Roam - Not up to Sonos standard

I like the Roam because it fits in well with our Sonos ecosystem, it’s great to take into the shower/bathroom, or outdoors. It is great for iOS Airplay and can act as a Bluetooth line-in to provide other options to play that audio-source on all our other Sonos speakers. Great for in-car audio and sounds even better when ‘paired’ or ‘grouped’ on the computer desk.

I’m not having difficulties with its battery, like one or two others have mentioned. I use a 5v/3A charger, which charges it fully in 2hrs 15mins. I also let it stand on a Qi charger overnight. If I power it off completely, it holds its charge fine and even in standby, it easily holds it charge overnight, that’s if I have left it off it’s charger.

This speaker is a mini computer in my mind and so needs the power of lithium batteries, which deplete anyway even when not in use - so I have no issues with the way the batteries work - it’s no worse than some mobiles. 

I love the SoundSwap feature too, it’s something I will/do use when out the shower or return indoors from the garden. 

I found the button controls slightly difficult at first, especially the rear power button, but I guess that is all part of its waterproof capabilities …and overtime I have begun to get used to them. I like the multi-press play/pause button for skipping tracks etc.

Playback at 50% volume, or thereabouts, exceeds the 10 hours stated in the marketing material - I have had more than 11 hours playback time.

And finally I’m impressed with how well Amazon Alexa works with this speaker - although I do wish the device would ‘enable/control’ Amazon Alexa Groups and support profile switching… maybe those features will become available later? Voice recognition and playback control seems almost faultless, but I’m a long-time user of the assistant.

So I’m definitely going to hang onto my speaker, which I have called ‘Walkabout’ as it has become part of the Sonos family here and having now used it/them, albeit just for a short period, I think I would miss the little speaker. In my view it has way more advantages than disadvantages by a long chalk.

No regrets for now having two of them in our Home

Good to hear that you’re happy with the Roam. It seems like you’re using it and charging it daily, and I’m sure it works fine like that. But for me it would be less often, hence I don’t want it on the charger for days, standby mode wouldn’t be an option, and having it take ages to start up and appear in the app after a cold restart isn’t acceptable.

I’ll be watching the reviews closely before reconsidering.

Liking the Roam a lot. Very versatile from taking it into the shower,to the park and to my storage facility. Solid sound and easy tomove back and forth between wifi and Bluetooth. No problems with length of use (got 7 hours out yday with plenty of charge left). Keep mine on the wireless  charger so no issues as described above. Great addition. Well done Sonos. My only real complaint is no case for it. I throw it in a sock to travel which just looks ridiculous. Should have been a launch option. 

Had my Roam less than a month new .

I found using over the period the Roam in Vertical position, there is a vast sound improvement (it sounds better) if it is positioned upside down (i.e the control button face / Sonos sign on the bottom -down, rested down) the normal way the sound is not very pleasant. 

This simple technical reason what i think it is, that in the normal vertical stand up position it’s tweeter speaker position is in position below the mid/ base, this is very unconventional by 99% of all speaker designers and manufactures positioning of the same , they all place tweeters above the bass/mid speaker for a reason. 

i.e

Sonos Roam units is designed with its two speakers cones or drive units the  bass/mid range drive speaker cones above the tweeter speaker drive cones, the bass/ mid range sound better running at lower level and improves bass sound if it is below nearer to the ground and the tweeter above it and it will be nearer to the ear lever (and away form the sound lever) so it higher frequencies produced by yhr tweeter will rear the ear fuller and not having to travel through and pass and above the bass drive to reach the ear

Hence this is a design error (un conventional speaker positioning mistake) 

I also own three other renowned brand potable blue tooth speakers and with traditional floor standing and book shelf speakers to compare this with and my reasoning proves this

Surprised the SONOS Roam designers and developers got this wrong. 

I am now having to use the Roam upside down and problem is I cant use its control buttons as they are now in the bottom also i cannot use the Roam wireless charger set (i purchased for an extra £44 GBP ) to charge the unit in this position. 

Sonos team let us now how you going to help us with the mentioned above.