Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Which is to purchase?

By way of sensible audio system, Sonos is presently a high model. To be able to assist you to select which Sonos speaker is finest for you, we’ll examine the Sonos One and Sonos One SL, which the corporate just lately launched.

Sonos One (Gen 2)	Sonos One SL
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
+ Bass and treble sliders by way of companion app. + First rate directivity. + Helps Alexa and Google Assistant. + May be linked to Sonos soundbars as encompass audio system.	+ Suitable with Sonos soundbars. + Bass and treble changes. + Clear vocal replica.
CONS	CONS
– Struggles to get loud and compression artifacts at max quantity. – stereo content material into mono. – No audio streaming by way of Bluetooth.	– No Bluetooth assist. – Downmixes stereo content material into mono. – Not very moveable.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Specs

Worth & Availability

The Sonos One gen 2 is a $219 smartspeaker from Sonos that helps Apple’s Airplay 2 protocol, the Google Assistant, Alexa, or Sonos’s personal voice management assistant and has a premium construct and design. Most significantly, it has wonderful sound. The Sonos One SL is likely one of the firm’s extra fairly priced linked audio system, permitting you to enter the Sonos ecosystem of units. Nevertheless, it nonetheless must be made reasonably priced.

In contrast to the One, the One SL is $20 cheaper at $199 and lacks microphones and native voice assistants. For those who don’t require or intend to make use of voice assistants in your Sonos system, it can save you some cash by switching to the One SL, which shares the identical performance except for the absence of microphones and voice help.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Design

1. Sonos One (Gen 2)

Let’s begin by discussing design. The Sonos One is well-built, feels premium, and has some weight to it. It additionally has a pleasant aesthetic and may slot in with your own home due to its simple design. The touchscreen controls for the system are situated on the high. Over the previous six months, the controls have been dependable, and I like how Sonos created the Sonos One (Gen 2).

You slide throughout the highest between the quantity buttons to skip ahead and backward. There may be additionally a mute mic button, play/pause, and quantity management buttons.

The primary benefit of getting a Sonos One (Gen 2) is its sound. It outperforms each different sensible speaker I’ve examined, together with the amazon echo, apple homepod mini, nest audio, nest hub max, and so on. One other nice characteristic of its design is that Sonos One (Gen 2) is designed with high-humidity environments in thoughts, so you may place one in a rest room to take heed to music.

2. Sonos One SL

The One SL is offered in white and black and has a matte plastic and metallic design that appears up to date and minimal. A metallic speaker grille surrounds the whole speaker, concealing and defending the 2 forward-facing speaker drivers, whereas a plastic end covers the highest. I do like how the one with the One SL appears to be like. With dimensions of simply over six inches tall, simply over 4 and a half inches deep, and simply over 4 and a half inches huge, it’s easy, understated, purposeful, and straightforward to combine into the house.

The One SL’s high plastic space homes the one bodily interface with the speaker. On the highest of the speaker are three contact buttons that allow you to change the quantity, skip tracks, and play in ports. Tracks may be skipped with a easy swipe throughout all three buttons. This retains the highest of the speaker wanting neat and arranged.

Though quite a few different standing colours and patterns are described on the Sonos web site, the highest of the speaker additionally has a standing mild that may point out whether or not the speaker is turned on, linked, or muted.

As a substitute of utilizing wi-fi, you may join the speaker to a bodily community utilizing the ethernet port on the again of the system. There may be additionally a be part of button for speaker reset. The speaker is primarily empty except for a right-angled figure-eight energy cable that plugs into the underside of the system; the Sonos app is used to arrange and management the speaker’s different options. You’ll discover that the One SL doesn’t have an influence button as a result of it’s all the time supposed to be on and linked.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Sound High quality

The Sonos One (Gen 2) is the speaker I favor to make use of over all different smartspeakers I personal as a result of it produces a really crisp, detailed sound that’s gratifying to take heed to and has a shocking quantity of bass, given its dimension. Throughout my time utilizing the One SL, it was tuned to the room utilizing Sonos’s true play characteristic, which is regrettably solely obtainable on the iOS model of the Sonos app. The One SL presents an awe-inspiring listening expertise.

