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Hiya! This is gonna be one heck of a first post for this forum.

 

I’ve had a Sonos Roam for a while now, and I love the thing. Really, I do, or at least I did… then I started worrying. I had to RMA my first unit the year I got it, because the battery health had worn down so far during its usage cycle that it refused to start up anymore. For reference, this is what I experienced:

 

  1. The Roam refused to respond to the power/bluetooth sync button, media buttons, or microphone button.
  2. The Roam’s lights would not turn on, and the speaker would not connect to the local network.
  3. The speaker would let the power light fade on, sit a moment, then abruptly shut off entirely when at rest on its wireless charging pad.
  4. The speaker would not respond to the support rep’s “plug it in and leave it overnight” troubleshooting step.

 

Later on in the day, I found that often times, the Roam and other battery-powered Sonos products relied on their batteries for things like keeping the internal clock running. When my Roam’s battery failed, it simply refused to boot. Considering it’s the only Sonos product in my arsenal, and the battery isn’t exactly user replaceable, I want to advocate for something to prolong the life of these speakers, hopefully well beyond their warranty cycle - I want to request an implementation of battery health settings.

 

My reasoning behind this is, if we use these battery powered Sonos products often or keep them plugged in, they’re prone to get particularly warm, if not hot, even when at rest. This heat can damage the battery and cause excess strain on the internal components of the speaker. If we had the ability to limit the total charging capacity for the units like we can with the volume, or outright disable charging the onboard battery beyond what would be considered necessary to boot the device and keep the internal clock ticking, we could reduce the sheer volume of RMA requests for these products. They wouldn’t get as hot, because they’re running almost solely off of their charging cables instead of constantly topping up their battery, and they’d see better longevity because of the aforementioned idea of battery level limiting.

 

I’ve seen this kind of idea put to use in various different settings. For example, Samsung devices tend to have battery charge limiting enabled as a part of their demo mode, and even charge rate limiting in some cases to keep the batteries in better shape. Apple, as far as I know, does similar things with their demo units, so they don’t have to be replaced as much (especially considering the phones often sit on wireless chargers when at rest nowadays). Some laptops have a similar feature as well, meant to learn your patterns and save charging to full for when it’s needed, or even cap off at a lower level if you’re always hooked up to the wall.

 

There are many ways this could be implemented… but considering Sonos products aren’t exactly user repair-friendly… the best we can do is ask to delay the inevitable with a firmware feature like this, so we can make the most of our Sonos speakers, and hopefully keep their batteries healthy where applicable.

 

Sorry if this comes off as rambling, I hope this all makes sense - it’s been on my mind for a few months now, but it seems like it won’t happen without a nudge. Here are my sources from the forum, which brought me to finally join to make this:

 

 

I know that there are other complaints similar to yours. Unfortunately, in the Community we don’t have complete data with respect to the ROAM population. To some extent this is a hospital. Here, “everyone” is sick. We don’t know what fraction of the full population ends up in this hospital.

In general, lithium batteries last longer if they are kept charged. Repeated full discharge shortens their life and if the charge level falls too far, some batteries become fire hazards. Overcharge is also a hazard. With previous generations of portable equipment using NiCad batteries, the situation was very much the opposite where keeping batteries constantly on the charger reduced battery run time and ultimate life. This was partly due to raw battery characteristics and misunderstandings of the battery system dynamics by system designers. As users we were conditioned to pull the battery off the charger and to fully discharge the battery from time to time. Retaining this practice for lithium batteries is counter productive.

I have several Samsung tablets, most sit on a charger full time showing a clock screensaver, behind that I usually have the Sonos App and a monitor App for my security cameras running. I rarely take them off the charger and then only for a few minutes.

Samsung offers an option to limit maximum battery charge to 85% which the claim greatly improves battery life when left on charge most of the time. I switched it on and see no issues with it in my use case since battery run time really isn’t an issue.

I still remember the fun of finding one of my several CR-100s with the case split and screws stripped from a failed internal battery. I learned that lesson quickly and replaced the old batteries in the others before failure.

I miss my old flip-phone where it was easy to carry a spare charged battery and swap it in when the original went flat. Really handy when away from AC power for a long time. A lot more convenient than the solar charger I have yo use on my current internal battery phone.

I know that there are other complaints similar to yours. Unfortunately, in the Community we don’t have complete data with respect to the ROAM population. To some extent this is a hospital. Here, “everyone” is sick. We don’t know what fraction of the full population ends up in this hospital.

In general, lithium batteries last longer if they are kept charged. Repeated full discharge shortens their life and if the charge level falls too far, some batteries become fire hazards. Overcharge is also a hazard. With previous generations of portable equipment using NiCad batteries, the situation was very much the opposite where keeping batteries constantly on the charger reduced battery run time and ultimate life. This was partly due to raw battery characteristics and misunderstandings of the battery system dynamics by system designers. As users we were conditioned to pull the battery off the charger and to fully discharge the battery from time to time. Retaining this practice for lithium batteries is counter productive.

 

I understand the idea, but i’m trying to cast a bigger net than just the discharge cycle. Lithium batteries, like what’s used in the Roam, Move, and most non-Sonos devices, really don’t like heat when they’re charging or in use. Hot batteries tend to suffer much worse battery health over time, but my primary thought is that if we can move from continuously topping up the battery, and instead top it up every week, or few days based on charging usage… well, we might be able to just draw straight from the wire instead, based on device usage or settings. My Roam tends to run pretty hot, and the Roam I had before did too… but if that was constant, maybe there’s room for improvement.

So it’s been about 10 months since I posted this, and my replacement Roam unit is now showing the same signs of failure as the first. Against my attempts to keep the battery healthy, it now discharges when charging. This is a sign of battery failure, since it happens with other chargers as well.

 

It seems like the only way to genuinely save the battery in this case, since I haven’t seen any staff response, is to either breach the user agreements and disassemble the speaker to modify the hardware and avoid charging the battery above a certain value or replace the battery manually, or call in and get a replacement every year.

 

This sucks.

I am thinking the exact same thing about both my AirPods Pro, and my iPhone.

Inaccessible / not easily replaced batteries are not my preference.

Although I have to admit, I don’t have this issue on my Sonos Roam, but perhaps my use case is different than yours.

I am thinking the exact same thing about both my AirPods Pro, and my iPhone.

Inaccessible / not easily replaced batteries are not my preference.

Although I have to admit, I don’t have this issue on my Sonos Roam, but perhaps my use case is different than yours.

Maybe? Frankly, I use it as a home speaker, and sometimes take it on trips. Otherwise, it’s usually on its charging stand waiting for Google Assistant commands. I tried contacting support about it just a bit ago, and apparently they have a temperature cutoff now (which is undocumented) but no way to artificially limit the charging cycle - even though they can certainly stop charging if needed based on the support rep’s scale of 4 to 45C..

Update, the battery failed just yesterday, one year later.

 

Again. The support representative was sympathetic and provided the ability to replace it, but I can’t say I’m happy with how these speakers handle their batteries.

 

When I talked to support by text, almost a month ago, they said that the speakers have battery management tech that prevents the battery from being damaged, but this is only heat protection that stops the battery from charging as soon as it gets too hot. There’s no way of limiting the charging process for long term use.

In my experience the unit is warmer when sitting on the charger than when connected via USB.

In my experience the unit is warmer when sitting on the charger than when connected via USB.

Interesting… for me, it was usually about as warm. Definitely odd though.

I think that it depends on if the battery is partially or fully charged.

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