The very best Sonos speaker is on sale for Cyber Monday — and that’s rare

There’s a reason the Sonos Five has remained atop the company’s speaker lineup: it sounds terrific. No frills. No gimmicks. Just great audio quality.

by Chris Welch

Dec 2, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

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Image: Sonos

Editor’s note: The Sonos Five is no longer on sale; however, we’ve put together a roundup of the Cyber Monday deals you can still get if you missed out on the previous discounts.

If you made me give up all of the Sonos products I own except for one, I’d keep the Sonos Five each and every time. Well, in my case, technically, it’s the second-generation Play:5, but that speaker sounds identical to the current iteration. Typically priced at a steep $549, Sonos positions the Five as its true hi-fi option for audiophiles and vinyl listeners. (The speaker has an aux input for plugging in a record player and other external audio sources.)

For Cyber Monday, the Five is seeing a rare discount and is 20 percent off, which brings the price to a more palatable $439. How rare? The speaker hasn’t dropped this low since 2020, according to CamelCamelCamel.

Sonos Five

$439$54920% off

$439

As the flagship desk speaker in Sonos’ lineup, the Sonos Five provides superb sound quality that outperforms any other smart speaker in its price range. It also has an auxiliary input for playing other audio sources (like a turntable) through your Sonos system.

$439 at Amazon $439 at Sonos $440 at Best Buy

Something people occasionally say about Sonos gear is that the hardware is more about convenience than sheer audio performance. But if there’s one product in the lineup that doesn’t compromise on sound, it’s the Five. There are no spatial audio gimmicks here. It’s just a wonderful stereo speaker with clean, tight bass and decent separation — or as much as a single unit can muster, anyway. When placed horizontally, the Five outputs a stereo signal. If you stand it up vertically, the speaker will mix that down to mono.

I’ve always had just one of these speakers on my desk, and it’s been more than enough for my needs. But I’ve also heard many owners attest that linking two of them together as a stereo pair takes things to another level, and the two-pack is also on sale.

The Sonos Five handily outclasses every other music speaker in the company’s lineup.

Image: Sonos

I’m not blind to the moment we’re in; Sonos is still working through the giant mess it created by rushing the release of its new app. And if you’re still having a frustrating experience with the software, I wouldn’t blame you one bit for ignoring this deal. But the app has been working fairly well for me recently, which makes this tempting.

And as it turns out, my Play:5 is no longer compatible with the recently released Arc Ultra for use in a surround sound setup. So... I guess planned obsolescence just gave me another reason to think about upgrading. That’s less great! But the Sonos Five works with the new soundbar just fine. And even if an Era 500 is somewhere on Sonos’ roadmap, that won’t make this speaker sound any less phenomenal.