Sonos and Denon HEOS are the two multiroom audio platforms UK buyers land on most often once they move beyond a single Bluetooth speaker. Both let you play different music in different rooms, group speakers for whole-house playback, and control everything from a phone app — but the two ecosystems are built on different premises. Sonos is a self-contained speaker and soundbar range with no AV receiver option; HEOS is Denon's proprietary multiroom protocol, built into wireless speakers, soundbars, and — crucially — into Denon and Marantz AV receivers. This guide compares the app experience, hardware range, pricing, streaming support, and Home Assistant integration depth of each so you can decide which fits your home.
The Core Difference: Speaker Platform vs Receiver-Integrated System
Sonos sells only dedicated wireless speakers and soundbars — there is no Sonos AV receiver. Every Sonos product connects over Wi-Fi and is controlled through the Sonos app (previously called S2, now simply the Sonos app following recent updates). If you want a Sonos device to work with an existing hi-fi amplifier or AV receiver, you are limited to the line-in on select models such as the Sonos Five.
HEOS, by contrast, is designed to sit alongside a home cinema setup from the start. If you already own a Denon or Marantz AV receiver with HEOS Built-In — recent examples include the Denon AVR-X1800H through AVR-X6800H and Marantz's Cinema series — that receiver appears in the HEOS app as its own zone, sitting alongside any wireless Denon Home speakers on the same network. You can send music to the receiver's zone directly without a separate streaming box or extra setup, which is a genuine practical advantage for anyone who already has Denon or Marantz gear driving their TV sound.
App Experience
The Sonos app remains the more polished of the two, though it has had a rocky recent history. A 2024 redesign stripped out features and drew heavy criticism from long-time users; Sonos has since restored most of what was removed and the app is now considered stable. Grouping rooms, adjusting EQ, and switching between streaming services all happen within a single, well laid-out interface, and setup for a new speaker typically takes under ten minutes.
The HEOS app has historically lagged behind Sonos for polish, but the gap has narrowed. Adding speakers is straightforward — plug one in, and it appears automatically once it is on the same Wi-Fi network as your other HEOS devices — and grouping rooms is a simple drag-and-drop action. Where HEOS genuinely pulls ahead is AV receiver integration: a HEOS-enabled Denon or Marantz receiver shows up in the app as just another zone, letting you route the same multiroom audio into your home cinema setup that you use for the kitchen or bedroom speakers.
Speaker and Receiver Range
Sonos's current line-up runs from portable and compact speakers to full home cinema soundbars. The Era 100 starts the range at around £199, the larger Era 300 sits around £449, and the flagship standalone Sonos Five costs around £549. For soundbars, the Sonos Arc is priced at around £899, with the Beam Gen 2 a more affordable £499 option. Portable options include the Sonos Move 2 at around £449, and Sonos also sells the Sonos Ace headphones, which integrate with the Arc and Arc Ultra for TV audio handoff. Prices vary by retailer.
Denon's HEOS hardware spans wireless speakers, a soundbar, subwoofers, an amplifier, and a wide range of AV receivers. The Denon Home 150 is the entry-level HEOS speaker at around £219, the Home 250 sits around £449, and the Home 350 tops the standalone speaker range at around £599. A 2026 refresh added the Home 200, 400, and 600, with the flagship Home 600 supporting Dolby Atmos playback from a single wireless unit. On the receiver side, HEOS Built-In spans the Denon AVR-X1800H up through the flagship AVR-X6800H, plus equivalent Marantz models such as the Cinema 50 and Cinema 70s — meaning almost any current Denon or Marantz AV receiver doubles as a HEOS multiroom zone. Our full Denon HEOS review covers the speaker range in more depth.
Streaming Services and Protocols
Both platforms cover the mainstream UK streaming services, with some differences in how you access them. Sonos speakers connect directly to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Tidal through the Sonos app, and every current Sonos product supports Apple AirPlay 2 for direct streaming from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac without opening the app at all. Sonos deliberately omits Bluetooth from most of its range (the Move 2 and Roam are exceptions) to keep the focus on Wi-Fi-based streaming quality.
HEOS supports the same major services — Spotify, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz, and internet radio via TuneIn — directly within the HEOS app, alongside Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect for handing off playback from those apps' own interfaces. Every current Denon Home speaker and HEOS-enabled receiver also supports AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth, giving HEOS slightly broader connectivity options than Sonos on paper, since Bluetooth is available as a fallback across the whole range rather than on select models only.
Home Assistant Integration Depth
Both ecosystems have official, actively maintained Home Assistant integrations, but they behave differently under the hood. The Sonos integration connects over the local network using UPnP — Home Assistant classifies it as "Local Push," meaning no cloud round-trip is needed for state updates. It exposes each speaker as a media_player entity, plus additional number, select, switch, sensor, and binary sensor entities covering things like bass and treble, crossfade, battery level (on the Move and Roam), and microphone status. No Sonos app account is required for basic playback control from Home Assistant, though any music service that needs an account — Spotify included — must first be configured through the Sonos app itself. One limitation: microphone state is read-only and cannot be toggled from Home Assistant.
The HEOS integration also connects over the local network, using the IP address or hostname of any HEOS-capable device, and it automatically fails over to another host on the system if the configured one goes offline. It creates a media_player entity for every HEOS device — speakers, amps, and receivers alike — with playback, volume, mute, shuffle, and queue controls, plus custom actions for group volume and browsing services like Tidal. A HEOS account login is optional but recommended, since features such as favourites, playlists, and quick selects require it. The integration has two notable gaps worth knowing before you rely on it: AV receiver-specific features such as zone selection and power control are not exposed, and there is no text-to-speech support, so announcement-style automations that work on Sonos are not possible on HEOS today. For more on setting up local-control automations generally, see our Home Assistant UK setup guide.
Multiroom Grouping in Practice
Day-to-day grouping is similarly quick on both platforms. In the Sonos app, you tap a room, then add others to the group — playback syncs almost instantly and volume can be controlled per room or across the whole group. HEOS works the same way, with rooms grouped by dragging them together in the app. The practical difference shows up when a HEOS-enabled AV receiver is part of the mix: because the receiver is just another zone, you can extend whatever is playing in the living room into the receiver's connected speakers without touching an HDMI switch or a separate remote — something Sonos cannot replicate without buying a dedicated Sonos soundbar.
Which Should You Choose?
If you are starting from scratch with no existing AV equipment and want the simplest, most polished multiroom experience, Sonos remains the safer default. The app is more refined, the ecosystem is larger and better established among UK retailers, and resale value on used Sonos gear tends to hold up well.
If you already own — or plan to buy — a Denon or Marantz AV receiver, HEOS is the more sensible platform. You get multiroom audio built into equipment you would be buying anyway, broader Bluetooth and voice-assistant support across the speaker range, and a lower entry price at the Denon Home 150's roughly £219 versus the Sonos Era 100's £199 — close enough that AV receiver integration becomes the deciding factor rather than price alone. Home Assistant users should also weigh the specific integration gaps above: Sonos offers deeper entity-level control and no-cloud local push, while HEOS trades some of that depth for tighter receiver integration.
