Sonos Roam Review: Premium Speaker With Pure Sound

In the crowd of round-cylindrical speakers, Sonos chose to stand out with a twist of curved triangle design. Sonos Roam comes with a smooth matte finish, a clean and elegant design. Sonos has chosen its typical precision-drilled hole design on the speaker. At the front, it gets the Sonos logo imprinted on the speaker grille. If placed vertically, it gets four buttons at the top consisting of Play/Pause, a mute button for the microphone, a volume up, and a volume down button. On the rear side, it gets the power button and Type-C port for charging.

The speaker is 6.61 inches tall and weighs just 430 grams. It can be easily carried anywhere you want. Moreover, it can survive up to 30 minutes in three-feet deep water, thanks to IP67 water and dust resistance. The company has definitely paid attention to detail and it certainly looks and feels premium.

Talking about the most exciting part- audio quality. Sonos Roam is really one of the best-sounding portable speakers out there. It produces great depth and texture. While there is heavy bass in the speaker, it is slightly at the downside if compared with its counterparts. In most portable speakers, when playing songs at full volume, the sound always gets distorted, at least to some extent. But this is not the case with Sonos Roam. It gives you clarity in sound even at 100% volume. However, greater depth can be experienced at low volumes.

While reviewing the Sonos Roam, I played a range of songs including Old Ghazals, Pop-Music, instrumentals and lots of new singles from Hollywood and Bollywood. The results were amazingly great. I watched The Witcher (Web-series) on Netflix using Sonos Roam and I was amazed by its depth in dialogue delivery. I was very impressed with the sound and lack of any lag when connected through Bluetooth. Despite the smaller dimensions, the speaker can easily fill a medium-sized room. Add two Sonos Roams together and you've got a force. However, it is a little complex to pair two speakers via its App.

Sonos comes with automatic TruePlay technology where it analyzes the surroundings and levels the music to provide a better sound experience. You will barely notice any difference in outdoor space, but can be experienced in a closed environment. Moreover, its ability to play music from anything anywhere is its USP. Once connected to the Wi-Fi, you can play music from every corner of your house.

Notably, Sonos Roam supports voice assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, but not yet in the Indian region. If you try to set up Alexa or Google Assistant via Sonos App, it will disappoint you with the “Service is not available in my region” message.

Coming to battery life, we managed to get about 8 hours of playback on a single charge. When connected with Wi-Fi, it offers around 7 hours of battery life. Battery life will also depend on whether you are putting it in standby mode or turning it off completely.

Should You Buy One?

At the time of writing this review, Sonos Roam is available at a price tag of Rs 19,999, which is pretty high considering the Indian market. Sonos Roam is a luxury speaker and the cheapest product in the brand portfolio. Although it is a little pricey, Sonos Roam justifies every single penny with its sound and connectivity feature.  It is true that audio is one category where people like to be different as the experience can never outweigh the price. Sonos Roam offers a complete package and can perfectly fulfill all your needs. It will be not wrong to say that it is one of the best premium portable speakers that I ever used. If you are looking for a premium audio device then Sonos Roam must be on your bucket list. If you want to look at other premium brands be sure to check out Beosound Explore (Read Review) from Bang & Olufsen