Sonos had a quiet 2025. After the company got a new CEO, having fired the one who oversaw the app update debacle that turned the brand’s most ardent fans against it, it’s been licking its wounds. It canceled an ill-fated streaming TV device, and didn’t announce any new hardware at all last year – its last consumer product was the Sonos Arc Ultra.
But now it appears that Sonos is ready to get back to business, and reportedly “hardware launches will ramp up in the second half of its fiscal 2026” – which in Sonos’ case, means between April and September.
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1. A ‘Sonos Era 500’ hi-fi focused speaker
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The Sonos Five has been around for a long time, and is surely due for its retirement. The Sonos Era 300 isn’t quite the same kind of thing – its focus on spatial audio means that’s impressively expansive, but it doesn’t have the pure focus on detail and depth that a real hi-fi speaker offers.
Sonos’ Sound Motion bass speaker is the cool addition I hope to see as the foundation here. It debuted in the Sonos Arc Ultra, and is basically an ingeniously small dual-diaphragm low-end speaker with a force-opposing design, so it can move a lot of air in a small space, without shaking the unit.
I’d love to see this used with a traditional forward-facing driver system, rather than the angle speakers of the Era 300. Allowing this driver to handle the low end would leave the other drivers to handle mid-range without also needing to wade into the low-end, hopefully allowing for really strong mid detail reproduction, but with a bigger dynamic range overall.
And I’d be happy for this speaker to borrow the compression driver and horn system used in the Era 100. This is the kind of system used in studio monitors, so would be a great fit for a hi-fi focused speaker.
Naturally, I hope that instead of needing a dongle to connect a turntable or other wired input (as the Era 100 and 300 do), this would just have a range of inputs on it, like the Sonos Five does.
2. A Sonos Beam Gen 3 soundbar with Sound Motion and upfiring speaker
(Image credit: Peter Hoffmann)
The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is still a great soundbar that we highly recommend, following its price drops. It produces impressively full sound from its small frame, but it’s a shame its Dolby Atmos support is totally virtual, when the Bose Smart Soundbar is able to fit in real upfiring speakers for a better ‘dome’ of sound effect.
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I hope a new Beam could use the Sound Motion bass driver again to add even richer bass, but in a small space that hopefully leaves Sonos free to add upfiring speakers, and to make even better use of its forward speakers.
I’d personally also love if Sonos would finally start adding HDMI passthrough ports to its soundbars, but that seems like a distant dream, alas. I’ll settle for the audio upgrades.
3. A wireless home theater HDMI dongle
(Image credit: Future)
Speaking of soundbars, for the last few years, they’ve slowly but surely been going wireless. Samsung and LG both offer wireless connections from their TVs to their soundbars, and LG in particular has gone to the next level by offering Dolby Atmos FlexConnect in its new soundbar and speakers. TCL is also on board with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect’s wireless speaker skills. You can get wireless surround speaker system from both Sony and Hisense.
Sonos clearly should have been the leader in fully wireless home theater (sort of its raison d’être, you know?), but lacking the ability to transmit from the TV to its soundbars/speakers means it hasn’t made progress. All it needs to start is a little HDMI attachment, so I’m hoping we’ll see one soon.
I’d also love for this attachment to offer the ability to have wireless surround sound using satellite speakers only, no soundbar – and this apparently was on the cards with the canceled streaming box, and I said at the time that the company shouldn’t abandon this feature.
4. A portable speaker between the Roam and Move
(Image credit: Future / Cas Kulk)
Sonos has two portable speakers: the Sonos Roam 2 and the Sonos Move 2. The former is pretty small and costs $179 / £179 / AU$299, while the latter is large and costs $449 / £449 / AU$799. So there’s a big gap in terms of both size and price for something else – something closer to the JBL Charge 6.
Maybe this is a good size to include a mini version of the Sound Motion speaker, which Sonos told me it’s exploring: “We’re exploring all kinds of applications, whether it’s more bass, more compact form factors, more energy efficiency.”
One of the nice things about the Roam and Move is that they can work as a home speaker most of the time, and then you just grab them to go out. There’s definitely scope for something with a meatier sound than the Roam but a lower price than the Move that could fill the bedroom, office or kitchen of most people.
5. An Era 100 with a screen
(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)
The WiiM Sound is a direct competitor to the Sonos Era 100, with a nearly identical speaker setup and multi-room skills – but with the addition of a touchscreen on the front to add some personality and easy control options to the whole package. And we really liked it!
It made it notably more expensive than the Era 100, so we still preferred Sonos’ option for value. However, just as WiiM then followed that up with the Sound Lite, which omits the screen and competes with the Era on price, we’d love to see Sonos go the other way and offer an Era 100 with a touchscreen.
The screen doesn’t need to function like a full Sonos app, but the Sonos app already has a ‘Favorites’ bar, so it could replicate that part only on the touchscreen, so you can easily find your favorite streaming stations, playlists or artists – and control which speakers the music is playing on.
6. A big party speaker
(Image credit: Future)
The Sonos Move 2 is a very powerful portable speaker, but I’ve been told by many audio companies that huge party speakers are getting more and more popular – the kind of thing that sometimes comes with wheels, and is for mid-size events (parties in a hall, weddings, and big outdoor parties) more than home listening. The likes of JBL, Anker Soundcore, LG and many more make these.
It’d be great for Sonos to get in on the action too – waterproof, beefy, great sound quality, and perhaps a classier design than most of these have. It could be another good fit for Sound Motion – maybe in a bigger guise, or even multiple of them to provide a ton of bass kick – but it’d also be fun to again see Sonos use the pro-like compression drivers used in the Era 300, to bring a touch more ‘studio’ accuracy to the sound than these big speakers usually strive for.
Those are the picks from me and the TechRadar AV team – we’d love to hear what products you hope Sonos will launch or update in the comments!
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