Using this characteristic is extremely advisable as a result of TruePlay analyses how the speaker’s sound displays off objects within the room and adjusts the speaker to provide a sound acceptable for the atmosphere. Contemplating that just one speaker produces mono sound, the One SL additionally has a great vary of quantity settings. Playback may be very quiet on its decrease settings, however it might additionally deal with the quantity when you flip it up and fill the room with sound.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Pairing Gadgets

The Sonos 1 may be grouped with different AirPlay 2 audio system you personal as a result of it helps Apple’s AirPlay 2 normal, which is a superb characteristic. It’s very straightforward to pair two Sonos audio system within the app, which improves the sound stage. Moreover, the app permits you to group collectively a number of Sonos audio system in a single room.

You’ll be able to pair two One SL audio system to make a stereo pair when you’d like, however the sound stage is spectacular and TruePlay does play a major position with One SL. After all, you may change the EQ from the Sonos app when you favor.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: TruePlay

The TruePlay characteristic of Sonos, which may be discovered within the Sonos app, contributes to the unimaginable sound that Sonos audio system produce. TruePlay is an audio tuning characteristic that helps your Sonos One (Gen 2) stability its sound output primarily based on the scale of your room and the place you’ve positioned your audio system.

When you’ve arrange your whole audio system, the Sonos app makes use of the microphones in your telephone to collect details about your room as your Sonos One emits a semi-loud sound, however the result’s that your speaker or audio system will sound means, means higher when you use TruePlay.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Sonos App

One of many principal methods to regulate Sonos One proper now’s via the Sonos app. One of many cool issues Sonos did with their app is making it extremely easy to connect with your favourite music streaming providers so you may play them in your Sonos units. Not simply well-known providers like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Deezer, and TuneIn can be found to them. The One SL is primarily managed via the Sonos app.

You should all use the identical account in your community, although, as a Sonos system can’t be shared amongst completely different accounts in the identical house.

You may also hook up with web sites like Pocketcasts for podcasts, Libby for listening to audiobooks you borrowed from the library, Audible, and plenty of others. As well as, Sonos presents a free radio characteristic with adverts and consists of reside radio stations like NPR and BBC. You may also improve to an HD model for $799 per thirty days to get an ad-free expertise with limitless skips and lossless high quality.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Voice Assistants

As was already talked about, the Sonos One SL doesn’t have the voice assistants that may be put in on Sonos audio system to play and management media. Sadly, the assistants you may run on the Sonos One should be extra as much as parity with competing audio system from google and amazon. The google assistant, which I’ve used on the Sonos One as my main assistant for the previous six months, really works fairly properly.

Now, the Sonos One will appropriately play one thing after the unique tune you requested when you use both assistant to play Spotify. Moreover, for the google assistant particularly, the Sonos One will dim its quantity after you request a tune so the assistant can preserve listening for a subsequent request. Nevertheless, it ceaselessly does this for too lengthy, making it straightforward to be misled into considering the quantity is turned means down, so that you’ll flip it up solely to be shocked by the elevated quantity.

Moreover, the Google Assistant performs music on the Sonos One rather more slowly than Alexa or Sonos’s personal voice management characteristic.

Sonos One (Gen 2) VS One SL: Sono’s Voice Management

Sono’s Voice Management makes use of the onboard microphones of the Sonos One to regulate your music and Sonos system with out utilizing Google or Amazon to course of your voice knowledge. It’s a silly limitation put in place by Google, not Sonos, that stops you from utilizing the Google Assistant on the Sonos One and Sonos’ voice management concurrently. Fortunately, Amazon doesn’t put such restrictions in place with the intention to concurrently use Alexa on the system and Voice management.

You’ll be able to’t presently use Sono’s voice management to play music from YouTube or Spotify. It additionally has an issue the place whenever you ask Sonos to play a tune, it solely performs that tune and nothing else. Nevertheless, you need to use Sono’s Voice Management to play and pause media on a gaggle of airplay audio system that features a Sonos One. You’ll be able to’t use Sono’s Voice Management to group in different airplay 2 audio system as you may with Siri on Apple’s Homepod mini.

Conclusion

There isn’t a denying the consumer expertise is considerably and negatively impacted after six months of use with the Sonos One (Gen 2) system. Nevertheless, the Sonos One SL is a implausible linked speaker on your house that appears and sounds nice. It has ios-centric options like trueplay and if that doesn’t concern you and also you’re on the lookout for one thing that works as soon as it’s all arrange, the One SL is a good way to enter the Sonos world. Nevertheless, when you’re on the lookout for one thing that works instantly after it’s been arrange, the One SL is a superb different.