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I hate my Roam


I cannot tell you how much I hate my Sonos Roam and I am beating myself up that I spent close to $200 for this miserable experience. The charge on it lasts one hour at most. Then it won’t play even when plugged in until it reaches a certain charge percentage. My old bluetooth Jambox works SO, MUCH. BETTER. 

Sonos Team: I have 6 Sonos One speakers wired in and they are wonderful. This Roam wireless option is a piece of crap.

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 29 May 2022, 00:11

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31 replies

@sherylsb,

Are you perhaps using a 5v/1A (5w) mobile charger by mistake, just as a thought? .. or maybe a shared USB charger that’s not hitting the minimum power requirement. If so I would look to double or treble that charging power, which will charge the Roam fully within 2-½ hours and provide you with around 10+ hours of playback at a 50% volume level.

I love my Rome Sonos roam and I wish Siri would learn to type it. I don’t like Siri even with a man voice! So I checked my Sonos Rome into the lake today I was on the end of my dock and I said enough sun and perfectness! I’m going in and I walked around the corner on the dock and kicked my little Sonos into 4 feet of water. I quickly went indoors within 15 minutes I was in the water then got it out. I am in Minnesota so this is been the first time I’m in the water because of the late spring. But it was fine. I will let you know if it boots up tomorrow. I’m happy  with the charging and have had no problems with it. I am returning to Sonos fives. They just sounded horrible. I have about eight Sonos play one in different rooms I have two subs in different rooms I have a Beams.  I guess two beams one older than the other so I am a Sonos fan. We’ll see if the roam starts up.

pintac

I think this is the first thread on here that has made me wonder if I have entered a parallel universe. 

Userlevel 7
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it’s the attack of the bots

I know someone else who ate their Roam too...😀

 

I am back and I love my Sonos roam even more! I just use it for on my dock during my private time watching the waves rolling in and out and the boats going by. Leaving the dock the other day I had kicked roam into the lake! I saw it go off my foot and into 4 feet of water….
for 15 min it was underwater! 

And it worked! I let it dry for five hours but I don’t think I had to.  I think all you have to do is dry it externally, because I saw no water coming out of it. And it worked like it does.
These are fabulous but you know,

 they could use more bass. but just to hear a nice clear tune outdoors is nice.

And then turn it off and listen to the nature!

Pintac

 

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My two cents.  I own numerous Sonos products, so I generally like them a lot. I have an Arc, a Playbase, one subwoofer, an 5-6 Sonos ones as surrounds.  All rock solid.

I have one Sonos Roam.  It is a total piece of steaming dog crap.

I use it, say a couple of times a month.  I cannot recall one time where I ever turned it on and it actually worked, without jacking with Sonos apps, resetting it, holding the button down for 5 seconds (should we stop holding it down after 5 minutes if it’s not doing what is instructions say?)

Today it’s flashing orange when I turn it on.  Sonos app doesn’t see it.  iPhone doesn’t see it on bluetooth.  I wanted to use it on Airplay, forget that, can’t be found.

Trying to turn it off by holding the power button, oh, 5, 10, 30 seconds, or maybe 5 minutes?  I don’t know I may have fallen asleep. The orange button flashes slow.

It’s awful. Just awful.

 

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Should have bought a Move, personally I can't really see why they released the Roam. Saying that it could all be S2 related.

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I’d agree with those who hate their Roam - keep it on it’s charging base and it’s OK - move it and (especially if you’ve had it muted for 20min or more) you’re into several hours of trying to reactivate it to no avail.  Support will talk you through a circular process of sleep/power off/full reset  - an hour later you might get it back with no explanation of why or how to avoid the issue in future.  By all means go for wired devices, just don’t imagine you can move this with you consistently

I’d agree with those who hate their Roam - keep it on it’s charging base and it’s OK - move it and (especially if you’ve had it muted for 20min or more) you’re into several hours of trying to reactivate it to no avail.  Support will talk you through a circular process of sleep/power off/full reset  - an hour later you might get it back with no explanation of why or how to avoid the issue in future.  By all means go for wired devices, just don’t imagine you can move this with you consistently

Well that’s not the case for the two Roams that the Wife and I use when we go ‘out and about’ glamping, hiking, or using them standalone, grouped or paired in the Garden etc.

