Sonos Roam is Pure Garbage

It very much sounds like you didn’t do any research, or perhaps understand what you were purchasing. I wanted the Roam for its BT Line-In features to a Sonos HH and its ability to SoundSwap, pair/group with my existing Sonos System, use with SVC & Alexa voice control and to link Sonos with Amazon Echo and so many other things that it is able to do too.

If you just wanted a BT speaker, you should perhaps have just bought a cheap BT speaker, particularly if you’re not using it’s computer controlled features. It appears you might have made a mistake, a bit like spending your money on an OLED 4K TV when all you wanted to do was to listen to a local radio channel, is perhaps one way of looking at it.

Is it not advertised as a Bluetooth speaker?

No, it’s advertised as a portable Sonos speaker that also offers Bluetooth.

If anyone took the trouble to read the FAQs on the Roam product page they’d see:

Will Roam work with Bluetooth out of the box?

Like all Sonos speakers, Roam must be set up with the Sonos app whilst on WiFi before you can connect a device directly via Bluetooth.

Probably a good idea to actually check the privacy statement if you’re concerned about Sonos or any other company selling your data.   A quick summary….they don’t sell your data.

Not to nitpick, but a portable speaker that also offers Bluetooth would be considered a Bluetooth speaker to the casual consumer.

I like that this is covered in the FAQ, but again to be fair to the casual consumer:  This would not be a Frequently Asked Question, nobody would know that there was a need to ask about the prerequisites for a Bluetooth speaker.  The actual FAQ should be “Why doesn’t Roam work with Bluetooth out of the box?”  Unfortunately most don’t research before picking up something like this.  A Roam could certainly be an impulse buy.  A mistake could easily be made.  I just don’t think that this mistake falls completely on the consumer.

And no, I don’t have a Roam so I have no feeling one way or the other about how it should work.

It’s listed as a requirement on the box. When I purchased one, I checked. 

Admittedly, I still don’t understand the issue here, as I see this as a simple case of connecting a phone/tablet/App to a wireless AP, or a nearby mobile WiFi Hotspot. 

Open the App - and the Roam can easily be setup in a matter of minutes (that includes account setup too) and then (I guess) used just as a Bluetooth speaker from that point forward.

That’s of course if the user wants that and prefers to give up the other 90% plus (approx.) of all its other functionality that the Roam is also capable of. 

Personally, if that was my own (simple) use-case. I would have just bought a much cheaper BT speaker if that’s all I needed, rather than a Qi/USB rechargeable, voice-controllable computerised wireless-connected multi-room speaker, that brings Bluetooth line-in to an entire Sonos System, plus AirPlay, SoundSwap, button-grouping, stereo pairing, 24/48 audio quality, with access through the app to literally hundreds of great quality audio sources, including Sonos Radio etc. etc.

Or… Step one: Pair to Bluetooth like any other Bluetooth speaker.  And then… well… no more steps.

If it can do more than that, then great, even better.

And pay the developer costs to make if work entirely differently to every other Sonos product and rewrite the user-manuals, support pages, product tours etc. for this their cheapest device?… That doesn’t make financial sense to do that, as the Roams primary function is a wireless portable speaker that forms part of the Sonos ecosystem. The Bluetooth function is its secondary form-factor.

Yes, I think they should have invested in making their cheapest device easy to use.