Sonos Roam - Battery drain


Userlevel 3

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 🙂!


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278 replies

Userlevel 2

I’m having the same issue. I’ve hardly used it and the battery is down 50% in 24 hours. I thought standby mode was up to 10 days? This is not even close. Something is obviously wrong.

Userlevel 3

Same here; severe battery drain. My Roam seems to have an inner life; turns on when it wants and loses battery charge even when off.

I want a device that remains off if I press an off button.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Same here, so glad to know I’m not alone (although I’d assumed it was software related anyway).

Battery went from 100% to 74% after 45 minutes of music playing at 30% volume. Sleep mode after 9 hours takes around 25-30% off the battery. 

Appears the low-power state isn’t activating correctly. 

Userlevel 5
Badge +12

Sounds just as bad if not worse than the Move!

Userlevel 1

same here. I can’t believe the countless reviews haven’t mentioned this issue!

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

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.

 

No, I don't think powering it off is the best solution or intended use of the product.  That means you have to physically engage with the Roam to turn it on --  but you should be able to wake it remotely (from another room in the house - like using other Sonos speakers) but ONLY if you want to (not as it is designed now -- where it happens every time you use the Sonos app -- even if you are not intending to use the Roam at that moment).  Some people have many Sonos speakers in various rooms -- not just a Roam.

This design “feature” of waking with App use, was intended by Sonos so that you always had the Roam ready to direct music to, when you want to.  But the miscalculation is that some people (or many per the posts here about the Roam), have systems where they may engage with the Sonos App often throughout the day FOR OTHER SONOS SPEAKERS, but only using the Roam for brief periods (maybe while in the bathroom).   So the waking of the Roam by use of the Sonos App has the unintended effect of prematurely draining the battery. 

So to balance the “ready to use” design, without unnecessary battery drain, it seems the best solution is to have a software button/toggle that you engage in the App to purposefully wake the Roam from sleep mode when you actually want to use the Roam (yes, its one more click, but better than always waking it and draining the battery needlessly).  And for those who don’t mind the always waking the Roam upon using the app -- they could have a toggle to have that switch always on (or something like that).   Always Wake (sleeping) Roam when using App   vs.  Wake (sleeping) Roam when I tell it to via the App

Simple -- get to work on my solution Sonos engineers.  I’ll take just a few pennies per unit as my royalty.   Seems like a fairly easy algorithm to implement.

Userlevel 3

So, I did a “test” overnight on my Sonos Roam.

Any voice assistant has been off. Auto trueplay has been off too, thinking it might influence the mic and battery.

Charged the Roam to 100% before going to bed. Slept 8 hours; Roam was turned off. This morning Roam battery is at 39%. This is useless. I could not even fly or drive to a holiday destination without the battery being gone.

Checked my 5 years old UE Boom. Was 2 weeks off. Still has 60% battery charge.

Sonos Roam is a miss-design. Off must be off. This device will go back Monday. A petty. I hoped to have a travel speaker fitting into my Sonos eco-system.

Userlevel 6
Badge +2

There might be a software problem that causes battery drain issues, but it is exacerbated by uncommon power button functionality, a poor website, and poor communication.  Even the “essential guide to the roam” (https://blog.sonos.com/en-gb/guide-to-roam) doesn’t mention the standby/power functions.  I mean come on Sonos, it’s the essential guide, don’t you think it should mention the standby/off functionality and how to use it?

The roam “setup” page doesn’t mention this functionality either: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4994?language=en_US

 

The official Roam product page doesn’t mention it either: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/roam.html

 

There is a “user guide” section in the official product page, but it just has a link which points to a broken page: https://www.sonos.com/support/en-us/sonos-user-guide/sonos-user-guide/roam/roam.htm

 

The Sonos website is slow, the font is WAY TOO BIG, and it is hard to find information.  It took a very specific google search just to find the sonos article describing the power button functionality. https://support.sonos.com/s/article/5029?language=en_US

 

Pressing once for sleep and 5 seconds for off is not intuitive (to me at least).   Especially since the Roam makes a sound and the lights go off when pressing it once.  To me, (and possibly every other human being) that means the device is off.   

 

Edit: they should add in voice prompts like many other bluetooth speakers.  If you press the button once it should audibly say “Now entering sleep mode”.  When pressing it for 5 seconds it should say “powering off”. 

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Appreciate if SONOS staffs here can help to clarify, thanks!

Userlevel 1

My roam has only lasted 3 days on standby with only 1-2 hours of actual playtime. 

I have Alexa as the assistant.

 

This is far from the 10 days promised.

If this does not improve its going back! 

Userlevel 1

I fully charged my Roam upon receipt on Tuesday then switched it off. I did not install an assistant and truplay is switched off. I switched it on 4 days later to find the battery at 47%. After 5 minutes of play it had dropped to 43%. Unacceptable.

My 4 year old Bose Revolve that it was going to replace is laughing hysterically at it.

I will monitor for the rest of this charge and give it one more charge, but after that it's gone.

Userlevel 7
Badge +16

It's genuinely amazing how the Move and the Roam have the same battery drain issues.

