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Not a question - just some major gripes - Return/get a refund if possible

C

The Sonos Roam is constantly dropping from my home PC and iPhone. Yes, it’s set up properly via wifi with the Sonos app. Yes, I follow the instructions on the Sonos site (incl. factory reset). Yes, it’s fully charged. Etc, etc. I even get it to work sometimes (for several consecutive days)...until it doesn’t (dropping randomly with me doing absolutely nothing).

I have looked in several Sonos community threads to investigate and a lot of feedback is not helpful (things I already did repeatedly) and usually condescending (the equivalent of “try ctrl-alt-del you dolt”).

My gripes -

  • Why does my Roam keep dropping randomly when using Bluetooth (on my phone or PC) - Actually, don’t answer this - I give up.
  • Why does the Roam not have a Bluetooth button if it is intended to be primarily a Bluetooth device (using the on/off button to pair the device is an idiotic design flaw in my view)?
  • Why do I need to link it with my wifi to get it started in any case (few if any other Bluetooth-enabled speakers require this)?
  • Why can’t a I simply use this as a ‘wired’ speaker with my PC as that would be an option - albeit a costly option - to get around the Bluetooth issues I am having?

Alas, I had extensive experience with Sonos speakers and systems years ago when it first came out (bridges, multiple speakers in different rooms and outdoors), and it worked fine. I eventually stopped using it in favor of using Bluetooth enabled devices in each room (long story short, it’s much easier to manage kid/wife expectations that way).

I do not have the same opinion of this product, and I cannot recommend the Sonos Roam at all.

DO NOT BUY (or return it before it’s too late and save hours of lost of time).

 

 

 

 

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 7 January 2023, 17:07

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31 replies

Bumper
Userlevel 6
Badge +12

Gripe 1- no idea

Gripe 2- no idea but agree the design is not good 

Gripe 3- no idea. It’s a hassle if you are away from home but shouldn’t be that big of a deal imo. 

Gripe 4- bc it lacks a line in 

Ken_Griffiths

Gripe-1 - Bluetooth can dropout for a variety of reasons.

  • Audio source, if not stored on the sending device, might have communication/bandwidth issues.
  • Sending device might have other software blocking its connection, firewall, vpn, mac spoifing etc.
  • Sending device is too far away from speaker 
  • Speaker or sending device is near to other devices causing interference, microwave, dect phones, baby monitors, wireless access points, other Bluetooth devices,

Gripe-2 - The multifunctional button is just that and it is designed to resist water ingress so that the device is IP67 rated. It can be used for standby/power-off mode, Bluetooth pairing, PID reset etc,

Gripe-3 - you only need to link it to WiFi for initial setup/registration (needed so Sonos know what services are available to your region/country etc. After that it can be used as a Bluetooth speaker if so required. 

Gripe-4 - The Sonos product is primarily designed as a portable wireless multi-room computerised speaker with the following features (not an exhaustive list):

  • Waterproof 
  • Auto-Trueplay 
  • Apple Airplay 
  • Wireless Audio
  • Sound Swap
  • Bluetooth (with WiFi pass-through to wired/wireless Sonos products)
  • Stereo pairing / multi-room grouping.
  • 10 hour battery life
  • Built-in mic with voice assistant (Alexa/Google/SVC)
  • Available in Black/White/Other colours
  • Wired and Qi Wireless charging

So IMHO the Sonos Roam is great value for money and I personally have no difficulties with either Bluetooth, or Wireless playback and use it at multiple locations and also whilst travelling.

Bumper
Userlevel 6
Badge +12

I bought a Roam during the pre release. I returned it bc it was a pos.
 

My kids gave me a Roam for Christmas this year. Very thoughtful gift, but unfortunately it is still a pos. A pos I can’t return. 
 

I will say that at least they seem to have the battery drain issues fixed.

Ken_Griffiths

The two Roams here work fine - never had an issue with either of them (touch wood). Can’t recall a playback issue with either of them. I use them with the Sonos App services (Sonos Radio), Native Apps (Deezer, Amazon Music mostly) and they each play fine over WiFi, Sonos API, Airplay2, and Bluetooth.

They’re great standalone, grouped, or stereo paired. I can leave them playing ‘happily’ for hours. I have set mine on the least-used 2.4Ghz WiFi band on non-overlapping WiFi channel, with a channel-width of 20Mhz only. Bluetooth sending devices are iPhone XR, iPad-10 and iPad Pro (3rd Gen). 

