Reviews are meaningless in 2024.  They're just a consumer protest vector now.  Review bombing has broken the whole concept.

dafman:

 

eracode:

 

Strange that many here say no current issues with the app or the hardware. It must be something specific to your set-up.

 

 

It’s great the app is working well for you, that’s not the universal experience; my experience matches countless of others online.

 

For eg. Take the most 20 recent App Store reviews as per today. 14 of the 20 are one star reviews.

 

Unfortunately that's not always a good metric. People nearly always come back to complain but rarely come back to praise

Patrick Spence the Sonos CEO came out in July 2024 and made a public apology the app's failure to deliver - https://www.sonos.com/en-nz/blog/update-on-the-sonos-app.

Sonos is well into it's enshittification arc now:

• Will not sell customer's personal data clause was removed from TOS
• Unfixed bugs in core functionality
• Terrible app redesign

yes, the app update was awful - but after the last few updates (which happen regularly) I can't fault it (using with an era300).
I used to suffer from it not finding my speaker all the time but haven't' seen this happen in months now.

CYaBro: We have some of the gen1 Sonos stuff and it works great.
Not gonna get rid of it!

Until Sonos discontinues and bricks it at some point...

Kinda crazy that 20-30 years ago (and earlier) when you wanted to buy something that'd still be working today you went for established quality brands.  Today when you buy something that you still want to be working in 20-30 years you avoid anything with "smart" or "app" in the name or "cloud" in the description.

Dulouz:

 

Patrick Spence the Sonos CEO came out in July 2024 and made a public apology the app's failure to deliver - https://www.sonos.com/en-nz/blog/update-on-the-sonos-app.

 

But did he withdraw the app? Or at least give frustrated users the option to revert back to the previous app which was great?

No. And no.

You don't have to hate Sonos to consistently avoid them for various reasons. But I can well imagine that one or two Sonos buyers feel locked in.

There is that general problem now of internet/app reliance to make something work.

Great when everything is going as it should - not so great when the supporting servers/apps suddenly stop.

When you buy something now, you have to consider :

• How long will the manufacturer support this particular product
• How much of a brick will it be without 'cloud' support
• What if the manufacturer goes out of business

Often you wont know the answers to those questions when you are looking at the item. They can be seriously unusable without that cloud support.

If you are lucky you just lose a few 'nice to haves' but the item will still work ok.

Manufacturers try and put 'smarts' into everything as a selling point.

Washing machines, fridges, TVs and even cars etc etc

Remember TiVo? -Probably one ofthe first 'obsolete by software'. (feel free to name others). Luckily, some keen users made their own solution.

In the USA Fisker EVs went bust. Many users were stranded without being able to install important safety and functionality updates as the servers were all shut down.

After a lot of noise was made by users, they somehow worked out a deal to get some of that back online. 

dafman:

 

But did he withdraw the app? Or at least give frustrated users the option to revert back to the previous app which was great?

 

No. And no.

 

I avoid them because they are patent trolls like spotify.

dafman:

 

Dulouz:

 

Patrick Spence the Sonos CEO came out in July 2024 and made a public apology the app's failure to deliver - https://www.sonos.com/en-nz/blog/update-on-the-sonos-app.

 

 

But did he withdraw the app? Or at least give frustrated users the option to revert back to the previous app which was great?

 

No. And no.

 

On android it was very easy to revert to an older version of the app . I did it myself. But several months in things just started to stop working as the way things connected changed (tunein etc)

FWIW, we have  2 x Ones (stereo pair), 1 x Port and 1 x Move, love them and have had pretty much no issues to speak of for the 4 or 5 years we've had them.  To be fair we hardly touch the app.  We mostly drive via Alexa, or Airplay 2.

To summarize this thread so far:

Not counting peripheral comments, there are ten current Sonos users who have posted here.

• The OP is having great difficulty with the app and his hardware and hates it.
• One user is OK with their hardware but doesn’t like the app.
• Eight users are having no trouble with their hardware or the app and say it’s all working fine - with both current and legacy gear. 

I sympathize with the OP but it appears there’s something wrong that’s particular to his set-up - his experience isn’t replicated here.

Several years ago I had some set-up problems and called the Sonos NZ support team on occasions - on 0800-423-747. They’re based in Australia and work Aussie hours. They were superb and spent a lot of time sorting my issue. If you give them sharing permission, they are able to look into your system and check the way it’s set up. I would certainly give this a try.

I'd add one to the App hatred, it's been a horror show for me since the new one rolled out. Not saying it isn't fixable at my end, but I had 5+ years of solid performance from my setup, and now units frequently don't show up, trying the in app search returns an error, and adjusting volume is a sometimes works sometimes doesn't proposition. There are workarounds but sometimes you just want sh!t to work :D