Share music around the home – at a price
When Sonos first brought out its music-sharing kit – which allows users to play music from their PCs or a networked hard disk through speakers dotted around the home – there was nothing around that could match it.
Things have moved on, though, and similar products from Logitech and Pinnacle are almost as easy to use and, more importantly, they're significantly cheaper than the Sonos devices. That's why the company has come up with its new product, the BU150 bundle.
It includes two players, which form the basis of the system, and a remote control. The remote control is the same as before, but both players have been redesigned to be smaller and nicer-looking than their predecessors.
The smaller one, the ZP90, can be connected to an amplifier or a set of powered speakers, while the larger one includes its own amplifier so it must be connected to a pair (or more) of standard speakers (which are not supplied).
Sound quality from both was very impressive, but Sonos's most important selling point is still its ease of use. It was simple to install everything, and almost no setting-up was required – we just plugged it all in and it worked. You need to press a few buttons to tell the various components to find each other, but other than that it was automatic.
The supplied software is not particularly pretty, but it worked well enough, and quickly compiled a list of all the music stored on our PC.
You don't need to use the software, though – the player, controlled through the remote, can pick up shared folders on any computer or hard disk attached to your home network. It can even play millions of tracks from the Napster subscription service, although after one month's trial this requires an extra monthly payment.
An iPod-style wheel on the remote control made it easy to navigate through even large collections of music, and the screen on the remote was clear and text was easy to read.
