Sonos to discontinue sales of its Control remote
With a certain inevitability, Sonos has today announced that it is to discontinue sales of its dedicated Control (CR200) remote for its range of music streamers such as the Play:3 and Play:5.
Ever since it developed a bespoke app for PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices, the Sonos Control has effectively become redundant.
"This move simply acknowledges that consumers now want to use the device they already own and love to control their system," says Sonos.
"With free Sonos Control apps now available on the most popular platforms, including the newly redesigned Sonos app for Mac and PC, the need for a dedicated hardware remote controller no longer exists."
Sales of the Sonos Control will officially end on May 31st, 2012.
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Comments
Have to agree with you Matt. Though you can see why they discontinue it when you can buy an iPad for around the same price.
Interesting point re the hard buttons. Maybe they could make a much simpler, cheaper remote that only has hard buttons (play/pause, prev/next, volume and mute), and maybe a single line LCD display denoting the current zone or track. I still use my old CR100 for pretty much this exact purpose.
Bad news
I think there is a place for a dedicated control with hard buttons.
I got a sonos controller app on both of my Macs as well as the iphone, but there is no replacement for a remote that you can control without looking at it, even if simply for the volume control.
In fact, I think the better approach would be to add a few more hard buttons - like play/pause and previous/next track, rather then discontinue the remote.
Matt