HoFo Blog

Until recently, my wife and I used Bluetooth speakers when we wanted to listen to music at home. I figured Bluetooth speakers were the most flexible solution. Pretty much every phone, tablet and computer sold in the last 10 years has it. Bluetooth support is also built right into Android/iOS/Windows so you don’t need any special software to use it. There are also many, many different Bluetooth compatible speakers available at all price points.

Still, Bluetooth isn’t a perfect solution. I won’t cover all of them here, but for us the 3 biggest shortcomings are the range, support for multiple users or lack thereof, and the fact that the Bluetooth speaker will playback everything that’s playing on your phone including alerts.

In terms of range, our phones will only stream reliably while we’re in the same room. This is inconvenient if we need to leave the room temporarily with our phone.

However, the bigger problem is the lack of multiple users. When you turn a Bluetooth speaker on, it usually tries to connect to the last device that was using it. This is fine if I’m the only person trying to use the speaker. However, what happens when I’m around and my wife wants to use it? Switching users can be a hassle.

Then there’s the fact that Bluetooth speakers playback alerts from your phone. It can get quite irritating when you get a bunch of alerts during your favorite song.

With these problems in mind we figured we’d try out a Sonos. Sonos has been around for a while, so they have a fairly mature lineup of speakers. I’ve actually wanted to try one for a while but various issues with them me from trying it. ...