What you need to know about the Sonos Roam

Source: Sonos

The Sonos Roam is the company's second attempt at making a portable speaker. And it looks like it has learned from the Move to make it a viable option.

How much is it?

The Sonos Roam costs $229, and you can get it in Lunar White or Shadow Black. It's available for pre-order now, and the company says it'll start shipping on April 20.

Nifty features

This portable speaker introduces a feature called Sound Swap. When you hold the play and pause button for three seconds, you can pass the playing music to the closest Sonos speaker.

The Roam can detect nearby Sonos speakers by the high-pitched frequency the other speakers emit. According to The Verge, it's not something we humans or dogs can hear.

Source: Sonos

This speaker also gets Trueplay, which promises to tune the audio output automatically to get the best sound depending on where it is located.

The Roam now supports the use of both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It can automatically join your Wi-Fi and then switch to Bluetooth when you take it out of Wi-Fi's range. 

This speaker also has AirPlay 2 support and can let you stream from different services with the Sonos app's help.

Audio quality

This smallest Sonos speaker ever comes with two Class-H amplifiers, a tweeter for high frequencies, and a "custom racetrack" mid-woofer that "ensures faithful playback of mid-range frequencies and maximizes low-end output."

It doesn't have a 360-degree design, but Sonos claims it fires audio where it makes the most sense. You can set up two Roams for stereo sound. But you're limited to doing this on Wi-Fi and not on Bluetooth.

The Roam also serves as a smart speaker as it supports both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

Source: Sonos

Battery info

Sonos promises up to 10 hours of playback and 10 days of standby time. The Roam offers both wired and wireless charging, with a USB-C cable included in the box. The company is selling a wireless charging dock separately for $69. But if you have a Qi charger that can fit the speaker when it's standing up, you can use that, too.

Ready for some adventures

With IP67 water and dust-resistance rating, this can be taken to many places. It can take a plunge in up to a metre of water for up to 30 minutes. The triangular-shaped speaker also has silicone ends that can help protect it from drops.