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Ditte
March 9, 2021

Meet Sonos Roam, the ultra-portable smart speaker

Related content:Hardware
Meet Sonos Roam, the ultra-portable smart speaker

We’re happy to introduce you all to Sonos Roam, the ultra-portable smart speaker built to deliver great sound at home and on any adventure. Fully connected to your Sonos system on WiFi at home and automatically switching to Bluetooth when you’re on the go, Roam’s powerful, adaptable sound defies expectations for a speaker of its size. Effortless set-up and control and new smart features make it easier than ever to enjoy music and more from anywhere. Weighing less than a pound (450g), Roam’s elegant yet durable design is perfect for your home, the backyard, and wherever you go.

Get to know Sonos Roam

A simultaneous connection to both WiFi and Bluetooth makes streaming wherever you are seamless. When you’re listening at home Roam connects to your system and streams on WiFi, and when you leave it intuitively switches to Bluetooth and automatically re-pairs with your mobile device.

With an all-new feature called Sound Swap, you can hold the play/pause button on the speaker to switch the music to the nearest speaker on your system, making it easy to move music from room-to-room.

Sonos Roam (left) and Sonos Move (right)

Seamless connectivity also unlocks Bluetooth streaming for your entire system, with the Sonos app allowing you to group any of your Sonos speakers to Roam when streaming with Bluetooth. Roam works with more than 100 streaming services, including Sonos Radio, and is easily controlled with the Sonos app, your voice with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, Apple AirPlay 2, or directly from your favorite music service app.

Roam was created to deliver an incredible sound experience no matter where you are. Like all Sonos products, Roam was tuned by industry leaders across music and film to ensure the speaker reproduces content exactly how the creator intended. A carefully designed acoustic architecture delivers rich, detailed sound with the clarity, depth, and fullness you’d expect from a larger speaker.

Automatic Trueplay is now available when streaming via Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi, and means Roam is always tuned for the best listening experience in any environment.

Available in shadow black or lunar white, Roam’s tactile triangular shape and soft profile is comfortable to pick up and looks great inside the home. Combining elegance and durability, Roam is dust proof and fully waterproof with a rigorously tested IP67 rating, and features silicone end caps and physical buttons to protect against drops or bumps.

Roam is ready for any adventure with up to 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge and up to 10 days of battery life when not in use.

To recharge, Roam connects to a custom magnetic wireless charger from Sonos sold separately, any Qi wireless charger, or with the USB-C cable included in the box.

 

Sonos Roam

Roam’s compact size will fit into any bag or the smallest corner of your living space. Listeners can place Roam vertically for a smaller footprint or horizontally to provide added stability on uneven surfaces outdoors. Even the packaging leaves a light footprint, with a structure that is made of 100% sustainably-sourced paper, minimizes the use of inks, and includes no single-use plastics. 

Roam is available starting April 20 for $169, €179, £159, NOK1799, SEK1999, DKK1349. You can pre-order today on sonos.com.

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394 replies

melvimbe
April 19, 2021

 

It seems logical to me.  I would expect that you need to stoop current playback before going into standby mode if currently grouped, or just power it off.  Actually, I guess I would expect it to not go in standby mode, just keep playing, if it’s currently grouped to an active stream of audio.  

On ungrouping though, I am not exactly sure that press and holding the play/pause button will group/ungroup the Roam, since the sound swap process also requires press and hold of the play/pause button.  Maybe it won’t do a sound swap if it is not near another player?  Not sure on that.

If you consider a quick-press of the Roam’s Play/Pause button as being the first ‘bleep’, that starts/stops the music playback. 

I then understand a longer press of its Play/Pause button (two ‘bleeps’) is used for grouping/ungrouping - which is exactly like a long-press (audio source-cycling) action thats on most other Sonos products.

...and then an even longer press (three ‘beeps’) on Roam’s Play/Pause is used for the new ‘Sound Swap’ feature.

Hope that helps clarify the Roams button action for Play/Pause.

