Sonos - Playbar

Are you paying for the Atmos and higher end audio from streaming services? If not, the Arc would never be the right buy. I’m pretty sure based on what you’ve said you may have liked the old Playbar. I just picked one up as a Goodwill used electronic for $100 through their online auctions. I had it before the first gen Arc, but always felt for general stereo content the Playbar was far better.

Still have a Playbar in my downstairs den paired with two Play:3s. I only replaced my upstairs Playbar to an Arc a few years ago because the little flapper door for the optical cable input broke and it would no longer hold the plug in place. Perfectly working otherwise, what shame to have to junk it. Sonos said they can't fix that so they gave us a nice deal for an update to Arc. While on this subject, is there any advantage to using an HDMI from eARC/ARC to the Playbar utilizing Sonos' HDMI to Optical adapter? Or is there nothing to gain over using an Optical cable?

Playbar is a great piece of kit but a little limited if you want latest tech, it still uses optical input and does not support newer formats like Atmos.

Still enjoying my Playbar with Sub1

I can confirm. I used to use Sonos, for non critical listening it sounds great. The reason is because it doesn’t fail at anything audio wise, nor does it do anything mind blowing. It kinda just merges into the background and lets the TV or visuals take center stage. This is how it should be for movies imo, the audio immersive but not doing too much. For music I found this quality to make the Sonos feel dry and boring

My playbar is coming up on 8 years and it’s just as good as when I got it (just a little more dust on that cloth top). Wish it supported airplay but otherwise there’s no need to upgrade.

Clearly….. the first sound bars still sell very easily for 200-250€ even though they are 12 years old…. (playbar) and they are still clearly up to date in terms of audio quality! Well above some Samsungs which are not even 2 years old…. Then as you say, no one buys Samsung systems that are already 4-5 years old

Why does nobody like the Playbar?

Agreed-my system is older, but I love the sound still.

I've had the playbar for 7 years. I also have the Sonos sub and ones. It definitely is behind on almost everything the new soundbars can do. However, last year I bought a Samsung 990 with sub and surrounds and was very excited to hear how much better it is than my playbar. Well after 2 weeks I returned the Samsung and am still using the playbar. To me it sounds fuller and the vocals especially mens voices sound way richer. It may be my room dimensions and high ceiling I don't know, but my advice would be to get the Samsung and keep the playbar until your sure you like the new setup better.

You can pick up Playbars on places like FB marketplace etc.. for a decent price. That will be much better for a surround set up. I’d look for the play bar and sub/sub mini on the marketplace to shave a few bucks.