Sonos Move Review - 6 Months Later

Vemuda Techno - The Sonos Move is surprisingly good. Well. Okay, maybe it's not surprising that Sonos made a great sounding speaker.

They've been doing that for a while now, but what has really surprised me over the past six months using the speaker is how much I’ve found myself moving my home to play music thanks to its Battery & Bluetooth capabilities.

Source: Engadget

But at $400 US dollars, which is the retail price of the Sonos Move, those features come at a cost and I'm going to walk you through whether or not I think it's worth that cost.

1. Sound Quality

And the first feature that has really stood out to me over the past six months with the Sonos Move is sound quality.

If you’re buying a speaker, you want it to sound good and I don’t think you’ll have any complaints with the Sonos Move’s sound.

The speaker features Two Class-D amplifiers, one downward-firing tweeter for crisp highs and a wide soundstage and one mid woofer for mid-range and low frequencies.

It can easily fill a room with distortionless playback at high volume, and honestly it just sounds good in any room I put it in now.

2. Auto Trueplay and EQ

And one reason for this is a technology Sonos uses called TruePlay, which helps Sonos speakers tune their sound and tailor it for the environment you place them in.

Normally with TruePlay you have to get your phone out and have it scan around the room while your speakers emit a semi-loud sound, but, with the Sonos Move, Sonos introduced Auto TruePlay.

Auto TruePlay will automatically retune your Sonos Move as you move it around by utilizing the on-device mics.

The data collective from the mics is only used locally and not uploaded to Sonos's servers or anything like that.

And it works on both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mode though weirdly if you have the Google Assistant installed on the speaker, auto-play will not work when you put the speaker in bluetooth mode.

Auto Trueplay can also work when you stereo pair two Sonos Moves together as well which will get you even better sound.

And if you want to tweak the way your Sonos Move sounds by default, you can go into the Sonos app to play around with the speaker’s EQ.

The Next thing I really like about the Sonos Move is that move part. The portability of the Move is something I didn’t even know I wanted or needed, but I really love it.

3. Battery Life and Charging

The battery life for me has been excellent, its rated for 11 hours, though depending on a variety of factors such as volume level, temperature, etc, those can all impact your real world battery life.

For me, I haven't used it for the full 11 hours of playback but it's at least lasted me eight hours of playback.

You can check the battery level by either asking the speaker through Sonos Voice Control, Sonos’ own voice assistant,

“Hey Sonos! What's the battery level?”

Sonos Voice Control: “The Battery is fully charged.”

or looking at the Sonos Move in the Sonos app.

And its easy to pack up on a trip and you can even put it in your carryon luggage, though it might take up a good amount of your bag or luggage space compared to the smaller Sonos Roam.

The Move will also net you around 120 hours of battery life when you leave it idle off its wireless charger dock, which comes with the device and leaving the speaker on its dock all the time will not negatively affect its overall battery health, and you can alternatively charge the speaker using a compatible 45 watt usb-c charger.

And you’ll know when you need to charge it because the Sonos Move’s battery light will start to blink orange.

If you want to save even more battery life you can turn on Battery Saver mode in the Sonos app which will cause your Sonos Move to power off automatically instead of going to sleep.

4. Battery Replacement

Now, one concern i had about buying a speaker with a battery in it is how long that battery would actually last.

Sonos rates the battery for 900 charges or about three years. Once the battery has started to go on your Sonos Move, you can purchase a replacement battery kit for it which retails for $70 US dollars.

It's honestly great to have a speaker thatís designed to be both portable and durable and have a replaceable battery which is honestly pretty rare in tech these days.

5. Design and Controls

Another thing I really like about this speaker is it’s design. I think first, it has a great aesthetic for a speaker, its very clean and minimalist and comes in two great colors: lunar white which is the color I have and shadow black.

The touch controls on the top are easy to use and intuitive. You can tap to raise and lower the volume, swipe between the volume buttons to skip forward or skip back, and tap the mic button to turn the mic on and off.

And the Status light at the top will turn a variety of colors to give you info about your speaker, it’ll turn green when the volume is muted, blue for when the speaker has gone into it’s Bluetooth mode, white when it’s on Wifi, and the status light will turn a brighter white when you talk to a voice assistant.

6. Bluetooth Mode

The WiFi Bluetooth toggle on the back makes it easy to switch between both modes, you just simply hit it once to switch the device over to Bluetooth and then go into your device to find and pair with the Sonos Move, which will make a sound confirming its paired with your device.