I have various PD certified wired and Qi chargers that I use and when not in use they are either powered off or left standing on Qi pads.

I find the WiFi adapters in both Roams extremely good, in fact I can take them to the end of our rear garden area (a distance of 40-50 feet away from the nearest WiFi Access point) and they will still connect and play on WiFi.

 

K

I have this exact issue by the sounds of things - Roam will lose connection and disappear from the app entirely or say ‘Not Connected’ - the only sure-fire fix is to do a reset on the device and set up from scratch (including adding the Alexa back in). My wife and I will sometimes get different availability from each other (ie one of us will have connection and then can operate it). Not a wi-fi issue as no other devices in the house experience anything like this. Been like this since new and it is driving me mad. I just want to sit outside occasionally or just put some music on and it’s pot luck if we can connect. Sometimes es we have more luck by getting Alexa to start the music. So frustrating.

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@cjspr, you’re not alone, I feel your pain investing on a good sounding speaker that costs   $4500 Mexican Pesos or 250 dollars, and is very unstable and Unrreliable in therms of Wifi conectivity and poor software, mine keeps stopping the music randomly if I use  Airplay or Spotify, skips songs randomly, its compatibility with Google Assistant and Alexa is very unrreliable, and this is my second replacement, issues remain, and all other devices in my Wi-Fi network at home work absolutely fine, and seeing all the complains in this forum, I made an expensive mistake, I don’t want it in my home anymore  and sooner or later   mine is going to be returned. I can’t even connect it to SonosNet through a boost to see if there is a difference so no, there’s no way     
        

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
I

I have the same issue. My Sonos Roam keeps on being dropped from the App and my IPhone can never find it to connect to it. I have no issues with the Sonos App for my Sonos Play speakers and have no issues with headphones which need to get to connected to IPhone. I rang up support today and they couldn’t even connect it after trying a factory reset. I have asked for a refund but I am out of my warranty period. Well I will see how that goes!

J
Userlevel 1

I have multiple Roams and they lose WIFI connectivity all the time.

I initially thought I had a defective unit, which is how I ended up buying a few more.

Roam is the only Sonos product I've been truly disappointed with after many years of buying Sonos products.

I

Firstly I am surprised you purchased another Roam after buying the first one! Lol! However I just wanted to say I have spoken to a telecoms professional and they tried to get my Roam working and they couldnt. They have said the Roam has probably a defective adapter or software. Also, not being able to differentiate between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz is old technology software and means that the software in all Roams is outdated. No wonder the price of Roams in the UK is falling dramatically.

Ken_Griffiths

Firstly I am surprised you purchased another Roam after buying the first one! Lol! However I just wanted to say I have spoken to a telecoms professional and they tried to get my Roam working and they couldnt. They have said the Roam has probably a defective adapter or software. Also, not being able to differentiate between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz is old technology software and means that the software in all Roams is outdated. No wonder the price of Roams in the UK is falling dramatically.

The Roam adapter is WiFi-5 (802.11ac) compatible, so not sure where you are coming from when you say it cannot differentiate between a 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz band - it will use either band? - The only problem im aware of, arises if the router you are using has difficulty passing the SSDP multicast ‘discovery’ packets between those two network segments - such as the documented issue with some BT routers in the community here.
 

In that case where the controller device is on a different band to the Roam, the device discovery is intermittent - but this only happens with a very few router products. Most routers work flawlessly. The Roam will work fine on either WiFi band, so whatever the telecoms professional told you in regard to this then I’m sorry but they are wrong - the 802.11ac adapter in the Roam works fine, but of course that does not ever exclude the fact that an individual Roam may develop a faulty adapter - as that can happen in the case of any electrical product. However, generally speaking, the many hundreds of thousands of Roams sold worldwide, work just fine on either WiFi band. The band used of course depends on the strength of signal between the Roam and access point.

Ken_Griffiths

I had to walk down the garden (60ft +) to get the Roam to switchover to the 2.4Ghz band, but here’s the evidence that the Roam will use either WiFi band and will switch as necessary dependent on strength of signal, admittedly the adapter is sticky when playing, but otherwise has no difficulty switching - it remains the case the issue often lies with the router/AP’s and their handling the SSDP multicast packets correctly for device discovery… that’s certainly not a Sonos issue.

