Hello,
This is my first Sonos product, which I received as a gift.
The network setup requirements were mildly frustrating since we were traveling for the holidays (which I mention only because I’d seen another thread about this and thought I’d chime in), but it set up easily enough when we returned home.
Reading on the functionality, I thought it could be a wireless smart speaker, but enabling Google Assistant drains the battery faster than the charger it came with can keep it going. After discussing with Support, I disabled the assistant since it seemed to be to blame for the power drain. Otherwise, between the assistant drain and it refusing to stay off, it would have had to be on a direct USB-C power supply permanently.
After getting it set up on WiFi, I can get my Synology music to play to it directly most of the time, and found it could integrate with SiriusXM. Other web sources e.g. Youtube Music required upgraded accounts vs ‘just working’ on Google smart speakers, but I imagine that is Google’s fault more than Sonos.
As a bluetooth speaker, it is comparable to my Anker Soundcore, but suffers from less standby time, less usage time, and that you can’t take calls on it. Documentation indicates the microphone is primarily for the autotune, although I’ve disabled this as it created some sort of feedback sine wave where the speaker would increase and decrease volume.
So for the use cases I’ve discovered, it can play from some WiFi sources to save my phone’s battery vs pushing bluetooth, and it can be used as a limited bluetooth speaker. I feel like I’m missing out on this thing’s killer feature since everything I’ve tried to do with it so far has had caveats. What do you like to use yours for?