Is Sonos Move a $400 paperweight? When did Sonos give up making products that work?

Is Sonos Move a $400 paperweight?

No. My Move has worked flawlessly from day 1.

Have you tried configuring the Move on both AP's?

Mine works fine too and always has. Sonos makes greater demands on a network setup than most devices because it involves multiple devices.

The answer here lies in the configuration of your network and the two APs, and/or the network settings in Sonos. The Move does use the same software as other Sonos products.  I am afraid most of your post is misguided, as would be your revenge YouTube video.

Note. One difference in the Move 's connection is that it can connect to the 5GHz band. Whether that is relevant I cannot tell, because your post contains no useful information. 

For the folks that said it works flawlessly for them, I have no doubt it does for you - I’m happy for you. The fact that some of them do work isn’t really relevant, the point is that it doesn’t work for others.

Regarding @JohnB’s “Sonos makes greater demands on a network setup than most devices” he misses the original point - that I have run my multiple Sonos devices for years on Wifi perfectly fine. No SonosNet. Every other Sonos device works perfectly, Move fails perfectly. It has nothing to do with demands on the network. My Play1 uses Wifi, my Move uses Wifi. My Play1 works perfectly on my network, my Move fails perfectly on the same network. Ergo, the Move’s firmware is broken.

Regarding @JohnB’s “I am afraid most of your post is misguided, as would be your revenge YouTube video”, unboxing videos are standard fare on the Internet because they serve a valuable purpose - educating consumers on products and what to expect. If a company fears consumers viewing an unboxing video of their product then they should probably re-think what they are selling the consumer. Sonos customers such as myself that have significant investments in Sonos should be aware of the potential incompatibility of the $400 Move, I’m afraid your assertion otherwise is misguided.

As for some of the network detail questions above here are some details:

• Cable DOCSYS modem connected to an ASUS AP (#1), with that connected via a wired connection to a (2nd) ASUS AP. (The #2 AP is simply a wired bridge, no DHCP, etc).
• The Sonos devices only see the wireless network from the 2nd AP, which is both 2.4 and 5 Ghz on the same SSID (using something they call Smart Connect).
• All Sonos devices are wireless, i.e. no SonosNet.

To @106rallye I have not tried configuring the Move on both APs - thank you for that idea. I thought having different devices on different APs would be even more problematic instead of less but I’m willing to give it a try. What I did do - successfully, is create a private 2.4 Ghz network off AP #1 and on that network the Move works fine. But before everyone jumps on that saying I’m done: 1) that AP does not cover my entire home [hence the second one - a common setup], and 2) that band-aid is not the point - the point is the Move fails where my much older Sonos products work.

Again - the main point is that I can take my Play1 that is on a portable stand using Wifi, unplug it, move it around anywhere in the house, plug it back in and it works perfectly. If it had a battery instead of a power cord I’d have a Move that works. The Sonos Move, which is designed to do exactly that, fails perfectly. Ergo the firmware functionality of the Move is deficient and would never have passed any regression testing which Sonos apparently doesn’t perform.

Hi @ybl84f1, sorry to hear of the trouble you’ve been having!

Do you mind sharing the specific model number of the ASUS APs? We’re aware of some ASUS models which require a Factory Reset to function properly with Sonos, particularly after a firmware update on the ASUS side of things.

As to why this is only affecting the Move - I would hazard a guess that the issue is related to the 5GHz wireless connection; splitting the SSID so that Sonos only connects to the 2.4GHz may help, however performing the Factory Reset on the ASUS hardware may be necessary, if the models you are using match.

Hi @Xander P , the 1st AP (hanging off the Motorola D3.1 cable modem) is an ASUS RT-AC86U, the second AP bridged via ethernet is an ASUS AC3200 which is the only AP my Sonos devices are aware of.

Note that this is not some complex or esoteric network configuration - this is a very typical setup using popular APs to provide coverage throughout a home.

Also - please don’t tell me my network needs to be re-configured to work with Move - if that’s the case then Sonos has failed in designing the Move. All of my older Sonos devices have worked perfectly fine the last 4 years in this network configuration. Consider this for a moment: if I strapped a lithium battery and an inverter to my Play1 with duct tape I would have a portable Sonos speaker that would work anywhere in my home or in my yard, but a brand new $400 Sonos speaker designed to be portable doesn’t work? Does that make any sense whatsoever? If that's the case then Sonos should have simply gutted the AC power supply in the Play1, velcro’d on a battery and would then have had a better, more compatible product than the Move. Sonos is moving backwards.