(Screenshots from our mesh router interface)

K

Not sure if I helps anyone - but I have this issue. The fairly consistent solution I’ve found is to reboot the router. Without any intervention on the Roam it just magically re-appears. I have to do this daily. If I get see the Roam in Sleep Mode or ‘Offline’ there’s no recovering it without a factory reset or rebooting the wi-fi router. I have 2x wifi routers linked by a cable to provide more coverage in my house. Just thought I’d share in case we all have a similar set up causing the issue.

Ken_Griffiths

Not sure if I helps anyone - but I have this issue. The fairly consistent solution I’ve found is to reboot the router. Without any intervention on the Roam it just magically re-appears. I have to do this daily. If I get see the Roam in Sleep Mode or ‘Offline’ there’s no recovering it without a factory reset or rebooting the wi-fi router. I have 2x wifi routers linked by a cable to provide more coverage in my house. Just thought I’d share in case we all have a similar set up causing the issue.

What might help is when you lose the Roam in your app and it’s not discovered, to go onto switch your controller to your other router and then close and reopen the App to see if the Roam then appears. If it does, then simply blacklist the MAC address of your Roam and mobile controller device on one router only and the problem will then ‘most likely’ resolve itself. 

K

Will try that - thanks

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Music stoppages are not tolerated, and if the music keeps stopping randomly because the Wifi antenna is sticky, then it’s a hardware issue. It’s time to return mine, I think. That’s Pritty sad, a great sounding smart speaker should work entirely errors free, this is not the case for my Roam and other threads reporting the same. It’s a shame          

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
106rallye
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

A sticky wifi antenna?

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

I want to take my Roam to a place where someone can replace its Wifi Antenna to a better one 

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
Ken_Griffiths

"It’s time to return mine, I think."

If I had a £1 / $1 for every occasion you have mentioned that you’re going to return/sell your Roam @Manu84 in all the various threads here in the Sonos community I think I would be a rich man.

The advice you have been given by the many (many) Staff and experienced users here on how to resolve your local WiFi/Network issues continues, it seems, to fall on deaf-ears… my suggestion is perhaps to not ‘think’ about it, but just simply sell your Roam and move on. It will never solve itself with you not heeding the advice you’ve been given so many times in the past.

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

 I have multiple devices at home that work, just, fine. I have many evidences that  my Network is robust, many; SpeedTest:  

 Video playback, Buffering 0%, 2160p resollution, 961ms download time, suitable for playing content on big tablets, big computers and big smart TVs. Here’s a picture      

 

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
Airgetlam

Speedtest, and any variations of similar apps, measure merely the speed between one device, and the end point for that app. What they don’t do is check for communication in your local LAN between devices, the speed thereof, or even for potentials like duplicate IP addresses. They’re great apps for that one thing, they’re not very good at the things that Sonos itself uses much more robustly than any other network device. 

Bruce
jgatie

🤐

Ken_Griffiths

@Manu84,

As Bruce mentions, that’s all irrelevant to the SSDP multicast ‘device’ discovery issues that you were experiencing across the LAN segments and the intermittent audio dropouts due to interference from overlapping WiFi channels and unnecessary channel-width.

If you continue to choose to leave things as they are, your issues will persist. The advice you have been given in the past has apparently been completely ignored by yourself …and simply quoting network upload/download speed is (still) never going to fix your local network issues.

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@Ken_Griffiths, ok, I might have a network problem but Here we go again. 

1: I’ve tried to contact Sonos Mexico   Tech Support  many times, they’re quite unresponsive and unhelpful, nobody answers the calls and the chats get disconnected. 

2: I’m a person with vissual disabilities and it’s difficult for me to look at the printed manuals on my router to set it up, I live with 6 family members and everyone uses the network, so they don’t let me to touch the router, a simple reboot doesn’t makes a difference, and I’m not a technissian to sort out network issues. 

3: I’ve took a look of other threads of people having the same issues and nothing seems to effectively work, not even reducing wireless interference. 

4: I bought my Roam to enjoy my music happily, not to study networking and get frustrated because my music keeps stopping randomly. 

5: I’ve asked for help very nicely to fix my Roam but this is what I get, everyone had yelled at me to fix my network, I’ve been told that I’m a troll,  and many disgusting comments; I deserve respect. It’s not fair, stop treating me like this        

     

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
J
Userlevel 1

The Roam is a POS.

Not really much to bicker about there.

Airgetlam

I’ve got zero problems with my Sonos Roam, either in Bluetooth mode, or on Wi-Fi. 

Bruce

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