The Sonos Roam 2 corrects the few issues that the original had while retaining all of the positive features. It's one of those sequels that improves on its predecessor - rare when it's a movie series but thankfully common when it comes to Sonos' audio offerings.
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Sound
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Battery
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Features
I hated the original Sonos Roam so much that I gave it away. That the recipient loved it didn’t make me feel better about myself.
I might be willing to admit that my hatred was partly caused when I tried to pair it with someone else’s phone while on an overseas holiday. Who knew it would sever all connections and then fell afoul of Sonos’s insistence that you connect its Bluetooth speaker to your home Sonos network first? The rest of the two-week trip happened without music, sadly.
I was therefore a little reluctant to try the Sonos Roam 2 – which is odd given how much of my life now involves Sonos’s otherwise excellent speakers.
The Arc is our main source of music and TV sound in the TV room, while I have a few of the excellent Era 100 around the house and an Era 300 in my study. My default over-ear noise-cancelling headphones are the excellent Ace and I have long been a fan of the larger Move (and now the Move 2) battery-powered speaker. It gets a wireless signal away from the house that my smartphone doesn’t.
So, my bad experience with the Roam 1 was an aberration – and one that has been pleasantly reversed by the Sonos Roam 2.
To be sure, I never had any problems with the Roam’s sound quality, just its wobbly networking. To solve this, Sonos has included a dedicated Bluetooth button. One press and it becomes a Bluetooth speaker until you push it again and it uses WiFi to find the Sonos home system. Not a bad solution.
Better sound quality
I never tried the remarkable thing that Maurice van Heerden, MD of Sonos’s South African distributor Planetworld, told me about how his Roam 1 ended up in his pool.
I’d explained that I was against having microphones on speakers because I don’t use voice assistants, in no small part because they are always listening and recording, which is a horrendous invasion of privacy. The mics on the speakers, Van Heerden reasoned, were more for the speaker to adjust based on the space they are in.
To demonstrate, he told me his story of being pushed into a pool while holding the first Roam. After a few seconds, he noticed that the speaker adjusted itself and the music sounded better underwater.
He also pointed out that the Roam (and Roam 2) is IP67 rated, so it survives up to a metre underwater for up to 30 minutes. I never tested the Sonos Roam 2 that way, I have to admit. I’m too fond of this one for an intentional test — just in case. But I like a waterproof and dustproof Bluetooth speaker. The feature set seems like a no-brainer and I was pleased to see it carry over to the sequel.
Personal preference
I also prefer my portable audio to be lightweight because I always travel with a Bluetooth speaker. The Sonos Roam 2 weighs in at 430 grams.
I don’t want any gadget or accessory that doesn’t have USB-C as its charging port, but even the Roam 1 included that. It’s a 15W port on the Roam 2, which means you can charge its 18Wh battery pretty speedily. The battery lasts a healthy ten hours – or enough for a weeklong beach holiday in December.
If you know what this means, and therefore judge the speaker by its internal components, it has two class-H digital amplifiers that power a tweet with a “crisp high-frequency response” and a midwoofer that “ensure faithful playback of midrange frequencies and maximises low-end output”.
Automatic Trueplay is useful and is the self-tuning software Sonos includes in all its new speakers. I much prefer it to walking around my TV room waving a phone around as it emits a batlike tuning sound. I am sure my audio experience is enhanced but even a wife as attuned to sometimes eccentric behaviour as mine was bemused to find me doing it. The only real problem was I was asked to do it two more times, before giving up.
Sonos Roam 2 Verdict
Is the Sonos Roam 2 worth the R4,500? Yes, very much so. Add the wireless charger (R1,500), which allows you to keep the speaker always turned on, and it will function as part of your home Sonos system. As a portable Bluetooth speaker, it’s excellent. It’s light and compact for travel and the 10-hour battery is great for a holiday where recharging is difficult.
