Hi everyone,
I received my Sonos Roam yesterday and I am quite concerned by the battery drain on standby mode.
My roam is losing about 10% every hour on standby, which brings us to 10hours but I was expecting 10 hours in playing mode.
Should I be concerned by those stats are it was the expected consumption?
Thank you 
!
Leave it plugged in and unplug when you go outside
The idea of using a product battery all year round is completely ridiculous, not to mention extremely wasteful. The battery will be dead in 8 months
You are missing the point. 1. It’s on a shelf in the shower. There is no plug there. 2. I don’t take it outside. 3. Sonos said it would last 10 days on standby. 4. Per my experience and many others, it lasts just 2 or 3 days on standby - Even if not using the Roam. 5. The only intended use case for the Roam is NOT just plugging it in at home and relying on battery power ONLY when taking it outside.
Exactly. Sonos really owes us an explanation on 10 day advertised standby life since no one has come close to replicating it.
Unfortunately, it’s probably not happening, given the number of apologists both here and in Reddit on the “plug it in or just turn it off” bandwagon.
Meanwhile, Google Assistant is still practically unusable with the Roam. I accept that firmware fixes take time, but radio silence is a bad look.
+17
I seem to see two complaints in this thread:
The last complaint has been explained by Sonos. The Roam is two speakers: a bluetooth speaker (like a UE), but also a multiroom wifi speaker. When the Roam isn't completely turned off it's part of the multiroom audio system. Like other Sonos speakers it needs to be in contact with the system (this also goes for the Move), which will use electricity. So it is not a problem - it's a feature. The Roam can stay on the charger without any problem.
If you do not want the Roam to use electricity you need to turn it completely off. Then it should act as any bluetooth speaker and not use anergy.
This device is pretty trash. It does not hold a charge.
Power it off, completely (not sleep mode), the next morning it’s red LED is on for low battery. How is that even possible?
Get more battery juice if you put it into sleep mode instead. That’s completely ridiculous.
This thing is a joke of a smart speaker and a waste of $200.
I suspect you either did not fully power off the Roam, or your charger/Roam is possibly faulty. I powered off the Roam on Thursday night and went away from home until 4pm on Monday.
On return home I powered the Roam back on and it was still fully charged. It was off its charger and unused for approx. 88 hours over the long weekend period, not left in sleep mode.
I would perhaps contact Sonos Support, if you are certain it was fully ‘powered off’ (not asleep) and that your Roam lost virtually all of its full-charge overnight.
The last complaint has been explained by Sonos. The Roam is two speakers: a bluetooth speaker (like a UE), but also a multiroom wifi speaker. When the Roam isn't completely turned off it's part of the multiroom audio system. Like other Sonos speakers it needs to be in contact with the system (this also goes for the Move), which will use electricity. So it is not a problem - it's a feature. The Roam can stay on the charger without any problem.
If you do not want the Roam to use electricity you need to turn it completely off. Then it should act as any bluetooth speaker and not use anergy.
But that is not what the Sonos specs say:
What is the battery life of Roam?
Roam offers up to 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge. When not in use, Roam switches to sleep mode to conserve power, and the battery can last up to 10 days.
Based on this, I’d expect my Roam to switch to sleep mode and last close to 10 days (yes, will vary according to system use/temps etc). I get about 1.5 days - 15% of expected. So, the specs are wrong or my Roam is faulty? I’d really like to know the answer.
I want a device that remains off if I press an off button.
Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Roam battery SUCKS!
Suggest those who worry about battery drains just simply power off the ROAM completely… I have got both of my ROAM (white and black) last week and charged them on Sunday, added them to my existing system and then powered them off completely… A bit busy last 2 days so I just played with them again last night (so it’s over 48 hours since powered off), and the battery level was 99% when I put them on again…
Of course it takes some seconds for the speakers to start up and get ready but I think it’s much better to place them into sleep mode.
Hi everyone,
I received my Sonos Roam yesterday and I am quite concerned by the battery drain on standby mode.
My roam is losing about 10% every hour on standby, which brings us to 10hours but I was expecting 10 hours in playing mode.
Should I be concerned by those stats are it was the expected consumption?
Thank you !
Hi, I was having the same issue and spoke to someone at Sonos, it was because I was only putting it in sleep mode which still connects to WiFi and checks for updates etc so will drain the battery. Hold the off button for five seconds which will power it off. I did this last night and the battery was still on 99% this morning. Hope this helps.
Consider yourself fortunate then. I fully powered mine off last Sunday and it had easily 2/3rds charge. Tried powering it on just now - completely dead. I’m going to re-test this but if it does the same again I’m tempted to send it back. It’s not what was described / advertised.
Annoyingly I had to migrate to Sonos S2 app to get it to work too…
Also anyone managed to get it to work with the Sonos App while out and about? It seems that this functionality and Alexa are confined to when you’re at home and connected to your WIFI only - bit of a shame that.
So, some developments for me. To recap, I was seeing massive battery drain even with the Roam powered down and not in standby. I charged it last Thursday evening and was expecting to see significant drain the following morning. There was none (battery was indicating 100%). I’ve been away all weekend and on checking again this morning (which is now over 4 days since fully charging), it’s reporting 98% battery. I’m now beginning to wonder if the battery needs a few cycles of charge/discharge before it becomes fully effective. I’m not sure what else it can be as I’ve done nothing different in charging or in use in this last ‘test’ versus any previous ‘tests’. I’m now going to keep the Roam in standby mode to see how that affects battery life.
