Sonos CR200: now that's control!

Fwd Tech  Tuesday 28 July 2009

Sonos officially unveils its new iPhone-alike controller. Yep, we said controller

Sonos has long been the king of music streamers, but the design, particularly of that fat controller, was starting to look a bit dated. Enter the new Sonos controller, the CR200, which replaces the tired-looking CR100, with a gorgeous touchscreen.

It’s not often we dedicate a whole news story to a mere controller (in fact it’s almost never), but the Sonos CR200 looks more like some sort of awesome PMP than a remote. For starters, there’s a 3.5-inch touchscreen that’s double the resolution of the iPhone 3G S at 640×480 pixels.

There are still dedicated buttons for you to control the volume situated at the bottom of the device, plus a removable battery, you know, just in case it dies completely. Of course we’re not saying it will. But it could.

So, the new Sonos CR200 allows you to control all your music in different rooms with the mere swipe of a finger. The touchscreen’s capacitive, so it’s super responsive, and there’s even access to the likes of Napster and Last.fm. Awesome doesn’t quite come close to describing it.

To round off the package, Sonos delivers the CR200 with a neat cradle to keep it safe. So, how much for the Sonos CR200? Brace yourselves… £279! That’s more than an iPof Touch! If you buy it in a Sonos BU250 bundle (in which you also get ZP120 and ZP90 zone players) it’ll cost £799. That’s okay then.