Price
Sonos speakers aren’t always the cheapest around, and the Playbase is one of the firm’s most expensive products. It’s priced at £699 which matches the Playbar, as this is a sort of base version of its bar-shaped brother. So it’s a top-end soundbar and if you’re not looking to spend that much then you’ll want to look at the likes of the Orbitsound One P70 and Q Acoustics M3 – Both of which are less than half the price.
Design and build
As we just mentioned, the Playbase – as the name suggests, is a base version of the Playbar. So they key design difference is that you can place your TV on top of it rather than the speaker sitting in front. You might want to do this due to lack of space, or even so the TV is lifted up a little higher for a better viewing experience – it’s 720x380x58mm so you can check if it fits on your furniture. The Playbase can support TVs up to 35kg in weight so will comfortably piggy back the vast majority of modern displays you can buy. It’s no surprise that the Playbase uses a quintessential Sonos design consisting of curves and clean lines to create a sleek and modern look that will look great with modern TV designs. It looks like it’s been machined from a single piece of material. As usual, you can get the device in either black or white colours.
As we’ve come to expect, build quality is exceptional and you’d hope so at this price. Every detail has been thought about and carefully planned. We slightly prefer the addition of some metal on the Playbar but it’s a minor point. You need only plug two cables into the Playbase to get it working – power and optical – so things are nice and neat. As with all Sonos products it works wirelessly but you can plug an Ethernet cable in if you like (and even use it as a connection for one of your set-top boxes which is neat). The key thing is to check your TV has optical out, otherwise it defeats the point. The last thing to say about design is that the Playbase touch sensitive controls much like the Play:5 and Sonos One. You’ve got play/pause as well as volume, but you can also swipe to do things like skip track. It’s neat and much better than the physical buttons on the side of the Playbar.
Sound quality and features
One (many really) of the reasons to buy the Playbase over rivals is that the Sonos system can do a lot of things a regular soundbar or soundbase can do. It’s far more than just a speaker to play whatever’s happening on your TV. We won’t explain in great detail here but the Sonos system means you can have speakers all around the house for a multi-room experience. You can group rooms together and stream a huge amount of content from different places – like Spotify, Tunein Radio and Google Play Music – to those speakers. Read our guide to Sonos to find out more.
There’s no remote control to adjust volume from the sofa so you’ll need to use the app. However, there’s a fairly good chance you can configure your TV or set-top box remote to do the job. As with the Playbar, you can add other Sonos speakers to expand the set up in your living room. So, if you’ve got the cash, you can connect a Sub for extra bass or a pair of Play:1 speakers for surround sound. We’d recommend doing the latter. So onto the sound quality and we’re very impressed with the Playbase overall. Inside there are six mid-range woofers, three tweeters and one sub-woofer – all powered by a class-D amp each. That’s the same as the Playbar but with the addition of the sub-woofer. Although Sonos says they effectively sound they same, that’s not quite the case. Although they are similar, the main difference in in the bass department – namely due to that extra woofer and the acoustic space in the Playbase.
As a result, the low-end is strangely not as solid or as powerful compared to the Playbar, but it’s more controlled and has a deeper feel. Neither is outright better than the other, it’s more down to personal preference. Like with the Playbar, most users won’t feel the need to add the Sub in. When it comes to the rest of the sound, it’s pretty much the usual Sonos formula. A nicely even and balanced sound that doesn’t favour a particular area of the frequency response. It’s clever as it generally means the speaker sounds great no matter what you’re watching or streaming. Like the Playbar, the Playbase does an impressive job of filling your living room with sound – even if you don’t add Play:1s at the back. The soundstage is vast and immersive and you’re likely to notice a huge difference compared to the speakers built into your TV. You don’t really get much of a stereo field but that’s somewhat understandable. If, for whatever reason, you don’t like the sound of the Playbar you can make adjustments to the EQ using the app. You can also make use of Trueplay which uses the microphones in your smartphone to tune the speaker to your room. Tech Advisor’s Reviews Editor, Chris has been reviewing all kinds of tech for over 10 years and specialises in audio. He also covers a range of topics including home entertainment, phones, laptops, tablets and more.
