The new Sonos Roam is a rugged wireless speaker with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

Publish date: 2024-06-01
Whether you want to get a speaker for your home or something to carry around with you on the beach, you’ll be definitely interested in the new proposition Sonos is offering. The Sonos Roam is a portable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker designed to be extremely durable and withstand a submersion of up to 1 meter in water for 30 minutes with its IP67 waterproof resistance. It can also hold out being accidentally dropped.The Sonos Roam is intended to work with either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity -- though it can do both, and we’ll tell you how in a bit. When at home, it will connect to your Wi-Fi network, and when you’re out and about, it will automatically find your phone and pair with it via Bluetooth. It is also developed to be fully compatible with the Sonos ecosystem.

There is a very curious thing that the Sonos Roam can do. You can "tell" a nearby Sonos speaker to play whatever your Roam is currently playing. If you hold the play button for three seconds, the Roam stops playing and the other unit picks up the jam. This feature is called Sound Swap and it also works the other way around. It doesn't work with Bluetooth, however.

The Sonos Roam comes with Apple AirPlay 2 streaming compatibility. The speaker also integrates both Alexa and Google Assistant capabilities. You can stream directly from Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Sonos Radio.

Once charged, the Sonos Roam can amuse you for up to 10 hours. The portable speaker uses its microphones to determine what kind of environment you’re in and thus set the best output settings for it. This function is called TruePlay. The microphones can also take commands but this feature is available only via Wi-Fi.

Sonos tried to make the Sonos Roam as compact and lightweight as possible. The speaker has a size of 6.61 x 2.44 x 2.36 inches and it weighs only 0.95 pounds. It can be charged via the included USB-A to USB-C cable cable or wirelessly thanks to Qi wireless charging support. There is no wireless charger in the box, though you can buy the company’s own for $49 which is currently on pre-order together with the Roam itself for $169 -- these start shipping on April 20.

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