Sonos Setup – Brilliantly Simple

As I mentioned in my review of the Sonos Music System last month I liked it.  I liked it a LOT and this past week I finally pulled the trigger and purchased two Sonos S5’s for the Geektonic home.  The two Sonos S5’s and one Zonebridge arrived this week and since I’m out of town on a business trip it was the perfect opportunity to enlist MrsGeekTonic to see how difficult or easy it is to set up Sonos from unboxing to playing music on your new Sonos S5.

Our dog waiting for the Sonos Boxes to be opened.  Some assistance with the setup was provided by him :)  As others have said, dogs like music too!

 

I’ve been through that setup process myself and it was very quick, but I play with complex HTPCs, media players and other overly-complicated setups so I’m a little “immune” to this and the word “complex” has a little different meaning to me compared to MrsGeekTonic.  So I posed the challenge and asked her to time herself on opening up the box to the time all was set up.

For review, here’s the basic setup process:

The detailed instructions of the setup process include photos & diagrams for each step:

1. Install Sonos software on the main PC.  We already had this installed so it caused MrsGeekTonic to get some error messages telling her as much, but this was a minor stumbler.
2. Plug in ZoneBridge 100 to AC and to wireless router
3. Hit the sync button on the ZoneBridge
4. Plug in the S5 somewhere within WiFi range of the wireless router
5. Hit the sync buttons on the S5 (volume up and mute at the same time) until it begins blinking & auto-finds the network settings
6. Start browsing the music collection from a Sonos Controller, the Desktop Sonos Software or your mobile device

From start to finish it took her 20 minutes including getting slightly stuck since the software had already been installed on the PC (step 1).  Here’s the twitter report straight from MrsGeekTonic:

20 min. unbox to music for a total novice setting up @Sonos would have been faster but had to deal w/existing software issue on comp&phone

So there you have it.  MrsGeekTonic is no slouch when it comes to technology, but she typically leaves setting up gadgets to me.  Without question Sonos is one of the easiest gadgets to set up that we’ve had – I wish all Media Gadget devices were this easy!