Sonos – the Apple of audio

Over the past years I looked at Sonos audio equipment a few times, but I always assumed their wireless hifi systems would not work well in China. Because of that I never bought their audio players and amplifiers. But this summer a friend of mine at Sonos gave me some of their equipment and I realized Sonos actually works very well, even behind the Great Firewall.

In case you don’t know what Sonos is, it’s an audio equipment brand that lets you stream music wireless to different speakers in your house. For example, I can now listen to Spotify in all rooms where I installed Sonos audio speakers. Or I can listen in one room to an online radio station and in another to music that sits on a hard disk on one of my computers. Sonos streams it all wirelessly to the different locations in your house. If you want to have the same music in all rooms that’s easy as well, with one click your whole house has the same music everywhere.

You can control all your music through an app on your iPhone, iPad, Android or computer – or if you prefer an extra remote control you can buy a separate Sonos controller. The interface is very easy to use, even Scott (almost 5 years old) can already find his favorite song (currently Psy’s Gangnam Style) on Spotify and play it on the system in our living room.

I liked the Sonos gadgets so much that I bought a couple of more speakers for my house and even got some as presents for my family. In a way Sonos reminds me of Apple: the products look great, are very easy to install (basically plug-and-play) and even more easy to use.

And the best thing (at least for me) is that Sonos works great in China. I was worried about this as the Great Firewall normally leads to a very bad reception of foreign Internet radio stations, but generally this is no problem with Sonos (there have been a few exceptions, especially during the the time of the 18th Party Congress when all Internet traffic was severely reduced).

Sonos comes pre-installed with 1000s of radio stations, but in China all foreign ones are blocked by default. However, there is a simple way around that because you can manually add the streaming URL of each radio station that you want to listen to. It took me just a few minutes to set this up for my favorite stations. After that you click on the radio station and it starts playing right away.

If you are interested to buy yourself a Christmas present, the best (and currently only?) way to get Sonos in China is to go to MediaMarkt. They should have all the equipment on stock. Just don’t go during your lunch break like I did once: when I was there MediaMarkt only had one employee that knew anything about Sonos and he was on his lunch break as well…

And in case you are wondering, even though Sonos gave me some equipment half a year ago they never asked me to blog about it. I just love their products!