7. It's not Waterproof

Sonos also made sure to make this speaker durable, it has a shock absorbing design that also carries a IP56 water resistance rating for occasional brushes with the elements like splashes, rain, snow, but note, it is not waterproof.

It cannot be submerged or exposed to pressurized water such as a shower or heavy rainstorm. Also note, the wireless changing base is not rated to be used outdoors so you’ll want to charge your Sonos Move indoors.

8. Speaker Groups

The Sonos Move is also easy to setup and I like how Sonos guides you through each step and has helpful cards you swipe through during setup to get you familiar with everything your speaker can do.

Another great part about this speaker is how easy it is to add the Sonos Move into a group of Sonos speakers already playing music over Wi-Fi.

You can simply tap and hold the play/pause button and your Sonos Move will start playing the same music as your other speakers.

But if you plan to use Bluetooth mode, do note that you can't stream audio from your device to multiple Sonos speakers via bluetooth, as well as you can't actually group Sonos speakers together via Bluetooth either.

9. AirPlay and Sonos App

Another thing I really like about the Sonos Move is it’s easy to cast music to your speaker over WiFi through either Apple AirPlay from an Apple device or through the Sonos app.

It’s easy to bring up AirPlay on my iPhone and group my Sonos Move with other Sonos and non-Sonos AirPlay speakers like my HomePod Minis or my Onkyo Receiver to play music.

And when I was at the beach this year I was able to cast audio from my Apple TV to the Sonos Move which vastly improved upon the garbage audio coming out of the TV speakers.

10. Voice Assistant

The last thing I like about the Sonos Move is you can choose between several voice assistants to use on the device.

You can choose between the Google Assistant, Amazon Assistant, or Sonos’s own Sonos Voice Control.

For me, I use the Amazon Assistant on my Move because you can use it and Sonos Voice Control on the speaker, with the Google Assistant, you can’t also have Sonos Voice Control installed on it.

Overall, Amazon’s Assistant is speedy and can play music from a variety of services like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

Sonos Voice Control at the time of recording can only play music from Sonos Radio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Pandora.

11. Sonos Voice Control

Where Sonos Voice Control really shines for me is being able to control the volume of an individual Sonos speaker within a group of Sonos speakers currently playing music.

It can also tell you the battery level of a Sonos device in your system.

“Hey Sonos, What's the battery level?”

Sonos: “The battery is fully charged.”

and you can use it to pair a group of Sonos speakers together.

“Hey Sonos, group bathroom speakers.”

Sonos: “Grouping bathroom speakers.”

So that's everything I've liked about the Sonos Move, but there are a few downsides I've run into while using the speaker for the past six months.

12. Google Cast Support Missing

The first major downside for the Sonos Move is lack of Google Cast support. If you're an Android user and you want to be able to easily add your Sonos Move into a group of speakers made up of Google cast speakers, like the Nest Audio or my Onkyo receiver, you can't.

You can only group your Sonos speakers through the Sonos app or by using Sonos Voice Control.

13. Issues Moving Between WiFi Networks

Another downside I ran into with my Sonos move is when moving it from one Wi-Fi network to another.

When i brought the speaker along with me to my beach vacation over the summer, I found it was very difficult to use the Amazon assistant after I had successfully moved the Sonos Move to the Wi-Fi network I had set up at the beach.

It just would not play any music..Even after I did a soft reset of the device, reauthorized my Sonos account, i removed the Amazon assistant from the device and then reinstalled it on the device.

It still just would not play music. After trial and error, I finally was able to fix this issue by simply disabling the Sonos skill through the Alexa app and then re-enabling it and then, the Assistant would play my music again.

14. Sonos Voice Control Is Less Forgiving

The last downside I’ve found with the Sonos Move is with Sonos Voice Control. It’s less forgiving than the Amazon or Google Assistant when it comes to asking for a specific song from a specific artist, it’ll often not be able to complete my request where Amazon’s Assistant will understand what I’m asking for.

15. Sonos Move vs Sonos One

So that’s everything I like and dislike about the Sonos Move, and while it’s an expensive speaker at $400 US dollars, it packs in a ton of features, is easy to use, sounds fantastic, includes bluetooth and overall, its a much more versatile Sonos speaker than I had originally realized.

If you have the money, I'd actually recommend going with these Sonos Move over the Sonos One.

It's a bit larger and more expensive, but the ability to just pick it up and move it to a different room or outside on a whim, that versatility is actually quite nice and something you can't easily do with the Sonos One.

That's all for today. See you next time. Thanks for reading.

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