Sonos has just put up a teaser video on its Instagram, with a caption saying “There’s a lot of noise about the next Sonos launch…”, and a link to a new site where the company encourages you to sign up for email alerts about whatever it’s doing next.
The video shows the speaker configuration of a Sonos Sub, and anyone could be forgiven for assuming that this means a new model of Sub is on the way, given that the products mentioned in a recent report that apparently laid out much of Sonos’ 2024 plans included a new Sub.
But here’s the thing: as noted by The Verge, the video is directly adapted from the video from the launch of the Sonos Sub Mini in 2023. Here’s the Instagram tease:
And now here’s the announcement video of the Sonos Sub Mini – it’s mostly just a cropped-in version of this, with one image of the ‘inside’ of the subwoofer rotated to fit the vertical video of Insta.
So what’s going on? Is this a direct tease of an imminent launch – especially with CES just around the corner – or just a flashy way to take advantage of the amount of press around its supposedly leaked products?
I’m inclined to think it’s the latter. Sonos doesn’t usually do CES, and I’d generally expect Sonos to wait until a little later in the year – the company currently has a sale on, including on the Sub Gen 3, and I think the company would hope to avoid annoying anyone who just bought the old Sub by waiting at least a couple of months between its sale and dropping a new one.
But more than that, I would just expect something different from the teaser if it were about a real new product with its own marketing plan and art. If a release were imminent, Sonos would have new cool motion art to show us, designed specifically for this tease; something suitably cryptic.
Re-using the Sub Mini’s video – the product even appears partially in the video! – suggest to me that Sonos just wanted to have something that felt suitably ‘sound-y’, and this video is full of soundwave-like ripples.
So we don’t know exactly when Sonos will release the many products potentially on its plate in 2024 – including a new high-end soundbar, a new high-end amp, the aforementioned new Sub, a new Sonos Roam, and even a set-top streaming box… as well as its long-awaited headphones – but if you see this teaser on your socials, my advice is to keep your expectations for an imminent launch in check for now. The last time there was a huge Sonos product leak it was for the Sonos Era 300 and it took over six months for the product to appear.
