The Sonos Roam is here, with the wireless speaker being described by the company’s CEO Patrick Spence as “the smartest speaker we have ever built”.
The portable speaker – which comes with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity – will be released officially on April 20, and is available to preorder from the Sonos website now for $169 / £159 / AU$279.
With a lightweight, water-resistant and dust-proof build, the Sonos Roam bridges the gap between smart assistant and portable speaker, coming with Alexa and Google Assistant built in for smart home control.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? The Sonos Roam is a new portable speaker from the audio giant.
- When will it be released? April 20, but it’s available to preorder now.
- How much does it cost? $169 / £159 / AU$279.
The cheapest and smallest Sonos speaker to date, the Roam is the most affordable entry point into the brand’s multi-room audio ecosystem, and comes with a host of new features designed to let you keep listening to your tunes seamlessly as you move between your home and outdoors.
The first of these new features is Sound Swap – simply hold down the play button and the Sonos Roam will ‘throw’ your audio to the nearest other Sonos speaker available.
Another, Automatic Switching between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, means you can simply walk into your home and the Sonos Roam, having previously been paired with your Bluetooth device, will connect to your Wi-Fi, without the need to set it up and reconnect manually.
Finally, the Auto TruePlay feature first introduced with the Sonos Move has been upgraded here, so the Roam will automatically tune its soundstage to your environment, whether you’re on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
If it can live up to its lofty specs, the Sonos Roam will pave the way for truly flexible music listening, which is an exciting prospect for audiophiles and casual music fans alike.
The Sonos Roam is certainly a departure for Sonos, building on the success of the portable Sonos Move and adding an extra level of connectivity, rugged design, and accessibility to the audio giant’s comprehensive ecosystem. Here’s everything you need to know about the latest Sonos speaker.
Sonos Roam price and release date
The Sonos Roam will be available to buy on April 20, and it’s available to preorder now from the Sonos website for $169 / £159. That works out at around AU$220, though Australian pricing is still to be confirmed.
That makes it the cheapest Sonos speaker to date, undercutting the Sonos One SL, which costs $179 / £179 / AU$269. It’s also cheaper than Sonos’ first portable smart speaker, the Sonos Move, which costs $399 / £399 / AU$649 – a price that puts that speaker firmly at the top end of the Bluetooth speaker market, although it earns that price tag thanks to its array of Sonos smarts and powerful audio.
If the Sonos Roam can live up to its ambitious specs, its lower price could make it a contender for the best Bluetooth speaker you can buy today – as well as the most accessible entry point to the wider Sonos ecosystem.
It’s still not cheap by any means though; one of our favorite Bluetooth speakers, the UE Boom 3, costs $129.99 / £129.99 / AU$199.95, although it doesn’t come with the smart assistant compatibility of Sonos’ latest device.
Sonos Roam design
While the Sonos Roam retains the minimalist aesthetic of the brand’s previous devices, its design is quite the departure for the audio company, with a focus on ruggedness and portability.
It’s longer and thinner than the comparatively squat Sonos Move, and is a similar size to a water bottle. It’s far lighter than the Move too, weighing in at 0.95lbs / 0.43kg.
That light build, combined with an IP67 water-and-dust-resistance rating, should make it more easily portable than its predecessor, and rugged enough to withstand the elements. In fact, Sonos says it can survive being three feet underwater for 30 minutes.
Sonos will also sell you wireless charging stand for the Roam – it’s not included with the speaker. Simply place the speaker on the stand, and it’ll snap into place with magnets, giving the Roam a permanent home inside yours.
The Sonos Roam has concave end caps, which Sonos says increase the speakers drop-resistance and prevent accidental button presses, so you don’t jack the volume up to 11 every time you brush past it.
The buttons themselves are described by Sonos as “tactile and slightly embossed”, with a raised design making it easy to hit play or change the volume. The Sonos Move’s buttons are touch-sensitive, so the ability to feel the buttons will likely be a welcome feature for anyone with visual impairments.
Coming in ‘Shadow’ black and ‘Lunar’ white, the Sonos Roam boasts a “precision-engineered” honeycomb grille – it’s not a wraparound grille though, so don’t expect true 360-degree sound.
Still, you do have some flexibility when it comes to placing the speaker – the Roam can be positioned horizontally for stability on uneven ground, or vertically for a smaller footprint, with its triangular shape funneling sound upwards.
Overall, we think the design of the Sonos Roam looks really attractive. While many portable waterproof speakers come in garish colors and functional materials, the Roam retains the slick aesthetic we’ve come to expect from the audio brand.
If Sonos’ goal is to make a speaker that works just as well indoors as it does outdoors, the Roam’s design could be instrumental in its success – and from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like the company may be onto a winner.
Sonos Roam audio performance
While we can’t make an assessment of the Sonos Roam’s audio performance until we’ve tested it ourselves, we can take a look at the sonic specs on offer here.
Inside the speaker are two class-H amplifiers, with a high-efficiency motor that Sonos says “increases power and range”. With its smaller build, we’re not expecting the sound to be room-filling in the same way that sound from the Sonos Move is, but hopefully the Roam has some heft behind it.
