Sonos Roam Review - 6 Months Later

Vemuda Techno - The Sonos Roam is the smaller version of the Sonos Move that’s more waterproof and comes in at a more affordable price, retailing for $179 US dollars or $159 US dollars for the Roam SL which doesn’t come with a mic.

1. Sound Quality

Over the past six months I've come to really like the Sonos Roam and the first thing I like about it is its sound.

I’ve used this speaker as my main shower speaker and travel speaker for the past 6 months and given how crappy a lot of bluetooth shower speakers sound out there, by comparison the Sonos Roam sounds excellent.

Source: RTINGS.com

It's sound is surprisingly clear and good in the highs and mids and you do get some base with the Sonos Roam as well, though it's not room-filling base like you get with a lot of other Sonos speakers, but for what I'm using the Sonos Roam for, I don't really need room-filling base.

2. Auto Trueplay and EQ

Another cool thing the Sonos Roam has that’s borrowed from the Sonos Move is Auto Trueplay, which uses the mics on the Sonos Roam to automatically tune the sound of the Roam depending on where you place it in a given room.

Sonos also makes it easy to adjust the EQ of the speaker in the Sonos app. And if you have two Sonos Roams, you can stereo pair them together to get even better sound.

And of course, you can group in the Sonos Roam with your other Sonos speakers for true whole home audio and the Sonos Roam makes a nice addition to the mix because you can easily move it around your home to whatever location you want to play something.

3. WiFi and Bluetooth Modes

Another thing i've enjoyed about the Sonos Roam is it has both Wi-Fi and it has Bluetooth, which is a bit of a rarity for a Sonos product and it's a great feature, especially when you're traveling with the Sonos Roam and you don't want to have to deal with trying to switch the speaker over to another Wi-Fi network and switching from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth is pretty easy.

You use the button at the back of the Roam, hold it down until you hear a bluetooth sound and see the status light color of the Sonos roam switch from white to blue, confirming the speaker is now in bluetooth mode.

When you connect a device to your Sonos Roam, you’ll hear a chime from the speaker confirming a successful connection. I honestly can't tell the difference in sound quality, it's a very good sounding bluetooth speaker.

4. Sonos Voice Control in Bluetooth Mode

Now while a lot of features with the Roam won’t work while in Bluetooth mode, one that does is Sonos Voice Control, Sonos’ own Assistant.

You can still use it for basic speaker control like play, pause, skip, turn up and down the volume and check the battery level.

Hey Sonos, what's the battery level? Sonos Voice Control: “The battery is at about 80 percent.”

Now, most of the time, when I'm at home, I keep this speaker in its Wi-Fi configuration mode. You can always tell when it's in Wi-Fi mode by the status light being white and not blue.

And the reason i do that is so i can use features like Amazon's assistant or Sonos voice control, so i can just play music by using my voice.

5. Speaker Groups and AirPlay

WiFi mode also allows you to group the Sonos Roam with other Sonos speakers, like my Sonos Move which also lives in my bathroom.

And on WiFi you can use Apple AirPlay to send music and other media to your Sonos Roam and group it with any other AirPlay speaker like my Onkyo Receiver and HomePod Mini.

The next thing I really like about this speaker is its size. I found it's really easy to slip into a bag I used on my recent trip to Asheville, or you could also easily put this into a carry-on bag for a flight. Overall, I found this speaker to be incredibly well designed.

6. Charging and Speaker Placement

It charges via USB-C on the back and I was bummed it didn’t come standard with the wireless charger Sonos Makes for it but was surprised to learn the speaker also supports Qi Charging, so my existing chargers would already work with it.

You can place the speaker on a surface in either a vertical or horizontal configuration and in its vertical configuration it barely takes up any room.

7. Speaker Controls

The button controls are also the same intuitive controls you’d come to expect from Sonos, except there’s no swiping to skip forwards or skip back, for those functions you’ll need to press the play/pause button. Double press it to skip forward and triple press to skip back.

