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Sonos CR200 controller turns sentient, Tweets
If you've searched for "Sonos" in the Twittersphere recently then you may have noticed something odd. Tweets about the listening habits of Sonos users are on the rise. Why? Easy, Sonos just launched a private beta while here at IFA that gives a few heroes the ability to Tweet sweet nothings about the audio currently bouncing around their home audio zones. The beta adds a new "social services" (hint: that's plural) menu letting Sonos owners configure up to 5 Twitter accounts. Fortunately, it will not tweet every track you're listening to -- you have to purposely invoke the option from the "i" information icon off the now playing screen. The free update is coming "later this year" (read: Fall) for all CR200, iPhone, and PC/Mac controllers. Want it on the touchwheel-based CR100? Surely you can't be serious?
Sonos CR200 touchscreen remote now available
Well, here we are at last, at the tail end of a tear-filled journey across controllerland, CR100 finally in the trash, iPhone app getting a little love on the side, and the CR200 at last providing a true, elegant touchscreen interface for controlling a Sonos system. The CR200 is available as of today in a $999 system bundle or $349 all by its lonesome. Be sure to check out our review before you do anything rash.
Sonos CR200 review
It's here Sonos fans, finally. The new touch-screen CR200 controller is announced and ready for purchase. After making an appearance at the FCC on its way to being leaked in full, the new CR200 controller for Sonos' multi-room wireless music system is everything we heard including a 3.5-inch, 640 x 480 pixel (VGA) capacitive touchscreen with on-screen keyboard, beefier processor, and relatively tiny 2.9 x 4.5 x 0.7-inch / 6 ounce footprint with scaled-down charger to match. Those changes make the new CR200 pocketable, faster, and far more useful than the CR100 ever was. Not that the CR100 was a bad device, it wasn't, but the $399 controller (plus $40 for the charging cradle) was definitely beginning to show its age as the only dedicated handheld controller available since Sonos launched back in January 2005. What really made the CR100 archaic though, was the 2008 release of the free iTunes App Store controller for the iPod touch and iPhone. It was faster, more graphically rich, and offered an on-screen keyboard unlike the CR100. Fortunately, the price of the CR200 has dropped a bit to $349 / €349 list, a price that now includes the charging cradle. Still, we know what you're wondering: is it worth it when an iPod touch can be purchased new for $229, or closer to $170 refurbished? Having used the CR200 for a week now, we found that the answer's not as obvious as you'd think. Click through to find out why.
Sonos CR200 remote control's product page reveals capacitive screen, $349 price tag
Looks like Sonos has put up a staging page for its CR200 remote control along with all the specs you could ask for, and a handful of low resolution pics to boot. That 3.5-inch VGA LCD display indeed is a touchscreen, and better yet, it's capacitive. It's also a good bit smaller and lighter than its CR100 ancestor, only 2.9 x 4.5 x 0.7 inches in size and six ounces in weight -- you can probably give thanks to the aluminum case for at least some of that weight loss. Price is just a hair below $350 and that drops to $290 when you get it as part of the Bundle 250. The "add to cart" function doesn't quite seem to be working, but it can't be long now, right? Just in case the page gets pulled, we've taken the liberty of screencapping all the good parts and throwing them in the gallery below.[Thanks, Schmoop and Lowwie]
Sonos CR200 remote control has a touchscreen, at last
And here it is. After we unearthed the Sonos CR200 in a FCC filing, out comes the first pic. As we expected, it's a portrait controller and is said to include a touch-screen which makes an on-screen QWERTY keyboard a lock for searching by artist, album, or song titles. Goodbye scroll-wheel! If you own a Sonos, then you know this is the best thing to happen since, well, buying your Sonos... just so long as it's not priced for $399 like the CR100 it replaces.
Sonos CR200 controller outed by the FCC
Without a doubt, Sonos makes an excellent wireless distributed audio system. If we had to nit pick (and we do), then its massive controller, the CR100 is easily the first thing to complain about. For starters it's a $400 remote control that does one thing, it controls your Sonos audio system. Granted, the CR100 is rugged, splashproof, and turns on in an instant thanks to a built-in accelerometer; features that can't justify the price, however, in light of the solid Sonos did its user base when it released a free Sonos controller app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The app even one-ups the CR100 with its on-screen QWERTY since the CR100's scrollwheel isn't exactly the best interface for typing out the name of an artist search. So imagine our intrigue when we saw a new CR200 Sonos Controller pass through the FCC. The new controller appears to prefer a portrait orientation (instead of landscape like the CR100) and was tested across 802.11g WiFi frequencies with a 24Mbps fixed data rate. While that doesn't give us much to go on, at least it passed the tests meaning we could be close to an official announcement. Considering the controller's physical design hasn't changed since its launch in January of 2005, a few more days or weeks of waiting shouldn't be a problem.
