Sonos is continuing to distance itself from some of the oldest products it has sold over the years.
Starting from May, legacy Sonos products will be dropped from the company’s update cycle, and will no longer receive new features. If you own a first-generation Play:5, an original Zone Player (ZP80, ZP90, ZP100 and ZP120), a Connect or Connect:Amp, both manufactured between 2006 and 2015 or a CR200 controller or a Bridge, then you’re out of luck.
According to the company in a statement issued today, Sonos is discontinuing its legacy products because they have been “stretched to their technical limits in terms of processing power”.
Sonos was clear in its blog post on the news that its old products aren’t being phased out they’ll continue to work for the foreseeable future. The company also says that it’ll offer a way for people who have both these legacy products as well as newer ones a way to “split” the system so that current speakers can take advantage of software updates and new features, though we don’t have the full details on how that’ll work just yet.
This is just the latest move Sonos has made to distance itself from some of its oldest products. Back in October, the company announced a “trade-up” program that offered owners of those legacy products a 30-percent discount on new hardware. Of course, there’s a catch: you need to put that hardware into a “recycling mode” that deletes all personal information. More troubling, that recycling mode also essentially bricks the hardware so that no one else can ever use it, quite the environmentally unfriendly move.
To give Sonos its due, the original Play:5 came out in November 2009, which means that the speakers have been in active service for over ten years, way longer than most pieces of home electronics. But, that said, many audiophiles invest and operate their chosen sound systems for considerably longer than a decade.
With today’s announcement, Sonos made it clear that the way the trade-in program is structured isn’t changing right now. That discount is still contingent upon putting that old hardware into the recycling mode that means they won’t be able to be used again.