You can also press and hold the play/pause button to group your Roam into other Sonos speakers that are already playing something nearby. It's one of my favorite Sonos speaker features because it's so simple yet it works so well.

8. Sound Swap

And the Sonos Roam actually debuted a brand new Sonos speaker feature called Sound Swap, which allows you to push music from the Sonos Roam to another Sonos Speaker or pull music from another Sonos speaker to the Sonos Roam.

You do this either way by pressing and holding the play/pause button on the Sonos Roam until you hear a third chime and then the media will transfer.

Note, this does not work with some older Sonos speakers and Sonos has a list on their website of speakers this feature is incompatible with.

9. Waterproof Features

The other design feature of the Sonos Roam I've really enjoyed over the past six months that I did mention earlier is this thing is waterproof.

It comes with an IP67 waterproof rating which means it can handle being submerged in up to 1m of water for up to 30 min. Because of this the Sonos Roam makes for a great shower speaker, or speaker by the pool or in any outdoor scenario.

Baca Juga

The larger Sonos Move, is water resistant as well, but not to this extreme, you can’t submerge it or let it get really wet.

10. Voice Assistant Support

Another thing I really like about the Sonos Roam is you can choose between multiple voices, assistance 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 Roam because you can use it or Sonos Voice Control on the speaker without having to uninstall and reinstall the other one.

With the Google Assistant, you can’t also have Sonos Voice Control installed on the speaker at the same time, and in my experience, Amazon's assistant and Sonos Voice Control are both faster at playing music on the speaker as well. Amazon’s Assistant 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. Battery Life

Now, as we've discussed, this is a portable speaker, meaning, it has a battery inside. So then, of course, the next question is, okay, how good is the battery life?

Well, it's rated for a 10 hour battery life when playing media through the speaker at a moderate volume. And in my experience of the past six months, that seems about right.

And Sonos claims the standby battery will last about 10 days. This also seems about right. I find I have to charge my Sonos Roam every 10 to 15 days or so, which isn't too bad.

Now, there are two modes enabled by default on the speaker that can help you get even more battery life. Battery Saver will cause the Sonos Raom to power off automatically instead of going to sleep and WiFi Power Save will help optimize the Roam’s battery life while on WiFi.

Now, while the Sonos move has a battery replacement kit you can easily get from Sonos's website, unfortunately for the Sonos Roam, no battery replacement kit or program exists…yet.

A Sonos employee hinted on the Sonos forums a year ago the company was looking at offering a battery replacement service, but its been about a year since that comment and no service has launched yet.

And that's the first real downside I found with the Sonos Roam. Given that this speaker has been out for a bit now, and it's more expensive than competing Bluetooth-capable speakers.

It would be nice going into that purchasing decision knowing that yes, there is in fact a battery replacement program for it that you can take advantage of later on in the life of your speaker.

12. Google Cast Support

Another downside I’ve encountered with the Sonos Roam and all other Sonos products is the lack of Google Cast support for Android devices. Well, this isn't as much of an issue for the Sonos Roam since it does have bluetooth.

So if you just want to stream audio from your Android device to a single speaker, yeah, you can do that with a speaker, but Android users are still being treated as second class citizens in the Sonos ecosystem with the lack of cast support.

Another downside I’ve run into with this speaker is with Sonos Voice Control. It doesn’t always play the song I ask for where other assistants on the Roam like the Amazon assistant will.

13. Conclusion

Anyways, that's everything I've really liked and disliked about the Sonos Roam after 6 months.

The Sonos Roam retails for $179 US dollars and also has a SL version at $159 US dollars that doesn’t have a microphone, so you’ll forgo features like Sonos Voice Control and putting other Assistants on it, Auto Trueplay, and Music Swap.

To me, given the features, sound quality and overall design of the Sonos Roam, it is well worth what Sonos is charging for it, though, you can often find this speaker below its retail price which just makes it an even sweeter deal or you can find a decent open box version of them at a retailer for around $129 US dollars like Best Buy.

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