Sonos Roam 2

Verdict

A minor refresh of its smallest portable speaker, the Sonos Roam 2 still boasts a good sound, portable design, and solid battery life, but it’s no longer the best speaker at its price point

Introduction

The original Roam speaker took the Sonos’ sound and made it truly portable. It was a speaker that I thoroughly enjoyed, awarding it full marks, so it’s with expectation that the Sonos Roam 2 arrives.

The Roam 2 isn’t a major update. Instead, it’s a milder one that seeks to resolve a couple of issues the original had. With that in mind, is it worth the upgrade?

Availability

The Sonos Roam 2 matches the price of the original at £179 / $169 / €179 / CA$229 / AU$279. Sonos hasn’t announced an SL version of the speaker that comes without the built-in microphones, but you can bet that when (or if) it does, it’ll be slightly cheaper.

The Roam Wireless Charger works with both the original and sequel and is priced at £49 / $49 / €49.

Design

• Same looks
• Easy to carry
• IP67 rating

Nothing has really changed in terms of the aesthetic with the Roam 2. It’s the same size, the same shape, weight, look – everything.

All that’s changed is the addition of a dedicated Bluetooth button to avoid the confusion many had with the first model in terms of powering the speaker off or switching between Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modes. The new button makes that easier to do.

The Roam 2 works either upright or laid on its side, and there are no touch controls with physical buttons located on top (or its side) for playback, volume, and switching the microphone on or off. There are LEDs both at the bottom and the bottom, the latter indicates the battery charge (it’ll flash red/orange if the battery is low).

There is nothing particularly flashy about its aesthetics, though Sonos has launched the speaker in a wider range of colours than it initially did with the original. If you don’t fancy black or white, then there’s red, blue, and green for some added variety.

It still carries the same IP67 rating that allows it to be submerged in a depth of water 1m deep for thirty minutes. The USB-C port allows for charging or you could opt for the wireless charger but, in what’s become an annoying trend from Sonos, the price has gone up by £5 / $5.

Like with the original, it would have been nice if this speaker came with a notch to connect a strap. Some case options add this, but I haven’t tested any of them to judge whether they work with this updated version, although there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.

Features

• 10 hours battery
• Bluetooth streaming
• Stereo pair support with older gen

If there’s a theme emerging about the Roam 2, it’s that nothing much has changed and the same goes for the feature set, which is almost exactly the same as what was provided before.

There’s no jump in battery life, with the Roam 2 claiming up to 10 hours on a single charge. There’s a battery saver option in the Sonos app that turns the speaker off quicker when it is not in use to save some battery, plus there’s a WiFi Power Save feature that extends the battery when the speaker is on a Wi-Fi network.

Having played music on the Roam 2 (on Wi-Fi) for an hour at around 50% volume, the battery fell by 12%, so 10 hours doesn’t seem as if it’s far off the mark as long as you’re not pushing the speaker to its max volume.

Still, it’s a shame that Sonos hasn’t eked out more battery life from the Roam 2. There are speakers half the price of the Roam 2 in the Ultimate Ears Wonderboom 3, Marshall Willen, and Soundcore Motion 300 that can go for longer than the Roam 2 can.

Like the rest of Sonos’ portable speakers, there’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming, and connected to the Wi-Fi opens up Alexa and Sonos Voice Control, plus AirPlay 2 streaming with iOS devices.

There’s no Google Assistant voice control, which is not Sonos’ fault and is more about Google changing things on its side.

Setting up the speaker is less involved than it was before, the speaker emits a chime that the microphone on your smartphone recognises before it sets it up on the Wi-Fi.

Auto Trueplay optimises the sound for whatever space the Roam 2 is in, which removes the need to manually calibrate the speaker. This version of Trueplay differs from that on the Era speakers’ Quick Tune. You’ve got EQ options in the app to alter bass, treble, and loudness.

While the feature set hasn’t changed – if anything features have been left out – one benefit is that stereo pairing is possible across the Roam generations. It’s very easy to couple and uncouple a stereo pair in the app, though remember that the Roams can be used as rear speakers in a Sonos home cinema set-up.

Let’s talk (briefly) about the Sonos app, which has gone through a disastrous launch since it was updated. It’s meant to be streamlined, easier to use and customisable; I’ll speak for myself but I haven’t had many issues in terms of stability, but I do get regular prompts about updating the system (which I ignore since all the Sonos products have been updated).

Some features don’t seem to work for me such as grouping the speakers or the Sound Swap feature whereby pressing and holding the play button for two seconds sends a stream from one speaker to the Roam 2. If you want to group speakers, I find I have to do it manually in the app.

The Bluetooth specs feature v5.2 (SBC and AAC streaming), and the performance is fine with the connection only beginning to stutter the further you are from the speaker. You can switch to Wi-Fi from Bluetooth by tapping the button – though the sample I received tended to switch back to Bluetooth. A longer press will send it into its pairing mode

Sound Quality

• Clear and detailed midrange
• Lacks bass depth
• Virtually the same sound as the original version

A lot has changed since the Roam launched in 2021. One is that portable speakers have improved in terms of sound, the other is that portable speakers launched in the last couple of years have come down in price, so the Roam 2 finds itself in a more competitive category than the original did.

The performance is by and large the same as the first model. In fact, the biggest clue is that the 1st and 2nd gen Roam can be paired together to create a stereo pair. If the drivers or audio performance were different, that wouldn’t be possible.

And having listened to both pairs side-by-side, I struggle to tell the difference and anything I do hear that sounds slightly different, I put it down to an over-active imagination.

As far as I can tell from staring and listening to these two speakers, they sound very much alike. And part of me is re-evaluating the performance of the original. As I said, the landscape has changed but the Roam hasn’t evolved much with it.

So you still get a very good focus on vocals, with good midrange clarity and detail to pick up. The Roam wasn’t ever the sharpest sounding portable speaker, but for its size, you can pick up on most details in a song.

However, compared to the bigger JBL Charge 5 Wi-Fi, which is available for around the same price the Sonos doesn’t always come out on top. With a play of Porno Graffitti’s Melissa, the Roam has to handle lots of high-tempo instrumentation and it can struggle to sift through all the detail. Background detail gets lost in the shuffle, something that the bigger JBL speaker doesn’t have as much of a problem with as its bigger and taller soundstage allows for more space, and therefore more details to be picked up on.

The Roam 2 offers a nice twinkle with treble notes, though it’s not the brightest and sharpest high frequency performance you’ll ever hear from speakers at this price point, it’s perfectly decent in bringing out detail at the top end of the frequency range.

Its sense of dynamism is smaller than I remember and the difference between highs and lows doesn’t seem as pronounced. It’s not the most energetic performance but there’s a fine sense of rhythm that the Roam 2 is able to put out for its size. A little more energy would add to its excitement though.

It’s the bass regions that remain the weakest part. It sounds on the warm and rich side of the scale but lacks power and depth, which isn’t much of a surprise for a speaker of its size. If you’re after more wallop, the Charge  Wi-Fi can provide more.

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