One Year Later: Has Sonos Fixed Its Biggest Mistake? I'm Still Ripping Out Sonos Systems in 2026
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Spoiler alert: No. Not even close. Sonos is still doing nothing.
There was a time when recommending Sonos was the easiest call in my job. A client wanted whole-home audio, I said "Sonos," and I never thought about it again. The hardware was rock solid. Setup took minutes. Once it was installed, my phone stayed quiet. Sonos was the Toyota of home audio — boring, dependable, and impossible to screw up.
That company doesn't exist anymore.
Why I Wrote the Original Article
Last year I published the first piece I'd ever written for Home Technology Review (Then Home Theater Review), laying out why I thought Sonos had lost the plot. I didn't write it because I had an axe to grind with the brand. I wrote it because I was sick of fielding angry calls from clients who'd done nothing wrong except trust the name on the box. Sick of how a once amazing brand, destroyed themselves for money.
I've installed home A/V for over 15 years. I don't grade products on spec sheets or marketing decks — I grade them on how many times my phone rings after the job is done. For most of Sonos's history, the answer was "almost never." Then the app redesign hit, and my phone didn't stop ringing.
Has Anything Actually Improved?
No, haha. The app is less broken than it was during the disaster days right after the redesign. Some of the worst launch bugs got patched. Performance is marginally better for some users.
That's the entire list.
The hardware still sounds great — it always has. That was never the problem. The problem is a software team that broke something that wasn't broken, then spent a year doing damage control instead of fixing it. A full year later, the app is still the weak link in an otherwise excellent product, and "less bad than a disaster" isn't a bar anyone should be proud of clearing.
I'm Still Ripping Sonos Out of Homes
This is the part that hasn't changed, and it's the only part that matters.
I am still tearing Sonos systems out of client homes. Not because the speakers died. Not because an amp failed. The hardware is fine — it's always been fine. I'm ripping it out because people are done. They are done fighting an app that shouldn't need to be fought with, and they're willing to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to replace gear that still technically works, just to never open that app again.
When a customer will spend real money to walk away from functioning equipment, that's not a bug report. That's a verdict.
WiiM Took the Crown
A few years ago, if you'd asked me what I'd install instead of Sonos, I wouldn't have had a real answer. Today I do: WiiM.
WiiM isn't perfect, but it's built around a philosophy Sonos apparently forgot — the technology should get out of the way. No bloated app is required to just play music. The hardware is cheap. Setup is dead simple. And changing your Wi-Fi network — something that should never have been a nightmare in the first place — actually behaves like a five-minute task instead of a support ticket.
That's it. That's the whole bar. Sonos used to clear it easily. Now WiiM is the one clearing it, and Sonos is the one that turned a non-issue into a recurring nightmare for its own customers.
Sonos Forgot the One Thing That Made It Great
Sonos never won because it had the most features. It won because it was the platform you never had to think about. Nobody bought Sonos to manage another app. They bought it so that music played, every single time, the instant they hit Play.
Somewhere in the last few years, that got thrown away. The app got more complicated. The experience got less predictable. And installers like me — the people who put our names behind these recommendations — lost the confidence to vouch for it.
Would I Recommend Sonos Today?
No.
Not at these prices. Not with alternatives on the market that do the basics better and cheaper. Not while I'm still watching clients get frustrated enough to gut systems that work perfectly fine on paper.
The hardware isn't the problem — it never was. The problem is that buying Sonos today means buying into an ecosystem, and that ecosystem is still, one year later, a mess wrapped around genuinely good speakers. At this point it feels less like a premium audio brand and more like a toll booth: pay up, and hope the app cooperates today.
Final Thoughts
I'd genuinely love to see Sonos turn this around. Competition makes every company sharper, and the whole industry is better off when Sonos is firing on all cylinders. But "better than last year's disaster" isn't a comeback — it's a low bar cleared slowly.
Until the software is as reliable as the hardware it's supposed to run, my answer isn't changing. Wiim Audio Deals on Amazon!
If you asked me today where I'd put my own money for whole-home audio, it wouldn't be Sonos.
