Is Sonos' Cheapest Speaker Still A Good Buy In 2024?

Even for those who know the Sonos Roam 2 is new, you'll need to be eagle-eyed in order to spot the changes on the portable speaker. Launched in 2021, the original Roam was the worm on Sonos' hook: a $169 lure to bring new users into the fold and, if all went to plan, get them addicted to the concept of multi-room music. Ostensibly a portable Bluetooth speaker, it could also switch into Wi-Fi mode and join a broader Sonos system.

Although not as powerful as, say, a Sonos One, it went a long way in making up for that by being the company's cheapest model. While relatively expensive for a Bluetooth speaker, integration with Sonos' popular ecosystem promised to make that extra spend worthwhile.

Three years on and with Sonos expanding into noise-cancelling headphones with Sonos Ace, Roam 2 is here to refine that gateway. The second-generation portable speaker remains about 6.6 inches tall, roughly triangular in cross-section, and with a cluster of buttons on one rubberized end. Now offered in Olive, Sunset, Wave, Black, and White finishes, the big question is whether Roam 2's small changes are enough to keep it a recommended buy.

The end-cap buttons take care of play/pause, volume, and muting the Roam 2's microphone (with which it can be used as a smart speaker, including with Sonos' own Voice Control assistant). On the back, though, along with the power button and USB-C charging port, there's now a separate Bluetooth button. That makes it easier to manually flip between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections.

In fact, setup and ease — or perhaps, more specifically, clarity — of operation are the main differences between the two generations of Roam. The initial setup, for example, has been improved: you no longer need to have first connected the speaker to your Wi-Fi network, in order to establish a Bluetooth pairing. Where the original Roam would handle its own Bluetooth/Wi-Fi connection switching, which could lead to confusion, pressing the Bluetooth button on Roam 2 will automatically reconnect to the last-used device (assuming it's within range).

Treat it like a regular Sonos speaker, meanwhile, and you can do the usual grouping and remote control from the Sonos app (in Bluetooth mode, it's whatever source app you're using that'll control the Roam 2). Holding down the Play/Pause button triggers Grouping and Sound Swap; a roughly one-second-long press groups Roam 2 to a nearby Sonos speaker that's playing; a longer press "grabs" the stream from a nearby Sonos speaker and plays it on Roam 2 instead, or vice-versa.

In practice, getting the timing right — just how long to hold the button down — can still be finicky. There's an audio tone to confirm something is happening, but it comes too late to help you figure out when you've held the button down long enough (or, perhaps, too long).

Regardless of how you get it playing, the Roam 2 punches above its dimensions for sound quality. Those hunting the loudest music or the heaviest bass will still want to look to the bigger, more potent Move 2, but the Roam 2's balanced EQ doesn't sound weedy outdoors like you might expect. Sonos isn't actually promising any audio improvements for the second-generation and it still doesn't make a difference whether the speaker is positioned horizontally or vertically. 

The midrange still has a tendency to get lost outdoors, but there's enough low and high end to keep the Roam 2 heard over backyard hijinks. Stroll back indoors, meanwhile, and the portable speaker has a refinement that many rivals sacrifice. Sonos' battery-powered speaker sounds, bluntly, like its regular speakers, transparent and prone to emphasize vocals. Still, it's not the muted affair you might expect from something with an IP67 waterproof rating.

There's Auto Trueplay, which uses the Roam 2's microphone to automatically analyze the space it's in and adjust EQ accordingly. It's optional, and unsurprisingly requires the microphone be enabled — which also requires setting up either the Sonos Voice Control or Amazon Alexa assistants, first — but works whether you're playing music over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

As for battery life, that remains 10 hours. Less, certainly, than many basic Bluetooth speakers — Sony's similarly-sized XE200, for example, will do 16 hours, though it lacks the Wi-Fi connectivity and Auto Trueplay — though the Roam 2 does at least have the flexibility of both USB-C and wireless charging. Sonos now includes a USB-C to USB-C cable, not a USB-A one, though you'll still need to provide your own power supply.

As for wireless charging, Sonos will sell you a perfectly-sized magnetic charging puck for $49, or you can simply perch Roam upright on any Qi-compatible charger.

While the controls may have been finessed, many of the same limitations of the original Roam have been passed down to the second-generation speaker. You can set up two Roam 2 as a stereo pair, for example (or a Roam and a Roam 2), but only in Wi-Fi mode. There's still no way to create ad-hoc groups via Bluetooth — meanwhile, UE's models can be combined into vast, 150+ speaker groups — and you can't use a pair of Roam 2 as the rear speakers in a Sonos surround sound setup.

The biggest hurdle remains price, and how reasonable the $179 Roam 2 is depends on whether you see it as a portable speaker first, or a Sonos speaker. Viewed from the latter perspective, a speaker with a similar sound profile to a Sonos One but with the flexibility of a battery and a waterproof design is arguably a no-brainer, even if there's not enough here to justify first-gen Roam owners upgrading.

If you're looking for a Bluetooth speaker first and foremost, though, the fact is a UE Boom 3 currently has a street price under $100, while you could get four of Amazon's most popular model (which doesn't sound bad, either) for the cost of a Roam 2. What makes the difference is the value you place on the duality of Sonos' speaker: its Wi-Fi smarts when you're back indoors. If you're tempted to dip a toe into multiroom audio, the Sonos Roam 2 is an affordable and flexible way to do that.