After the most tumultuous nine months in Sonos’ history, the brand is trying to find its footing again. Even as work continues to rehabilitate the company’s beleaguered mobile app, Sonos is planning to take a big swing in a new product category: it’s getting into video for the first time. In the coming months, Sonos will release a streaming player that sources tell me could cost between $200 and $400 — a truly staggering price for its category.
I’ve seen images of the upcoming product, which is deep into development, and it’s about as nondescript as streaming hardware gets. Viewed from the top, the device is a flattened black square and slightly thicker than a deck of trading cards.
But the streamer, codenamed Pinewood, is designed to be more than just another competitor to the Apple TV 4K, Nvidia Shield, or Roku Ultra. Don’t get me wrong: streaming is a huge focus for the product. Sources familiar with Pinewood tell me it has a “beautiful” interface, despite the software being developed in partnership with a digital ads firm.
Sonos plans to combine content from numerous platforms including Netflix, Max, and Disney Plus under a single, unified software experience. Universal search across streaming accounts will be supported. We’ve seen similar efforts to mask the fragmented nature of modern entertainment from Sonos’ soon-to-be rivals. But I’m told this is a cornerstone of Pinewood’s appeal. Sonos Voice Control will be integrated, and Pinewood will also ship with a physical remote control that includes shortcuts for popular streaming apps. I see this as a welcome alternative to using your phone (or voice) to navigate around the software, which could grow tiring.
It’s yet another streaming player that promises to unify all of your entertainment
The hardware’s potential extends well beyond these features. According to people familiar with its development, Pinewood serves as an HDMI switch and has several HDMI ports with passthrough functionality. You’ll be able to plug external devices like gaming consoles or 4K Blu-ray players into it. Sonos engineers have been frustrated over the years by unpredictable issues between its soundbars and certain TVs. These can include audio sync delays, brief signal dropouts, and other bugs that can prove challenging to reproduce, let alone fix. With Pinewood, Sonos aims to take greater control of the I/O stack. The box will be able to wirelessly transmit lag-free TV audio to the company’s soundbars and other Sonos products.
Pinewood also unlocks a capability that Sonos customers have been requesting for years: you’ll be able to configure a genuine surround sound system using the company’s other speakers. Instead of relying so heavily on a soundbar, you can create dedicated front left and right channels with, say, two Era 300s. This will allow for far more advanced Dolby Atmos setups, but Sonos is still finalizing exactly which speaker arrangements will be supported.
In other firsts for the company, Pinewood will include gigabit ethernet and Wi-Fi 7 for the most robust connectivity possible. The Pinewood codename was first reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
I don’t need to keep reminding you of how terrible 2024 was for Sonos — all thanks to poor decisions made by its executive leadership team. But now the company has a new interim CEO, Tom Conrad, who will host his first earnings call as Sonos’ leader on Thursday. He’ll undoubtedly stress that improving the company’s oft-criticized mobile app remains priority number one. But I’ll be listening to hear what Conrad has to say about the future.
Do you know more about what went wrong at Sonos under Patrick Spence?
In my time at The Verge, I’ve covered Sonos more comprehensively (and I’d like to think fairly) than any other company. Yes, that includes a long list of product leaks, but I’m far more interested in shining a light on all the frustrations caused by the new app — both for customers and staff — and the bad decisions that led Sonos off the tracks. Those choices have had repercussions for ordinary employees who gave their best to the brand.
If you have more to share about the last year at Sonos, please reach out to me confidentially and securely over Signal at (845) 445-8455 or chriswelch.01. I can also be reached via DM on Bluesky, X, or Instagram.
Through that lens, Pinewood will be Sonos’ most important product introduction of fiscal 2025 and could end up being the company’s only new hardware due anytime soon. After the Sonos Ace headphones — an impressive first effort — were swallowed up by the app controversy, this is another attempt to break into a new product category. Sales of the Ace remain disappointing, according to sources. This has led Sonos to deprioritize planned features like TrueCinema, which was supposed to make the Ace’s surround sound even more convincing by taking the acoustics of your room into account. Sonos has also put other in-the-works hardware on the backburner so as not to spread itself too thin.
Inside Sonos, some employees remain pessimistic about Pinewood’s chances of becoming anything more than a niche device in a crowded, competitive space. The Nvidia Shield TV Pro, among the most expensive streaming devices, costs $200. The Sonos Ace headphones faced similarly daunting odds and have fallen well short of the company’s targets. To be fair, those were equally doomed by the app situation.
I’m told the streaming box is largely the pet project of chief innovation officer Nick Millington, who architected Sonos’ core networking framework decades ago. Pinewood’s early development began under Studio 110, an advanced group within Sonos that was helmed by Millington for a time. More recently, Millington has been overseeing improvements to the mobile app and regularly engages with Sonos’ Reddit community.
Pinewood was greenlit by former CEO Patrick Spence and remains in beta testing, so some features I’ve mentioned could be changed or dropped from the box by the time it ships. If the rumored premium price is accurate — several sources reiterated that Pinewood won’t be cheap — Sonos has to nail the device’s introduction and make a strong case for why it’s a must-own addition to the company’s ecosystem.
Positive reviews of the new Arc Ultra have been a much-needed morale boost at the company and prove that Sonos still knows how to make a masterful soundbar. But employees are wary of more job cuts in the near future. Some have expressed doubt as to whether the recent shakeup in Sonos leadership will ultimately produce meaningful change.