There’s also a custom racetrack mid-woofer to ensure “faithful playback of mid-range frequencies” and maximized bass, and a tweeter to provide “crisp” high frequencies. In other words, we’re expecting a well-balanced soundstage with plenty of clarity in the trebles, smooth mids, and a powerful bass response.
You’ll be able to adjust the EQ settings too, presumably via the Sonos S2 app.
Sonos is reprising its Automatic Trueplay tuning technology for the Sonos Roam, which we first saw with the Sonos Move – though with one key difference. The feature allows the speaker to adjust its sound output based on its orientation, location, and content, and it can now do this over Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi.
In spite of its small size, we’re expecting a powerful sound from the Sonos Roam thanks to some clever design choices surrounding the transducer.
The transducer transforms the electric signal into wave-shaped changes in air pressure – the sound you hear – and for that, it needs space to move, as well as space within the speaker to pack in as much air as possible.
As Sara Morris, Principal Product Manager at Sonos explains, the team managed to keep the size down by making the transducer part of the housing itself, allowing the Sonos Roam to be “smaller, lighter, and still have a really good sound”.
In any case, we can’t wait to try it for ourselves.
Sonos Roam connectivity
In spite of its focus on portability, the Roam is very much part of the Sonos ecosystem, which means you can use it as part of a wider multi-room audio setup, or pair two for stereo sound. Pairing the Sonos Roam with other Sonos speakers can be done by simply holding down the play button.
Unfortunately, you can’t use two Sonos Roam speakers as a pair of rear channels for your home cinema system. We expected this to be the case, as the same is true for the Sonos Move – the company puts this down to sync issues, and the potential for a directional soundtrack to lose its focus if a speaker isn’t optimally positioned in a room.
It works with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5, so you can use it in the home or on the move – and the new Automatic Switching feature should make this transition more seamless than ever, with the speaker automatically connecting to your Wi-Fi network when in range, and re-pairing with your phone when you’re out and about.
When you’re at home, the aforementioned Sound Swap feature allows you to ‘throw’ the music from your Sonos Roam to the nearest Sonos speaker available – all you have to do is hold down the play button on the top of the Roam (we suspect this is a shorter press than is required for pairing, but Sonos hasn’t clarified this). Pretty cool, if you ask us.
As with the Sonos Move, both Google Assistant and Alexa are onboard, so you can use the voice assistant of your choice to control the speaker hands-free, control your other smart home devices, check your calendar, ask questions, and more.
The Sonos Roam should pick up your voice readily, thanks to a far-field microphone array that uses beamforming and multi-channel echo cancellation to ensure the speaker can hear you even when music is playing.
There’s also support for AirPlay 2 on Apple devices with iOS 11.4 and later, as well as “100’s of streaming services”.
As with previous Sonos products, it sounds like connectivity will be a strong point for the Roam, with easy integration into the wider ecosystem, an agnostic approach to smart home platforms, and support for Automatic Switching and Sound Swap.
Sonos Roam battery life
The claimed battery life of the Sonos Roam is 10 hours, and the company says it can last up to 10 days in sleep mode – it’ll automatically go into sleep mode when you stop playing music.
That battery life almost matches the Sonos Move’s 11 hours, and most decent portable speakers on the market.
You can charge the Sonos Roam with any Qi-certified charging device, but if you want to keep it in the family, Sonos sells a dedicated wireless charger that features magnets to hold the speaker in place. You also get a USB-A to USB-C connector in the box, so you can use your own adapter.
The custom charger costs $49, which works out at around £35 or AU$60 – global pricing is still to be confirmed.
Sonos Roam: our first impressions
Without testing the Sonos Roam for ourselves, it’s hard to make a true assessment of its audio performance – but we’re certainly impressed by what we’ve seen so far in terms of design, and we can’t wait to see if the sound quality, connectivity, and extra features live up to the brand’s claims.
We’re also excited about the fact that this is the cheapest Sonos speaker ever. Traditionally, we’ve viewed Sonos as a fairly aspirational brand – sure, its prices don’t reach the heady heights of audiophile hi-fi companies, but its devices don’t come cheap.
The Sonos Roam represents a far more accessible entry point to the brand’s ecosystem, and hopefully that won’t be at the cost of compromises on performance.
We don’t think it will though; the specs are impressive, and Sonos products regularly top our audio buying guides thanks to their excellent design, audio, and connectivity.
The introduction of the brand’s second portable speaker does beg the question: “If you can afford the Sonos Move, why would you buy the Sonos Roam?”
It’s a question we put to Sara Morris, who explained that the choice comes down to where you expect to use your speaker. She explained that she would use the Sonos Move in her backyard or patio for its “space-filling sound”, whereas the Sonos Roam is for “when you want to just throw something in your backpack and go”.
With the Roam being about one-sixth the size of the Sonos Move, that makes sense, and we can see the appeal. Here’s hoping the Roam lives up to our expectations – if it does, it could easily take the crown as the best portable speaker on the planet.