Sonos truly has a smart speaker for every occasion. The Beam sound bar, Playbase speaker and TV stand are designed to enhance your viewing experience. Then there's the fabulous-sounding Play:2 that packs a huge punch, and the One, a smart speaker option. The brand still offers shelves and lamps now, thanks to its recent cooperation with Ikea. But, for years, Sonos lacked an external speaker. That changed with the Sonos Move, the company's first foray into portable Bluetooth speakers released in 24. Since its launch, it has topped our list of the best Bluetooth speakers and is perfect for listening indoors and outdoors. The Sonos Move offers Bluetooth playback on the go, as well as integration with a multi-room networked speaker system via Wi-Fi. So you have most of the functionality of a regular Sonos, like the very cool ability to unplug it. from a power source, thanks to an internal battery. It's bigger and more powerful than the recently announced Sonos Roam due out April XNUMX, XNUMX for $XNUMX / $XNUMX / AU$XNUMX, but it's also more expensive. Since its launch, we've seen a new and improved Sonos Move that improves battery life with an extra hour of charging to ensure those trips to the beach, or just out of reach of an outlet, are packed with sound. quality all the time. as possible. On top of this, a new Lunar White version of the Sonos Move gives the portable speaker a new white/silver look and should offer more variety. Can't decide if the Sonos Move is right for you? Read on for our full review, or check out our specific Sonos Move vs Sonos Roam guide to see the differences between the larger Sonos Move and the smaller Sonos Roam. [Update: Sonos speakers, including the Sonos Move, can finally handle wireless Hi-Res Audio streaming, with Qobuz beating competitors like Tidal and Amazon Music HD to become the first Hi-Res streaming service to be supported by the multi-room ecosystem. Available with the SXNUMX app, Qobuz is bringing XNUMX-bit wireless streaming to Sonos customers, who will be able to listen to "studio-quality music", which preserves "all the details and color of the original recordings," according to the French streaming service.]
(Image credit: future)
- Sonos Move on Sonos for € 399
Prices and availability
The Sonos Move went on sale on September XNUMX, XNUMX for €XNUMX / €XNUMX / AU €XNUMX. It's expensive for a portable speaker, but it's not your average Bluetooth boombox, which complicates its placement in front of direct competition. Few portable speakers, even those with built-in smart assistants, have as rich a feature list as the Sonos Move, making the higher cost more easily justified.
Integrated
Sonos products are expensive and the Sonos Move is no different, but it was developed less than an inch of its life to justify claiming your hard-earned money.
(Image credit: Future) It closely resembles the styling of previous Sonos models. It has a black speaker with a metal front grille, with capacitive playback control knobs on top, like a far-field 4-mic array. On the rear, you'll find a power button, a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi toggle button, and a multi-room pairing button. For audio, the Sonos Move uses 2 Class-D digital amplifiers, a down-firing tweeter for highs, and a built-in midrange woofer for lows and mids. Sonos designed the transverse cabinet to resonate and balance from every angle; after all, the outer planet knows no borders. As a portable product, its durability has been strictly tested. Sonos also claims it can handle extreme cold and heat, so if your party is in the desert or in the middle of a blizzard, the Sonos Move should have you covered. It's IP56 rated, which means it'll withstand a layer of sand or dust, like a drop in a pool. Il ya meme des canaux de ruisselement dans le boîtier pour que l'eau s'écoule à travers, tandis que Sonos affirma que los des testes de chute, una dalle de béton s'est cassée avant meme que le haut-parleur ne prenne un un tooth. It will depend on your weight, we imagine. With a height of XNUMX x XNUMX x XNUMX mm, it is portable, but it is not small. At nearly seven pounds, you can easily lift the Sonos Move, but you won't want to carry it around for long. It's a must for the large speaker magnets installed here, and it's a fair trade to ensure the audio quality delivered. To lighten the load, the case has a concave handle space at the rear for easy portability.