We have no difficulties with them whilst they’re off their charger, whether we use them with a WiFi/Bluetooth connection, with the battery saver feature ‘on’ or ‘off’ - it’s just a matter of whether we wake them from their ‘powered-off’ state (battery saver ‘enabled’) or from a sleep state (battery saver ‘disabled’)..

Awakening them from either state is a real easy process - a second or two from ‘sleep’ and less than 20 seconds from a ‘powered-off’ state and the switch between WiFi/Bluetooth is simple too from our mobiles Bluetooth device list.

If you’re having difficulties, then you are either not operating the Roam correctly, or you may perhaps have a fault with your device.

We’ve been using the Roams here for some months and not had the issues that you describe. If you think yours is perhaps faulty, then maybe submit a system diagnostic report from the Sonos App and contact Sonos Support. They are contactable via this LINK.

I’m also unhappy with the Roam, and I go way back with SONOS to the very first speaker.  Like all SONOS products it sounds fantastic but connecting via Bluetooth or Airplay is unreliable so I don’t get any enjoyment from it about half the time.  This morning we gave up and pulled out our Bose Bluetooth speaker, instant connection, no problems.  As far as charging the Roam, if the app tells me its charged to 100% and it dies in 2 or 3 hours then maybe the app has an issue, wouldn’t be the first time.

We will be using our Bose speaker from now on, it WORKS.

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So you haven’t contacted Sonos about your problems?

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What I love of my Sonos Roam is the sound quality, it seems a bigger speaker  being too small, I’ve tested its Bluetooth functionality when I went to a beach in Mazatlán Mexico, it worked flawlessly during vacations, perfectly fine, outdoors sounds great, and for traveling is awesome. 
However, in a daily usage it’s not reliable at all, it cuts out using Airplay, it cuts out using Bluetooth, skips and stops with Apple Music, and it’s so unresponsive with Alexa. I’m geting desperate because I don’t know why it’s so unstable, and sadly, I’ll be returning it soon if I don’t find an efective Sollution to these issues, bud I really  don’t want to, it’s a great sounding speaker, and in the market you wouldn’t find any Alexa smart speaker, being at the same time Waterproof, Bluetooth, portable and with an amazing sound quality. I’ll keep it hoping I can solve these issues, I don’t want to return it back  to the store just because is unstable and unresponsive with Alexa, there must be an efective way to fix this, at its price range, it should be errors free, but unfortunately, it isn’t.          

What I love of my Sonos Roam is the sound quality, it seems a bigger speaker  being too small, I’ve tested its Bluetooth functionality when I went to a beach in Mazatlán Mexico, it worked flawlessly during vacations, perfectly fine, outdoors sounds great, and for traveling is awesome. 
However, in a daily usage it’s not reliable at all, it cuts out using Airplay, it cuts out using Bluetooth, skips and stops with Apple Music, and it’s so unresponsive with Alexa. I’m geting desperate because I don’t know why it’s so unstable, and sadly, I’ll be returning it soon if I don’t find an efective Sollution to these issues, bud I really  don’t want to, it’s a great sounding speaker, and in the market you wouldn’t find any Alexa smart speaker, being at the same time Waterproof, Bluetooth, portable and with an amazing sound quality. I’ll keep it hoping I can solve these issues, I don’t want to return it back  to the store just because is unstable and unresponsive with Alexa, there must be an efective way to fix this, at its price range, it should be errors free, but unfortunately, it isn’t.          

Did you switch your network settings @Manu84 and put your Roam on the 2.4Ghz band and set that bands channel-width to 20Mhz? You keep complaining about your Roam in various threads here, but there’s no indication that you have switched it away from your less-penetrating 5Ghz band that you were originally using.

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I have a tale of two Roams.  The first was purchased around 2 years ago and works perfectly.  I take it to work every day and run it off the battery for about 4 hours or so.  Come home, recharge it and it hooks right back into my home WiFi.  My only problem has been that the power button is touchy and it will turn off or on if jostled around in a backpack..

