If the Sonos Move cannot be used as surround speakers, I doubt these will have that functionality. Also the One SLs are only $10 more and probably sound much better as surround speakers.

I am super excited about this product. I was holding out on purchasing the Megaboom 3 for when I ride my bike. I was hoping for a circular shaped speaker but I am sure there’s something specific about this design. I am curious about the price as well. If it is the rumored $169 USD, it wouldn’t make much sense since the One SL is $10 more. 

When you compare it to the Megaboom 3’s MSRP of $200, the $169 price tag makes sense.

You are right! I was thinking about the holiday prices. 

Or the Ikea Symfonisk speakers. They are great as surrounds and cheap too. 

Although I really like the idea of using these for surrounds speakers, as I think the aesthetic appeal would be very appealing...you’re probably right. 

Also very curious about the sound quality.  The size makes me think it can’t sound like much.   Then again, it’s Sonos and they have standards.  As well it’s not cheap, so it can’t sound cheap.  Then again, they likely can’t have it sound as good as a Move for example, since you could buy 2 Roams for less than the price of a Move.   You could speculate that it won’t sound as good as a Sonos One either, perhaps something a little less than that.  Don’t know.

So we know it has a built in voice assistant like the Move, and can be stereo paired in WiFi only.  Can it be charged by a normal USB-C charger that you use for a phone?  Does it have auto Trueplay?  Can it be used as a speaker phone (mic on during BT mode).  Any other surprise features?

Assuming the can be used as surrounds, they’ll appeal to many due to their size, no wires, wall mountable maybe (?). The Symfonisk and the One for me are too big for surrounds, we have smaller living rooms in the UK :)

I assume these will use the same power/battery management as the Moves so will go flat in a few days off the Dock too.  If they don't then there's no reason not to apply it to those and fix the long standing, but now ignored, issue.

Pretty safe to assume they WON’T work as surrounds.  Suspect they will be exactly the same as the moves on the Sonos integration front with just smaller internal speakers etc.

Not exactly no wires since it will need to be charging when not in use.  Perhaps a positive is that USB is low voltage wiring, and...depending on local electrical codes...are probably a lot easier to put behind walls.

They need to fix this bug. Speaking for myself only, if the battery drain is present with this speaker I won’t be buying it. 

I am not sure why someone would have these as rear surround home theater speakers when you can get what will be seemingly better sounding speakers in the One and One SL for just $10 more. This product has a niche of product uses and market that it is going after. This is going after UE and JBL directly with the bonus of incorporating into the Sonos ecosystem. UE has like 6 products. This product will sufficiently target in some way all 6. I think it’s a great fit. My use, replacing my bathrooms’ Amazon Alexa Echo puck speakers with this. I tried a Play 1 and it couldn’t stand up to the humidity. As a bonus, when we go to the park, out walking, or to other events and activities, these will be perfect especially if you can pair them up. I don’t know why the power/battery management issue is considered a bug; isn’t that the case with just about all similar speakers, they bleed out over time even if they don’t get used.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘over time'?

Turn your phone or tablet off fully and a week later it may have lost a percent or two. Sonos Move will be flat long before that.  Sonos now no longer respond to anyone raising the issue.  It's still being investigated.  A year or so later..

I’d agree, it would be silly for Sonos to treat these any differently than the Move. If they can be easily removed from the Home theater context, either singly, or the pair, I can only imagine the support nightmare that would ensue, when household member X grabs one to use elsewhere, without the knowledge of the rest of the household. I can only see ‘permanently bonded’ speakers allowed to be surrounds. 

I guess I never knew anything about this regarding the Move. Is that why they started offering battery replacements?

Sonos understands how important brand loyalty is. This has been the key to their success. I think the Roam will be nothing more than a small, simple-to-use, and reasonably-priced portable Bluetooth speaker designed to introduce a whole new generation of younger consumers to their brand.

I agree. I dont think that Sonos would put a subpar product. I think that we should just wait on Tuesday, March 9 and see what features, details, and specifications are when they unveil the product.

Some of us enjoy speculating, as foolish as it may be.  

Because of it’s size and and power requirements.  In the same way that some people don’t have a room in which they could setup wired rear speakers, others can't easily connect rear speakers to power.  It would be rather convenient to be able to keep 2 roams charged elsewhere, then easily place them in position when you want to watch TV with surround.  Even if you did want to keep the Roam plugged in during TV watching, a low voltage USB cable is easier to deal with that 110/220V wire. That’s not even factoring in that people don’t have unlimited budgets, and getting portable speakers and surround speakers for the half the price is going to be appealing.

Again, I see the appeal, I just don’t think Sonos is going to offer this feature for the reasons others already stated.

The leaked information states they cannot be paired in bluetooth mode, which is also the case for the Move.  That doesn’t completely rule it out, but highly unlikely.  If you have an android phone, you can connect to 2 speakers in mono.

I’m surprised you can’t per order these. I definitely want one so I guess I’ll wait

They won’t officially announce it until Tuesday. Probably will be able to preorder after that. 

Wishful thinking on my part that I could have one delivered in the next week 

Sonos should enable surround functionality for these and the move speakers. Sonos seem to hide behind a row of fanboys, then another row of flimsy excuses.
 

The move, plus roam, will be speakers more than capable of acting as surrounds. There are no technical limitations here. I started buying Sonos products a couple of years back but am becoming increasingly annoyed by their Apple like tendencies (I also have many apple products). The S2 debacle, lack of support for basic stuff, restrictions set by software have all enraged me in the last 2 years.

I wonder what material they’ve used to make the casing. That white one looks lovely, but I can see it looking quite shabby after a few months of being thrown into backpacks and used outside. Hope it is ‘washable’ (since waterproof) and hard wearing. 

i had imagined the ‘smaller move’ to resemble the current Move - only shrunk. But I think this form factor will work better for a tryely mobile version. The Move really is more of a luggable replacement for the Play 3 than a properly mobile speaker. 
 

i wonder if they’ll announce the rumoured headphones on the 9th also or of we’ll have to wait longer for anything official on that front. 
 

I hope it comes with a little draw string bag to deal with that situation.  As for cleaning, you can pretty much wipe all of the sonos speakers with a damp cloth, no reason this wouldn’t be different.

The roam seems suited for situations where you’re going somewhere on foot or for air travel.  As you stated, throw it in the backpack.  The Move is a better option when you’re traveling my vehicle I think, where space/size is less of an issue.  For example, I’d rather have a Move at the beach, but I’d rather bring Roam on a camping trip.

Doubtful.  Whoever leaked the Roam would have leaked a headphones announcement as well.  Plus, Sonos typically will only announce products a month or so before release.  It seems they want to keep quite until almost all the unknowns are resolved and they should be able to have a product by the promised date, and they don’t want to give competition much advanced notice.   As a customer, I do want to know things way in advance, but also glad that I don’t have to wait long for new stuff.

I wonder if Sonos has given any thought (if it is even possible?) to include the ability to use the ROAM as a portable trueplay setup device? I understand that the ROAM will come with a mic so that’s a good start.

You could then potentially use the Sonos app running on an Android device to kick off the trueplay function telling it to use the Mic on the Roam to perform trueplay setup for your other Sonos devices on your network.
This would solve the “can’t do trueplay on Android devices because of the variety of mic’s etc” issue.

Ross.