This is either a shortcoming in the firmware that 1) was missed in testing the product and 2) could be fixed and updated but Sonos has decided not to, or it is a shortcoming of the wifi silicon that Sonos has chosen in their design. Either way its very disappointing to see Sonos fail their customers.

The above statement is a contradiction to your thread title, which clearly implies that the product doesn’t work for anyone...it’s just a paperweight..   It seems you were just exaggerating to get attention, since you know that your thread title is inaccurate. 

A lot of incorrect assumptions here that have already been pointed out to you.  Even then, I’m not sure why you would conclude it’s a firmware problem with every Move rather than specific to your device and network situation.  Your assumptions don’t even narrow the problem down to broken firmware rather than faulty hardware or some other issue.

Education is only valuable if it’s accurate.  Your experience is not what consumers can typically expect and thus can be misleading.   It’s an experience, for sure, but trying to claim it’s more than that alone, or shared by a relatively small set of consumers, isn’t exactly honest.

And John doesn’t work for Sonos, so assuming his opinions match that of Sonos doesn’t make any sense either.

Understood, thanks for that @ybl84f1. While it's not a particularly complicated network, there are still a lot of settings & features on ASUS devices which, if not correctly configured, will cause problems with Sonos.

While the Play:1s in your system might not experience the same issues, Move is different in that it can connect via 5GHz, which may expose some slight issues with the network configuration that could otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Regarding the ASUS RT-AC86U, I'd recommend checking that the multicast settings are configured as below;

Another recommendation from ASUS themselves is to perform a Factory Reset on the router after updating the firmware, especially if there are any issues with device connectivity, and this has been shown to resolve similar issues with Sonos on ASUS networks. (It may also be worth performing a reset on the bridged AP also)

Thanks @Xander P, I’ll give that a try when I get a moment. As you are probably aware on the RT-AC86U those settings you list are not set to those values by default.

And again, the Move should not experience any of these issues just because it has a 5 Ghz wifi chip, that’s not a valid answer. That same chip also supports 2.4 Ghz. That means it can do everything the Play1 can do and more - it is a proper superset -  which means that even in the worst case scenario when the Move can’t connect properly (because of 5 Ghz issues) it could always fall back to using only the 2.4 Ghz and then connect perfectly anywhere the Play1 can connect. The Move should not fail to work anywhere a Play1 works properly! This is an easy solution that Sonos could implement in the firmware and app instead of having the product fail and with Sonos incurring all the costs (returned products, brand image, etc) associated with it not working.

Also - instead of the app definitively indicating it’s connected or that it has an issue, it presents this nebulous “kinda works, kinda doesn’t” Schrödinger's cat state by showing it connected sometimes, then completely disappearing other times. There’s no reason the Sonos app can’t diagnose this instead of leaving the user hanging.

Lastly - the Sonos phone support didn’t delve into any of the settings you listed above, or for that matter any settings.

@melvimbe - somehow you equate “it doesn’t work for others” with “the product doesn’t work for anyone”...it’s unclear how you find equivalence between those two statements, you seem to want to make more of what is actually written than what’s there.

Regarding whether its a firmware problem, you may not understand wifi silicon but read the prior post; in no situation should a 2.4/5 Ghz wifi chip fail where a 2.4 Ghz chip works. The wifi silicon in the Move is a superset of the Play1; the firmware in the speaker could disable the 5 Ghz and fallback to 2.4 Ghz, essentially making it indistinguishable from (a working) Play1 on the network. Although its a slower speed it 1) is an option and 2) is better then having a Sonos paperweight.

As far as “Your experience is not what consumers can typically expect and thus can be misleading” I’m not sure how my real-life experience can be misleading - it’s actually what happened. Period. As far as your judgement as to whether consumers can expect this or not it’s pretty simple - IT JUST HAPPENED! Your judgement of "typical” may be biased because what you don’t see in this forum is all the people that had this issue and just gave up and never came here. You may want to look up “Survivorship Bias” in statistics.

Yes education is only valuable if it’s accurate!