You don't get any built-in voice assistant here, unlike the Sonos Beam or Sonos Arc. No Alexa, no Google Assistant, and no Sonos Voice Control. That is because there's no mic at all, which seems a little bizarre given Sonos' recent focus on its proprietary Sonos Voice rollout, but there we are.

Sonos’ support technicians are very helpful (we know, we had to call them), and one way or another you will get up and running in the end, but in our experience it’s not always the super-simple process that Sonos sells it as.

PLAY:1 comes with all the unique benefits that can only be found in a Sonos Wireless HiFi System including Sonos PLAY:3™, Sonos PLAY:5™, Sonos PLAYBAR™ and more: Make the move to stereo (with a second unit) and the sound is even bigger, with a solid stereo image. You can choose to place them horizontally or vertically in this arrangement, and while horizontally will certainly offer a wider sound, we preferred it when vertical. Head into the drop down menu at the top of the screen labelled ‘Room Settings for’ and choose the speakers you’d like to pair If your audio keeps skipping, stopping or generally playing up, you could have an issue with wireless interference from other devices in your home. One way to reduce this interference is to switch the wireless channel that your Sonos system is using.

The narrow channel of sound that you’re probably used to is transformed by the Playbase into something airy and spacious, with it’s 3.1 array doing a quite remarkable job of convincing your ears you’ve got speakers in the far-left and far-right corners of your room. Certainly you wouldn’t expect an all-in-one unit this slim and compact to manage that. Be sure to move around as much of the room as possible during the tuning process to cover the whole space. You’ll need to grant Sonos permission to use the microphone on your device for Trueplay to work so make sure you’ve agreed to that in your settings. For the replacement, Sonos lost the port and went for a sealed architecture, increasing the acoustic volume to allow it to go louder and lower in the bass. Sonos says the Play:5 is capable of deeper, cleaner bass than even the Playbar– quite an achievement for a product around one-third of the size. Treble is a little soft, without the piercing clarity you often get with a dedicated tweeter. However, I take this as a sign Sonos has done its best to work with the compromises of a relatively small speaker, to make it sound as big and satisfying as possible. You’ll do much of your controlling via the app, with the ability to add your streaming services of choice, as well as search out music saved on the local network.

Any speaker the size of the Play:1 has to deal with a compromise or two. But Sonos has nailed it here. That rich bass response is even more emphasised in this set-up though, so you may find a visit to the EQ settings might be necessary to level things out to a more neutral playing ground. For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS. Under the hood, the speaker array remains exactly the same as its Play:5 predecessor –and Sonos actually makes no bones about this. You're getting the same six custom-designed drivers driven by six class D amplifiers for a combined power output of 120W: three high excursion 10cm mid-woofers across the bottom of the unit and three tweeters above them, two of which are angled outwards. Do bear in mind, though, this width can be helped or hindered by the size, shape and furnishings of your room, because this is a system that relies upon bouncing sound off walls.

In our dedicated listening room, it does little to the sound, but move the speaker to a less ideal location – a kitchen or a corner for example – and the difference is audible. It tightens up any boomy bass, adds clarity to the midrange and really cleans up the sound from top to bottom. When you connect a Sonos Boost to your router, all of the other devices in your house will continue to connect to your router as usual except for your Sonos products which will be redirected to the Boost on a dedicated wireless network. If you’ve splashed out for more than one speaker, your Boost will actually daisy chain the wireless signal from one device to the next. This can significantly improve the signal quality – especially in larger homes. We expect most will be fine, even if your TV and Playbase are in a corner or you have more air on one side of the room than the other, but we did try it in one room that had floor-to-ceiling fabric blinds that soaked up way too much sound and left us with a wonky presentation. Sonos is also less closed-off than it used to be. Until 2016, all music selection for your Play:1 had to be done through the Sonos app.

Sonos' biggest wireless speaker is kind of a big deal generally

One more consideration and we'll move on, we promise. It's just that if you were looking to buy a second Sonos Five to create a stereo pair, the KEF LSX stereo speaker system (and brand new LSX II) is closely priced and boasts a more comprehensive connectivity spec-sheet and hi-res capabilities out the box. Make sure you’re in the room you want to tune – a red dot should appear next to the room name if it hasn’t been tuned yet In traditional Sonos style, the Five is not interested in a shy, retiring sound – it's here to bring the bass and make you feel it, and we're not complaining. However (and we've said this before) it's important to note that we like it more if you can use TruePlay tuning, and not everyone is granted that privilege.