I know people who use wireless speakers … er … because there are no wires, but eventually the recharging becomes such an unwelcome task that dangling charger wires appear anyway.
It is possible to enhance the battery run time with a larger internal battery or using an external power pack, but eventually these will need recharging too. (And this will increase the cost.)
Thanks for your comments
Ten hours running time is absolutely fine for me - quite happy to recharge when necessary … how many 5.1 movies am I going to watch in one sitting? One perhaps …
I don’t need surround speakers all the time so no problem to plug them in to recharge at a convenient power point. It is considerably better than trailing extension leads across the room to power Sonos Ones
There is also the issue regarding trueplay tuning. Maybe not a huge deal, but part of trueplay tuning requires the speakers to be located in a consistent position in order to have the speakers properly tunied to the room. If you are moving the speakers from charging to listening position on a regular basis, then it’s hard to keep it consistent. That said, perhaps rear surround tuning is not that critical, compared to front speakers….don’t know.
I also think it might be too small of a market, and perhaps too complex for the customer. I mean, you have a Roam that is portable, BT and WiFi, and can not be used for surround sound. Then you have a Roam look-a-like that has no BT, but can be used as surrounds. Customers will claim that Sonos is just trying to get people to buy more customers instead of making a speaker that can do everything at a cheaper price.
That said, two thoughts on ways to make this work. One is having a detachable battery. So instead of moving the entire speaker, to charge it, you’ll keep the speaker in the same place (perhaps wall mounted) and only move the battery to recharge. Sort of like how power tools work. Sonos could sell extra batteries. Those that don’t need a battery could just wire to power directly. Not sure how well this would work though, as people could very well get annoyed with this setup.
My other thought is, Sonos recently acquired a company that has expertise in a new bluetooth standard that boasts improved audio quality, lower power requirements, and the ability to broadcast audio (instead of point-to-point communication). Perhaps a future product could use this LC3 technology instead of WiFi for communication between the Arc/Beam/Amp and it’s rear surround speakers, making it more feasible to use battery powered speakers for rear channels than currently. I have no idea if this could work reliably or if the current Arc/Beam/Amp has the hardware for this.
