Sonos Roam - Battery drain

Decided to finally make my first forum post, as I was frankly tired of reading “power it off” as a solution. Let’s be clear; it is not. Would you keep your mobile phone off except when you had to make a call or send an email? 

The standby battery life is undeniably poor; less than half - or at best, barely half - the advertised 10 days (who knows under what conditions Sonos achieved 10 days. I actually tried disconnecting if from my wifi and did not use it at all; checked at end of week and it was dead). 

For those who seem perplexed why one would not simply leave it plugged in, is it so hard to imagine that there are people who purchased a Roam primarily to leave in a space that does not have a power socket nearby (bathroom, patio etc)? Charging it once a week would’ve been a very acceptable compromise (I had no difficulty getting 1 week standby on my old JBL link which is also a wifi speaker with voice assistant); doing so once every 3-4 days is not.

The worst part of all this is that Sonos hasn’t even bothered acknowledging the standby battery issue. Heck, even the known bugs (Google assistant turning the Roam on and disabling trueplay; stereo pairing; soundswap hit&miss; etc) have not been fixed.

I have to say that the Roam soured my experience with Sonos as a whole (after enjoying the Arc 5.1 a lot) and I’m slowly gravitating back towards Chromecast speakers for the rest of the house.

@JoeJoe405 Since you are comparing the Roam to a smartphone, do you think charging a phone every 3-4 days is considered unacceptable too? I charge my phone at least once a day. I imagine most people do. Yet most people don’t complain about it.

Do you own a flashlight? When you aren’t using the flashlight, do you turn it off or keep it on at all times?

You are missing the point. Most phones are rated for about a day’s worth of intense use, maybe double for moderate use. Assuming one wants to avoid the phone dipping below 20%, charging once a day is in line with expectations. The proper analogy here would be having to charge your phone two or three times a day, and having people tell you “well, obviously turn off your phone when you’re not using it!”

As for flashlights, does yours have a standby mode? 

It’s mind-boggling that there are folks here who would rather blame other customers than hold Sonos to higher standards. Or simply the standards that they proudly proclaimed when they advertised 10 day standby battery life.

Managed to get mine working for my requirement by adding a 10,000 mAh power bank with a short braided cable.  It is in the bathroom and was only lasting a few days due to waking up when another part of the Sonos was in use via the app.  Not an ideal solution but means I only have to charge it once a week assuming everyone remembers to do the short button press after use rather than using Alexa.  The wife and children are not able / willing to do the full power off which I can understand - it is a pain when you are rushing to get ready in the morning and difficult for the very young.  Please Sonos, add a do not wake up Roam when using app option.  You are penalising your most loyal users - those that have Sonos in many other rooms.

I don’t think this would help greatly, as when a Roam is woken up by the S2 App on the LAN, the device is only fully awake for 3 minutes, if not used, then it returns to sleep mode - so you might save half hours worth of battery over an 8 hour period perhaps?

In general, whilst in sleep mode the Roam’s WiFi remains connected to the network anyway for playback, IP address renewal, updates etc; So the only real way to save battery is to switch the device off completely.

In our case the Bathroom/Shower is next to our Bedroom, so I just leave the Roam on a Qi charger pad and carry it in/out to the Bathroom and use SoundSwap to move the audio to the speakers in the Bedroom and vice versa.

I think switching off the wake-up option when the Sonos App opens, is not going to have any huge impact on battery life.

Thanks for your comment, my understanding of how this worked was different.  Given this information I have a question.  Am I only getting a 3 minute saving by stopping music by pressing the button to put in sleep mode as opposed to turning off music via Alexa?  Remember I have a power bank connected, does the fact the roam is effectively plugged in (as long I have have charge in the power bank) make it act differently?  I need to check again but I thought I witnessed the Roam emptying the power bank pretty quickly when it was turned off by Alexa rather than put in sleep mode.

This is my understanding…

 If you use the Roam, such as playing music on the device and then ask Alexa to stop the audio, then at that point, the mic (& LED) stays on, for further voice instructions. Note the mic is also ‘on’ anyway if Auto-TruePlay is enabled.

Then after 30 minutes of inactivity when off its charger, (important) …it then goes into sleep-mode. At this point the mic (& LED’s) all switch off - leaving a low-power state for the WiFi adapter to receive a WOL packet to bring the device back to life. 

If the App is then opened it sends a WOL request to the Roam and it wakes up fully (mic aswell) for 3 minutes waiting to see if you require the device, if not, it goes off to sleep again.

If you play/use the speaker after waking it up, off the charger, then it stays awake for 30 minutes after inactivity - so it then falls asleep, or you can manually put it to sleep using it’s power button.

The Roam can be moved to sleep mode by a quick press on its rear power button - but (importantly) please note that when the Roam is connected to any charger Qi, or USB, it is designed to always stay awake in those circumstances and not sleep at all - some Qi or power bank chargers though may power themselves off when the Roam has reached a fully charged stated and ‘some’ will power back on automatically when it’s charge falls.

Thank you again Ken.  Re. the last paragraph, if you quick press the rear button when connected to a power bank all the white lights go off on the Roam which I thought was indicating a sleep state despite being connected to a charger.  So the white lights can be off despite the Roam being awake?  If so then what are the white lights indicating when on?

It does go to sleep if you press the button whilst on the charger, but if the Roam wakes up - it will stay awake whilst the charger is connected - you might have to test that though, but as mentioned some chargers will auto-power off themselves too when some devices reach full charge. Generally speaking if the lights are off then it’s in sleep mode. Also generally speaking if the Roam is left connected to a charger it should stay awake with status/mic light on etc.

Understood, I’ll keep an eye on it.  This information is very helpful.  Many thanks.