This is the Sonos Roam. It's a bluetooth and Wifi speaker. It sounds good, and is super competitive considering its price of $170. But portable bluetooth speakers have been around for a while now. What makes this one stand out? Well. Let's find out with a little review.
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Sonos Roam: www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=... roam&index=aps&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=xm2&linkId=a81a830622a36dbb6c5ab8a91db68b00
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:22 Physical Features
1:56 Personal User Experience
5:00 How the Sonos Roam Sounds
5:33 Sound Test
7:41 Sonos Roam Alternatives
8:41 Conclusion
Out of the box you have the Sonos Roam, an angled usb-c cable and a quick setup guide. The speaker comes in white or black and the front has a hard feeling mesh speaker grille. The back is hard touch plastic with a usb type c port and power button. The bottom is also hard touch plastic with 4 tiny little dots for rubber feet. The sides are soft touch plastic and one side has your standard controls, volume up and down, a mic button for the smart assistant, and a play pause button that is also used to skip and go back a track. The speaker itself is small enough to grip with your hand. It's also IP67 water resistant.
Now let's talk about using the Sonos Roam. What stands out about this speaker is its wifi capabilities. It can get software updates, be paired with another Sonos roam for stereo sound, if you have two of them they can be paired with a sonos sound-bar to be used as side speakers for a surround sound setup, and be grouped with other Sonos speakers to play music in sync, even if they're in different rooms. It also allows you to switch to different Sonos devices, or group them together on the SONOS app. It does have airplay 2 support so it's easy to just send audio over to the Roam from an iPhone, but the "unsmart" thing about the Roam is that it does not have google casting features. But it does have built in smart assistant functionality. You can set it up to use either Amazon Alexa, or the Google Assistant. It shows up as a speaker in the Google Home app, but there's no way to pair it to anything other than other Sonos devices. Don't forget that if you use it out of range of your Wi-Fi, then the smart assistant function won't work. The roam has a battery life of up to 10 hours, and I get around 7.5 hours at around 70% volume. Uninterrupted, meaning I just let music play, but voice assistant usage, constantly changing volumes or rapidly skipping songs because you're not feeling in the mood for that one track at that one specific time may impact its battery life.
Let's talk about how it sounds. I'm no audiophile and rely primarily on my own ears. I'm here to give you a regular person's perspective on this. It had more bass than I expected. That being said, the Bass doesn't drown everything else out and I can clearly hear the mids and highs. I personally think It sounds pretty good.
Now let's talk about some alternatives to the Sonos Roam. The only ones that I could think of is the Sonos Move, and Bose Portable Smart Speaker, which are both larger, and cost twice as much as the Roam. Many other portable bluetooth speakers in this price range lack smart features and wifi. On the other hand, smart speakers like the amazon echo line or Google nest line have to be plugged in to be used. But with the Roam, SONOS kind of said "Why not both", and shoved the best of those features into this device.
Alright, so, based on everything I've said so far, how do I feel about the Sonos Roam? Well, I think this is one of the more versatile smart speakers out there at this price. It can be used as a portable bluetooth speakers for those days you spend outside. Or can be used as a smart speaker in your living space. It's Sonos's cheapest speaker and is surprisingly the most functional with all of its features. Of course it's smaller and doesn't sound as good as those other sonos speakers like the slightly beefier and pricier Sonos One, but it sounds good enough for what it is. A versatile small and portable smart bluetooth speaker. There's not many portable speakers with a feature set as packed as this one, and definitely not at this price point. It's a good value if you're interested in a smart speaker. And if you wanted a good reason to start trying out the Sonos ecosystem of audio products, I'd start at this one right here.