blue 3 wireless digital-to-analog converter (DAC) will officially be available to buy for $299 on July 9. When it is, it will be the first device of its kind to support a wide variety of Bluetooth codecs, including Qualcomm's aptX Lossless, the only codec that claims to deliver bit-perfect CD quality audio over a Bluetooth connection.

Admittedly, there are very few devices on the market that can receive aptX Lossless (and fewer that can transmit it), so it's a good thing that the Zen Blue 3 also works with the more widely supported aptX Adaptive, LDAC, and LDHC/HWA codecs (all of which are hi-res audio-capable), plus the three most common codecs: AAC, SBC, and aptX.

Read more
The new Beats Pill might replace Sonos on my back porch
The 2024 Beats Pill and an aging Sonos Play:1.

If I were to build an outdoor stereo in 2024, I'd do it with a pair of portable Beats Pills instead of Sonos speakers. Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

In 2017, after more than a decade in our home, my wife and I added a pool. With it came a covered deck, making what basically was a new outdoor room. Not uncommon at all in Florida, but new to us.

Read more