Sonos one SL - terrible speaker

It’s not a terrible speaker at all, used as intended. Perhaps you should have bought a Move instead?

Agree you bought the wrong product for your usage. The move does everything you want and, as the name suggests, is portable. 
 

A pair of Plays Ones/1 in a static location are a great stereo set up. 

I’m very happy with my Ones.
I knew they couldn’t be connected via Bluetooth before I bought them as I did a bit of research. I was sceptical about Trueplay, but do find that it makes a difference. It’s certainly not a feature on any £50 speakers I know of. 

If I wanted a single speaker to use in different rooms at different times, I would have auditioned the Move. More costly, but designed for that purpose. 

As pointed above, regardless of what it is you’re buying, it’s never a good idea to assume features based on what you think should be there based on the price.  It’s very easy to do a little research before hand, or ask the friends who recommended the product in the first place.    Even if you don’t manage to do that, or you realize features you want after purchase, you have a return period in which can switch it out for something else you prefer.  The Move is a better fit for the features you want.

As far as using the Sonos app, you have the option of playing directly from the Spotify app if you find that interface easier to use. Use the casting feature.

The often used (but very pertinent) analogy on here is that what you have done is a bit like buying a Ferrari and then complaining that at that price it should be able to go off-road.

You are also missing the point that your use case doesn’t match the versatility that it does have - it is fundamentally designed as part of a multiroom, multi-source, multi-controller home audio system. The app isn’t a music player, it’s a remote control for the system.

You didn’t do your research, you bought a product designed to do lots of things you don’t need and not to do something you did need. That doesn’t make it a bad speaker.

I did do research before I bought it. 

My partner refuses to have any speaker with built in mic so the SL One was my only option with Sonos. The Move (as much as I was tempted) is VERY expensive. It advertised that the ONE SL has multiple rooms around the house that it can be tuned into in the settings. It also advertised that you could change its location around the house, so I automatically assumed that I could actually do that without having to retune every time. I feel that this must be such a simple feature given what its capable of. But if there is no demand for it, it doesn't make sense for Sonos to change it. 

I’ve since learnt how to play from Spotify app, which I now do, but ideally the app will just be better. For paying top of the range, I want a really accessible app, easy to navigate. There's not even a search bar, to type in radio stations manually so you have to scroll through lists to find what you want. So many comments online with people struggling with it. 

But I can see I’m out voted. 

There is a radio search. Hit the search tab, select ‘Stations’ for the context and start typing. It’s difficult to see how it could be made any more intuitive….

And when you have found a station you listen to frequently, add it to ‘My Stations’ and ‘My Sonos’ so you can find it instantly next time.

Not sure I know what you mean by the bold statement.  The SL makes sense for many different rooms in the house, but it’s not designed to be moved around throughout the house and reconfigure itself.  And honestly, what we feel to be a simple feature often is not, requiring more memory to store all the different tunes, or other complications that we just don’t see from the outside looking in.

Thanks for the advise on radio stations, that's worked nicely. 

I appreciate everyones views on this. When speaking to the operator on the phone, he suggested I put these views on here, which I've done. If people agreed with me presumably, Sonos would look into it, but it seems that no one really experiences the same issues, which is fine. 

Thanks everyone