(Image credit: Future) Based on our tests, battery life should be good throughout the stated 5 hours and it will fully charge in around 3 hours. The speaker can be charged via USB-C, but you'll likely use the included dock ring, which charges the speaker whenever it's rested on it. The Sonos Move also employs a sleep mode to save power when it realizes it hasn't been used for about thirty minutes; This saves you power for up to five days without a charge, but also gives you enough power to keep you awake. wirelessly from your sleep. There are also commendable ecological references here. Sonos predicts, in average use, battery degradation after around XNUMX charge cycles, or around XNUMX years of daily use. Instead of waiting for you to throw away your high-end speaker, it's going to offer you (for a yet undisclosed fee) a spare battery that you can easily put in the dock itself.
Smart features
Sonos has a long tradition of connected and wireless audio, and just because this is its first attempt at going portable doesn't mean it's giving up that connectivity. Like other Sonos speakers, the Move can be designed to work in a stereo pairing or also as part of a multi-room ensemble. If you want the Move to play the same songs in the garden as anywhere else in your house on a Sonos system, it'll do it without missing a beat. Sonos Move will work with all types of audio sources connected, online or stored on a local network. If you want to start a playlist on Spotify using Spotify Connect, it's as simple in the app as playing something you've copied to a network storage device. Just launch the Sonos app, and when you're set up and connected to the Internet, your sources will appear over Wi-Fi.
(Image credit: Future) Get out of range of a Wi-Fi connection and you've got Bluetooth to fall back on. This is version 0 of the connectivity standard, rather than the newer 4, but Sonos says its experience with Bluetooth version XNUMX has given it more power-saving capabilities and led to forty-two than ever. Although he doesn't point out the range of his Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connections, he simply states that "if you can hear it, you can monitor it." XNUMX Wi-Fi antennas are distributed around the base of the Move, with the Bluetooth module located on top to provide the best possible coverage. AirPlay XNUMX is also supported, for the contingent of Apple devices. This range of top mount microphones serves a dual purpose. First, it gives you access to a choice of voice assistants from Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant - each AI assistant is fully compatible with Sonos Move, giving you the option to use to set reminders, monitor smart family devices, access the calendar and act as a voice-activated jukebox. Pairing the microphones and smart assistants works wonderfully here. Even in a chatty office and with the speaker playing a national song, he was able to answer our requests, although the answers weren't always exactly what we were looking for. But it's in the AI assistants from Amazon and Google, not the engineers at Sonos.
(Image credit: Future) Next, these mics are also the heart of the "Trueplay" audio tuning system. They examine the output of the Sonos Move and how its environment affects it, and automatically adjust it to approximate the desired studio sound. What's really smart is that it knows when the Sonos Move has moved: there's a built-in accelerometer that activates TruePlay system settings when it senses movement. The one thing the Move doesn't accept, however, is that it's used as part of the 1 rear channels of a home theater system, just like other Sonos devices can be. Sonos claims this is due to timing issues and the conflicting potential for a directional soundtrack to lose focus if one speaker can be lost in a room. But that's a shame given the potential for wireless surround sound that could have been provided here.
The Sonos Move doesn't feel like a portable speaker. If you're familiar with Sonos' home lineup, that would sit somewhere between the Sonos One and the Play-XNUMX, not just in terms of volume, but also loyalty. The midrange speaker delivers powerful, room-filling bass, yet rivals the acoustics of a large open space, while there's not the drop in vocal clarity that can often be seen. Generate with less powerful portable speakers. The Sonos Move is very suitable for the family range of Sonos, but let it go with its battery. We tested the Sonos Move with a mix of songs, styles of music, and in a variety of different locations. Kelis' electro pop banger 'Acapella' shows the Sonos Move handling what few other Bluetooth speakers can: firm, punchy bass, sparkling highs, and a melancholy vocal that cuts through it all with direct clarity. 'Orange Crush' from the REM Green album was a good test of the Sonos app's EQ options, letting you turn the treble and bass settings up and down. The low-fidelity track naturally favors a cleaner high-end, but the bass buildup in the EQ gives the track a bit more warmth than its neutral recording. Michael Kiwanuka's 'Bones', with his voice exposed, swaying...