On my side, it’s over. The roam is now back at Best Buy. Having to always to turn off the roam to save the small battery life was not acceptable to me. And 10 hours of use with the volume at 50% is really not something that we should get from a portable speaker in 2021. Back to my old Bose Soundlink Mini 2 now. It’s still performing well and it’s giving me more than 10 hours on a single charge. Not bad for a 5 years old speaker. I wanted an Airplay portable speaker, but it won’t be this time.
I can’t believe some of the comments on this post lately. It takes 1 second to press the button and turn it off!! Omg...come on guys...
I don't consider that to be a fix.
How exactly are you turning off the Roam?
I held down the power button for five seconds. Got two chimes and the indicator went off. I don’t have a voice assistant installed on it.
Still sounds like you were in ‘sleep/standby mode’ to me, as there are two separate tones followed by four tones (descending) from a powered on state…
If you want the Roam to not discharge you can turn it off completely by a 5 second long press of the power button, there’s a tone initially followed by a power down tone after the 5secs. Otherwise if you leave it on standby you should think of placing on a wireless charging pad.
I don’t need mine to be on standby so I just power them off completely.
Thank you Bockersjv, obviously I need to read the manual more fully. I’ll be sure to “completely turn off” the speaker. I suppose leaving it on standby easily allows us to directly play music to it from the app, but the trade-off is battery drain. Thanks.
Ah, I see. Yea, Sonos is a company that, in my perception, does not remove negative posts/reviews, at least here in these forums. But Sonos doesn’t have any sway over companies like Crutchfield, which appears to be filtering your review from being posted, although I suppose, not being familiar enough with Crutchfield any more, it could be in a moderation phase. To further the situation, Crutchfield has no official (or unofficial, that I’m aware of) representation on these forums that you’re posting on, nor any forums of their own in which you can communicate directly to them.
While I haven’t purchased anything from Crutchfield in maybe 15 or 20 years, I’d encourage you to do purchasing of Sonos products directly from Sonos. They’re pretty good about responding to direct questions where they can in these forums. And they have a pretty extensive money back time frame on all purchases.
However, it’s obvious that there’s more than one thing going on with the Roam’s battery, as some people are reporting changes when they factory reset the device, while others are not.
Sonos does tend to be mute while things are under investigation, so it can be frustrating as a user, but if you’re patient enough, they’ll often finally come out with some official statement, which may or may not be included with a software update, depending on the issue.
I have the same issue as well. Battery is draining quickly. On standby mode, I also see in my WIFI router monitoring tool the Roam communicating every minute. I don’t use an assistant and I mainly used the Roam so far with Spotify and Airplay.
Same here, if it’s not resolved quickly through a system update, it’s going back to Best Buy.
My battery is not draining quite this fast. However it does not stay turned off.
I have powered off, as in the instructions but every time I look at my app it re-opens.
I have only tested it and wished to save it for future use but it seems I will have to re-charge before this which is poor.
I have the same issue with move.
Is there any way, whilst charged, to fully power these devices off without them continuing to drain the battery?
I know you like your Roam Ken and certainly get more life out of it than most/any but 1-2% drain per day on a powered off li-ion device is way higher than normal (and most seem to get more drain than that).
If I fully power off my tablet it will be on 99 or 100% a week later. Always.
Funnily enough I just bought a battery ‘boost' thing for the car as it struggled to start sometimes through lack of use. They claim it should be on 70% after 12 months.
Hi Ken, I honestly believe you, really no need to do any of that. My point really is that I think Sonos does ‘other things’ even when supposedly ‘off’ as even 1-2% is way above what I would expect from a Li-Ion battery.
The article you linked to suggests an expected discharge rate of .35%- 2.5% per MONTH - whereas you appear to get approx half that per DAY. Approx 20 times worse than the upper expected rate.
Wow, thanks all for defining this issue. I’ll follow this thread hoping for a software fix. I sent the companion Qi charger back to Sonos thinking it defective. Ordered another one tho. Maybe it stays in the box. Q tho: does it charge better if stacked on the charger vs on end?
is it fair to say a workaround is to leave the Roam plugged into the USB c cable charger (which admittedly limits portability) but then when you want to take it somewhere it’s just grab (unplug) and go and you have your 10 hours? Rinse and repeat. Takes all the standby drain, Qi on/off, slow charge issues out of the equation.
Final point (repeating others), this is a major letdown by Sonos. I have a $25 BT speaker that holds it charge for weeks. Albeit I turn it off when not using.
Why on earth would you leave your speaker on Standby? Turn the damn thing off or leave it plugged in?
The battery drains so quick without even being used. I am still under warranty. Can I return it ?
+21
The battery drains so quick without even being used. I am still under warranty. Can I return it ?
Probably.
But have you tried tuning it off fully? You have to press the power button for over 8 seconds but then it turns off and the battery drain is very low.
Other than that get a Qi charging base and store the Roam on that to have continuous trickle charge?
+17
So if you want the full multiroom experience leave the Rpoam plugged in. If you only want the experience sometimes or only need bluetooth, you need to turn it off every time. Maybe not what people expect, but that seems to be it?
I’m having this issue, too. I turned it off after fully charged, and turned it back on a few days later, it was 30%. Now the indicator shows battery draining-- while it’s plugged in and charging! I think I may return it.
Same issues of very poor battery life on standby.
Sonos, you need to both acknowledge and fix this issue ASAP and respect your customers. There is a CLEAR issue and it needs to be addressed.
Interesting that none of the 'reviewers' (paid, influencers etc) experienced these real world issues!
Might be time to post my own YouTube 1 month test experiences.
Alternatively perhaps you need to start supplying this not-fit-for-purpose product with a wireless charging Dock as standard! Or at least retrospectively for customers who are experiencing these common issues.
I too may just consider returning it.
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