Expectations Not Met

Given all the hype and the price point, I had high expectations for the Sonos Playbar and Sub. Very disappointed. The sound quality is good enough, but the design has some major deficiencies. These include: 1. The Playbar has only one optical audio input. Most people on the planet have more than one device. In my case, I have a DirecTV receiver and a Panasonic smart TV for Netflix and Amazon programming. There is no way to plug two digital optical audio cables in to the Playbar. Sonos tech support says you have to add a 3rd party optical audio switch like the J-Tech optical switch which I did. It works well enough but you end up with another box, another remote, and a bunch more cables to hook everything up. Very clumsy setup and inconvenient to operate. What's the point of having wireless speakers if you end up with a bunch of cables anyway? Also, to switch back and forth from DirecTV to Netflix or Amazon, you have to manually switch the audio to get sound. Frustrating. The Playbar needs multiple optical audio inputs and the capability to manage audio inputs internally, (like a traditional AV receiver does). 2. I expected the WiFi network setup for the Sonos to be plug and play. It was a nightmare. I have a Ubiquiti AP for WiFi and a TP-Link wired router. The Sonos is not compatible with the Ubiquiti AP which is a pretty common interface. Even hard wiring the Sonos to my TP-Link wired router did not work. I could see the Sonos from my router, but the Sonos will not complete the setup process without a WiFi connection (the Sonos hard wiring feature is really useless). After 4 hours on the phone with Sonos tech support, my network would not work at all. The Sonos tech reset my WiFi access point and nothing worked after that. They gave up. After 4 more hours on the phone with Ubiquiti tech support and several days researching myself, I finally got my network back up and was able to complete the Sonos setup process. The fix is complicated and too much to get into here. I have many other devices on my network and have never had such problems with them. 3. The Sonos speaker shadows the IR receiver for my TV remote. I have to hold it over my head for it to work. Minor issue but annoying. If I had it to do over again, I would not go with the Sonos Playbar and Sub. Considering the price point, there are other better options.

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