The second Roam is garbage. I bought it to add voice control to a room with an old Play 1. Roam disconnects from my WiFi at least every 24 hours.  I’ve called support at least 5 times, run through all the steps of changing settings, rebooting or performing a factory reset.  Still the same result.  I’ve changed the location of where it sits and set the channel on my WiFi network to 6.  Still disconnects.

This only happens with Roam 2.  Roam 1 and my Move work great. 

I have a tale of two Roams.  The first was purchased around 2 years ago and works perfectly.  I take it to work every day and run it off the battery for about 4 hours or so.  Come home, recharge it and it hooks right back into my home WiFi.  My only problem has been that the power button is touchy and it will turn off or on if jostled around in a backpack..

The second Roam is garbage. I bought it to add voice control to a room with an old Play 1. Roam disconnects from my WiFi at least every 24 hours.  I’ve called support at least 5 times, run through all the steps of changing settings, rebooting or performing a factory reset.  Still the same result.  I’ve changed the location of where it sits and set the channel on my WiFi network to 6.  Still disconnects.

This only happens with Roam 2.  Roam 1 and my Move work great. 

I appreciate you mention you changed your WiFi network to channel 6, but is your Roam definitely using the 2.4Ghz band, as it has the capability to use the 5Ghz band too. Also did you change the channel-width and try it on a 20Mhz signal only?

I would also look at the routers DHCP server lease time to see if it coincides with the dropout and perhaps try the IP addressing on a longer lease time and even reserve the Roams address in the DHCP reservation table to see if that may help.

Also, perhaps see if you can still ‘ping’ the speaker on the network, even after it drops from the Sonos App to see if this might be an SSDP device discovery issue by the controller App, as that might just point to an entirely different network issue to investigate.

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Totally agree. It is, pants.  Love all my other Sonos speakers but wish I’d never bothered with this.  You need a PHD in Sonos to connect the bloody thing virtually every time.  Flashing orange at me now and no idea what to do.  Just held the ridiculous back button for 30-40 seconds to try to reboot and no joy.  We bought this to replace our Wonderboom which ALWAYS connected easily.  Guess it will be another hour on the phone to the helpline if I want to use it again.  Either that or it‘ll be on e-bay for a fiver if anyone wants it

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Totally agree. It is, pants. Guess it will be another hour on the phone to the helpline if I want to use it again.  Either that or it‘ll be on e-bay for a fiver if anyone wants it


I’ll take a gamble on it, and pay a bit more for it too, if you do give up on it. But, I hope you do get it sorted. 

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I hate my Roam so much now, it’s a beautiful, expensive and   disposable paperweight,  became so unreliable and unstable after 14.19 update. Music cutting out using Airplay and Bluetooth, and rear button not working properly. I used to like it so much, but now  I’m so annoyed. People always is  trying to convince you that is a network problem and wireless interference, but no, it’s not a network problem  

I’d be happy to take it off your hands. I’ve got no issues making my Roam work, either on my local wofi, or via Bluetooth, either from my phone or my my tablet. I’ve not connected it to my desktop, mostly due to the fact there is no need. 

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I hate when people tell me “Oh, mine works fine” That’s upsetting, the Roam is clearly a faulty product, don’t even tell me that yours works fine when there are tons of people complaining here in the comunity, tons of bad reviews on Amazon so no, it isn’t any good. Once again, I’m so annoyed 

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I’m absolutely happier with my Wonderboom2, it sounds gorgeous and I’ve never had a single issue with its Bluetooth connection, the battery lasts weeks and it’s waterproof design is so great, et even can float and I got it wet with water from my sink and I can’t believe that is working like a charm, I love its sound and when I take a shower, I feel so relaxed with my favorite music playing into the speaker. Forget about the Roam, the Wonderboom 2 is amazing, I’m so pleased with this bestial floating baby😇     

Thank the maker that's over. 🙄

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I’m going to throw my Sonos Roam out of the window and let it wet  to see if it works fine now 

I’m going to throw my Sonos Roam out of the window and let it wet  to see if it works fine now 

 

Go play with your new toy.  This forum is for people seeking help, your silly nonsense isn't needed here.