 

That does make sense, but I have two question.  What’s the difference between a beep and bleep?  What happens when I get to four bleeping beeps?  :wink:

Danny
Ken_Griffiths
April 19, 2021

I will just quickly mention some other things about Roam, but this applies to all Sonos devices…

When music audio is playing, such as a playlist, or album, etc; a quick double-press or triple-press of the Play/Pause button will ‘skip’ forward/backward through the playlist tracks.

Note: when skipping backwards through tracks, some music services may only move ‘focus’ back to the beginning of the current playing track, whilst other services may goto the previous track in the playlist.

So occasionally, with some services you may find you have to do a quick triple-press "twice" in some cases in order to get the speaker to play the previous track (it may depend too on how far you are into the playback of the current track). At least that has been my own experience, based on using these type of Sonos hardware button features.

I just thought that I would just mention that here as it ‘perhaps’ may assist some new users of the Roam. (Some of these points are covered anyway in the Roam’s ‘product tour’, which is available via the Sonos App in "Settings/System/[Roam Room Name]"

Ken_Griffiths
April 19, 2021

That does make sense, but I have two question.  What’s the difference between a beep and bleep?  What happens when I get to four bleeping beeps?  :wink:

Oh I hate my own typo’s - it should always be ‘bleep’. I base that on this link: https://wikidiff.com/bleep/beep 

ha ha 😂

Local Superstar
April 19, 2021

How does the sound compare to other small speakers, eg. The echo Shows, and the Nest Hub? 

It's the courageous bee's knees - all 6 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝. - - - - - Make Sonos Great Again - - - - -
Bumper
April 19, 2021

Happy to see people starting to receive their Roams! Let us know what you guys think! :smile:

I see a number of software issues - the Roam speaker wakes from sleep and resumes playing in the group it was part of. This might also be a feature but really unexpected when you have manually put it to sleep…

 

This is actually what I would expect.  If you didn’t want it to automatically wake when the group it belongs to resumes play, why not just power it off?

 

 

The situation is: a group is playing including the Roam speaker, I set the Roam to standby, the Roam stops playing for about five minutes and starts playing again. The controller/phone has not been touched.

I do not find this logical?

Yeah seems like a bug, to me it shouldn’t come out of standby on its own like that 🤷‍

edit on second thought maybe this is logical. I will see myself out of this discussions until I can make up my mind. 

Avid Contributor II
April 20, 2021

I just got by Roam today - I absolutely love this thing. So small, such amazing sound, features - awesome product!

Lyricist III
April 20, 2021

My Roam arrived today and boy is this speaker impressive. 
 

Seems like there are a still a few bugs in the software (sound swap tone doesn’t auto drop the music volume to be audible//sound swap doesn’t work on Spotify direct properly) but aside from that is a beautiful bit of kit. 
 

Only disappointing part is that my BeoPlay A1 won’t get used now. 

BMF
Prodigy III
April 20, 2021

This may be a dumb question, but how do I pair Roam to bluetooth?

 

I followed the instructions here Pairing and kept pressing the power button, but the only thing to turn blue was my finger…. no flashing blue LED and I pressed it for quite a while.

 

Does it need to be out of wifi range or something?

James L.
Retired Community Staff
April 20, 2021

This may be a dumb question, but how do I pair Roam to bluetooth?

 

I followed the instructions here Pairing and kept pressing the power button, but the only thing to turn blue was my finger…. no flashing blue LED and I pressed it for quite a while.

 

Does it need to be out of wifi range or something?

Make sure you’ve set the Roam up on your WiFi network first and fully updated it. Then, hold the power button and wait for the second small chime before releasing. This should put it into Bluetooth mode.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.
Lyricist III
April 20, 2021

How does the sound compare to other small speakers, eg. The echo Shows, and the Nest Hub? 

No comparison. This is unreal. The online YouTube reviews do sound no justice. I've 2 in stereo pair. Well impressed.