Who's designing and testing this mess?.

Userlevel 7
Badge +21

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. 

Same issue. I bought 3 roams, 2 of them were down to 70% when I woke up and I hardly used those yesterday other than for 5 mins or so. The other one was down to 35%!! Having been used for about 45 mins and then on standby from lunchtime till this morning 

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

The Roam is my 11th Sonos speaker (Playbase, 2 Subs, and 7 One SLs) and it’s the only one I’m disappointed in. And it’s all because of the battery because the sound and design are good. Why can I leave my MacBook or iPad sleeping for days or even weeks (and they even do stuff while asleep) and they still have a charge, but the Roam is dead the next day from a full charge if I forget to turn it off after my shower? It’s shockingly bad, like some old Ni-Cad/No-MH device when battery tech was primitive and terrible.

Userlevel 2
Badge

Same here. Heavy battery drain when in sleep mode and almost as bad in the so called low power mode after being woken up because the app was used. It’s a design flaw that needs to be sorted ASAP ☹️

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +10

One has to wonder what the pre-launch testing regime is for new products.

It does seem worrying that stand-by battery life is so limited.

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +15

Sonos proved they didn't have a clue how to integrate a battery powered speaker into its ecosystem with the Move.  Its longstanding issues are still there.

Different things were promised for the Roam. Sadly, it's quite clear nothing had changed, some of the drains are farcical.

Userlevel 1
Badge

Having the same issue. Charged it a couple of days ago, haven’t actually listened to anything on it in that time, and it’s already at 10%. It’s dropped by 3% in the last hour or two alone. No voice assistants turned on.

I can’t remember when I last charged my old UE Wonderboom, must have been months ago, but it just turned on fine.

Bought this to extend Sonos into my bathroom, where I can’t have a socket. Was expecting to need to top it up occasionally but this is a joke.

Userlevel 1

SONOS - are you listening? What are you going to do to address this massive failure?

Sounds like they did nothing with the move (which i just got too grrrr) so we will see.  This is much more portable so I assume a LOT more people will have issue and they will have to do SOMETHING. I hope. 

Userlevel 3
Badge +4

Yeah, I’m getting about ten hours on standby too. 🙄 
 

I’ve turned on TruePlay and have the Status Light turned on, if this makes a big difference. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi Everyone.

The Roam, when in standby, will wake up under certain circumstances - when you open the Sonos app, when updates are checked for, when it has to renew it’s connection on the network (this varies depending on router settings), and others. When these functions wake it from Sleep, it will soon go back to Sleep mode within 2 minutes. These actions will, however, use up battery life over time.

If you wish the Roam to be charged when you pick it up after a while, it’s really best to turn it off when it’s not charging, as you would with a normal, portable, Bluetooth speaker.

If, however, your new Roam does seem to be having problems with it’s battery, or is not performing as expected, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Roam and what it’s logs are reporting.

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

If the battery life of Roam does not seem acceptable and you have Google Assistant installed on it, please try removing Google Assistant - we are aware of an issue whereby Google Assistant can use a disproportionate amount of power on the Roam, and we are currently working on a resolution which will be available in a future software update. Thanks.

In addition, we can analyse your Roam’s battery usage if you get in touch with our technical support team and we can advise you from there.

Userlevel 2
Badge

Got my Roam last week but wanted to hold off on replying here till I’d tested a few things and let it stabilize.

As others have said, I see about 1% per hour battery drain in standby. This is overnight, with no use of the Sonos app or other speakers to trigger a full wakeup. This equates to about 4 days of standby time at most, less if using the Roam in that time. Very far from the advertised ‘up to 10 days’. Fully powering off the Roam does reduce battery drain to virtually nothing, but this is annoying due to the mushy power button and excessively long 5 second press time required.

Like many others here I mainly use my Roam in the shower, so powering it off completely means I have to remember to take my phone into the bathroom to select music after I wake it up. To work around this I’ve created a hack script in Home Assistant that starts with a 60 second delay - during which time I go to the bathroom and power on the Roam - then groups the Roam with my bedroom One SL, which I already set playing whatever I want - great user experience...

I also bought it to take on a trip this summer, but I’m a bit concerned that it’s very easy to accidentally leave it in standby mode, and when it’s not in range of a known WiFi network it’ll drain the battery constantly searching for one.

I suggest / request the following app features that I think will mitigate what is a pretty big annoyance in an otherwise good product:
 - A power off button in the app, equivalent to a power button hold, so if you accidentally leave it on standby you can turn it off remotely. Bonus for making this API-accessible so Home Assistant / Google Home, etc routines can call it.
 - An app-configurable automatic full power-off timer (1 hour, 4 hours, 12 hours or something), that would prevent the problems people have had coming to use their Roam and finding it totally dead. 
 - An option to fully disable WiFi and make it function entirely as a dumb bluetooth speaker, for times when it’s taken out of the home.

All in all I have no regrets about buying the Roam, but as it stands I couldn’t recommend it to less tech savvy friends / relatives,

SONOS - are you listening? What are you going to do to address this massive failure?