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I recently received my Roam and I have a couple of items to bring up for v2 of the Roam.  We have Sonos products in all our family homes, from Grandparents houses to Kids rooms, and love the quality, so this comes from our personal setup and first days with Roam:

Came uncharged from manufacturer - Strange but ok.  No charge me first sticker and perhaps I missed that note on setup via app.  

Charge - It is hard to know if the charge lasted more than 4hrs but that was how long we played music on first use from 100% at 75% volume.  The device was dead the next day.  How do you know how much battery is on device?  Its not in quick setup or app and therefore you have to look in Sonos App and cant do it from speaker itself (kind of strange).  

Power Button - This is my biggest issue.  The power button is very hard to depress and know when you are turning the Roam actually on and off.  It feels...cheap to press, like on a $6.99 radio.  Yes, there are the chimes and the tiny lights but I pressed the power button multiple times and I can’t tell the difference.  This button needs to either have some type of feedback or make it click or something different because as a Sonos fan and user, I find this button to be an issue.  Add color or light on the button and make the button feel more robust.

Sync via NFC - The tapping was very awkward and since I don’t have a cover for my iPhone 12Pro it was frustrating that I needed to do this 3 times to find the invisible sweet spot.  Can you either add color to perhaps the power button and have people hover over that or etch in something on the casing?  

Learning the Device - Knowing your Power Level and What the lights mean - Can you please add these to the Setup accordion quick start guide?  Both of these good quick to learn things that you have to figure out by diving in.  

Switching from house Wifi to BT - The Sonos App doesn’t work when the device is on BT and of course, this isn’t hard to switch to but for first time users, perhaps a note saying, when your device is connected via BT you can stream using other music apps just like any other BT connected device.  That was also not seamless first time.  (This I haven’t fully tested if I can use Sonos App with it only BT connected but first time, it just had all items blanked out as if it wasn’t connecting unless Wifi enabled).  

Sound and use inside the home worked great and did integrate with our everyday workflow and enjoyment of the product from streaming music.  

Thats my feedback, wish this product was a bit better out of the box experience like many of your other products that we use and love every day.   Many of these are feature requests but some can be added for future production should others agree with how we experienced our device.  

I recently received my Roam and I have a couple of items to bring up for v2 of the Roam.  We have Sonos products in all our family homes, from Grandparents houses to Kids rooms, and love the quality, so this comes from our personal setup and first days with Roam:

Came uncharged from manufacturer - Strange but ok.  No charge me first sticker and perhaps I missed that note on setup via app.  

 

 

Mine came in about 50%.  Not sure if your was an anomoly or a batch of them were made without a starting charge.

 

Power Button - This is my biggest issue.  The power button is very hard to depress and know when you are turning the Roam actually on and off.  It feels...cheap to press, like on a $6.99 radio.  Yes, there are the chimes and the tiny lights but I pressed the power button multiple times and I can’t tell the difference.  This button needs to either have some type of feedback or make it click or something different because as a Sonos fan and user, I find this button to be an issue.  Add color or light on the button and make the button feel more robust.

 

 

I find the light in the front to be sufficient, however, I may opt to turn that light off, in which case the feedback would be kind of poor.  Then again, I have the option.  My issue with the power button is it’s also the bluetooth button.  I understand that Sonos wanted to use less buttons to give the appearance that it’s simple to use and prevent accidental presses, but I think I would rather have a separate button and not have to learn how to press properly to get Roam to do what I want.

 

Sync via NFC - The tapping was very awkward and since I don’t have a cover for my iPhone 12Pro it was frustrating that I needed to do this 3 times to find the invisible sweet spot.  Can you either add color to perhaps the power button and have people hover over that or etch in something on the casing?  

Learning the Device - Knowing your Power Level and What the lights mean - Can you please add these to the Setup accordion quick start guide?  Both of these good quick to learn things that you have to figure out by diving in.  

 

 

There is a product tour under the setup..

 

Switching from house Wifi to BT - The Sonos App doesn’t work when the device is on BT and of course, this isn’t hard to switch to but for first time users, perhaps a note saying, when your device is connected via BT you can stream using other music apps just like any other BT connected device.  That was also not seamless first time.  (This I haven’t fully tested if I can use Sonos App with it only BT connected but first time, it just had all items blanked out as if it wasn’t connecting unless Wifi enabled).  

 

If the Roam is connected to WiFi, then you can use the Sonos app to control the speaker.  If bluetooth is enabled, then you would use other streaming apps.  If both WiFi and bluetooth are on, then you can use either method.  I am still playing with this too, so might not have that exactly right. 

I get what you’re saying about some training for first time users.  I might expand upon that though and explain that the Sonos app is not a music player, it’s a controller to instruct the speaker to stream music directly. (and therefore you can use the Sonos app to send audio to Roam via bluetooth)  From what I’ve seen, many first time users don’t understand that concept.

 

 

Sound and use inside the home worked great and did integrate with our everyday workflow and enjoyment of the product from streaming music.  

Thats my feedback, wish this product was a bit better out of the box experience like many of your other products that we use and love every day.   Many of these are feature requests but some can be added for future production should others agree with how we experienced our device.  

 

Going back to my comments about the power button, I also am not crazy about the play/pause button being used for so much more than play pause.  There are 6 different functions that could happen with the play/pause button depending on when and how you press it.  There are 3 different functions for the power button.  That’s 9 functions jammed into two buttons, not even counting factor reset.  I would have rather had more buttons, specifically for speaker swap and bluetooth.  If accidental presses or water proofing was an issue, then maybe add a cover over the buttons for this.

 That’s 9 functions jammed into two buttons, not even counting factor reset.

 

JFC I better RTFM as I only knew about the basic function. 

 

Power Button - This is my biggest issue.  The power button is very hard to depress and know when you are turning the Roam actually on and off.  It feels...cheap to press, like on a $6.99 radio.  Yes, there are the chimes and the tiny lights but I pressed the power button multiple times and I can’t tell the difference.  This button needs to either have some type of feedback or make it click or something different because as a Sonos fan and user, I find this button to be an issue.  Add color or light on the button and make the button feel more robust.

 

Agreed - the power button is my biggest concern too.  I would prefer the option of using the top buttons (play/pause or volume) to wake it.  My intended use is bathroom (not roaming around outside with it).  So I will not always have my phone, nor want to use it.   Use case:  walk into bathroom, have Roam wake and tell Alexa what to play on it (so no need for phone).   But the power button is awkward to push and hard to tell if pressed correctly.  So we need another wake option on the device itself.     Since it has Alexa, the wake function should be made easier.   

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