The reasons why Sonos will no longer be providing support for older products has become clearer with the company announcing the launch of its S2 operating system.
Designed to “power the next generation of products and experiences”, S2 requires greater resources to run and so isn’t compatible with older generation hardware.
New products launched from May 2020 onwards will run the S2 operating system exclusively and will require a new app to work. The company has also said that existing hardware compatible with S2 will be able to upgrade their system from June and download the new app, which is simply titled Sonos.
Sonos says that S2 will bring increased personalisation and higher resolution audio formats such as Dolby Atmos with the Sonos Arc.
With the new S2 app, improvements have been made to room groups. These will remember commonly-grouped rooms, letting you target music to areas faster than the current process, where rooms have to be individually grouped together.
Related: How upgrade to Sonos S2
What happens to old Sonos products?
Sonos has clarified what happens to old products that won’t support S2. As announced before, when Sonos said it was killing updates for old products old products can’t be updated. The list of unsupported devices is:
- Zone Players
- CR200
- Bridge
- Connect (Gen 1)
- Connect:Amp (Gen 1)
- Play:5 (Gen 1)
What happens depends on the mix of products you have in your system. In all scenarios, old products will continue to get bug fixes and security updates.
You have S1-compatible products only
If you have older products that can’t run the S2 OS, then you don’t have to do anything, and all of your products will continue to run. These products will be controlled through the app that’s available today, although this will be renamed the Sonos S1 Controller.
You have only S2 compatible devices
If you have S2-compatible devices only, including older products that can be upgraded or new products yet to launch, you can download the new Sonos app and upgrade your entire system to run the new operating system.
You have a mix of S1 and S2 devices
If your system is a mix of products, you have a few choices. First, you can leave the system as it is and run on the S1 OS, but you will miss out on new features. This will also prevent you from adding new future products into the mix, as these will be S2 compatible only.
The next option is to remove S1 products from your existing system so that what’s left can be upgraded to S2. Firstly, you can remove the old players that you don’t use. Secondly, you can use the Sonos Trade Up scheme, which will get you a 30% discount on new players.
Finally, you can split your system into two separate parts that can no longer be grouped, letting you run older and newer components.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
