I received a Sonos Move 2 for Christmas, and unfortunately it has been one of the most frustrating technology purchases I have made.
Let me be clear: the hardware is beautiful. The design is excellent, it looks fantastic and the sound quality is very good. If I were reviewing the physical speaker alone, I would have very little criticism.
The problem is everything that is supposed to make the speaker work.
The Sonos app is unreliable and buggy. I regularly have problems connecting to the Move 2, and I have experienced problems with both Spotify and Apple Music. Trying to play music that is already in my Apple Music library, rather than music streamed directly from a service, has been particularly frustrating.
I have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to connect the speaker, get the app to recognise it and get music playing. On several occasions I have had to effectively factory reset the speaker to get it working again.
I spend almost as much time trying to get the Move 2 working as I do actually listening to it.
Bluetooth is also unnecessarily complicated. A premium portable speaker should not require this much effort to simply play music.
What makes this particularly disappointing is that this was my first Sonos product. I bought the Move 2 with the intention of eventually putting Sonos speakers throughout my home. Instead, my experience has convinced me that I don’t want another Sonos product.
I genuinely hope Sonos fixes these software and reliability problems, because there is a very good speaker underneath all of this. But right now, I cannot recommend the Sonos Move 2.
It looks beautiful. It sounds great. But reliability and ease of use matter more to me than either of those things, and on those measures my experience has been extremely poor.
If you’re considering buying one, my advice would be to wait until Sonos has demonstrated that these issues have been properly fixed.
