It’s about that time of the year where SONOS is expected to announce a few new products. This year, one of the brand’s more anticipated products is actually a portable speaker, known simply as Roam.
Images and details of the Roam began to surface several days ago, along with its expected retail value of US$169 (~RM697). Thanks to The Verge, we now have some idea of what to expect from this new portable speaker.
Specs-wise, the Roam will inherit SONOS’ Trueplay, which is an audio tuning feature that was first introduced in its bigger brother, the Move. Basically, it’s a feature that automatically calibrates the performance of the speaker based on its immediate environment.
Like all SONOS devices, the Roam is also expected to house the ability to connect itself to a multi-room system via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing users to stream whatever they’re playing on their phone or audio source to another Roam over Bluetooth. While also streaming the same audio track to other SONOS devices in and around the room.
On that note, the Roam is expected to introduce a new feature called Sound Swap. There’s not a whole lot of detail about it, but supposedly, users will be able to send music that is played on the Roam to a nearby SONOS speaker by holding down the play button. Oh, and the writer seems to make it explicitly clear that the Roam cannot be used as an impromptu surround speaker for the SONOS Arc or Beam.
In terms of performance, the SONOS Roam is expected to have a battery life that supports up to 10 hours of continuous playback, as well as IP67 dust and waterproof rating, the latter allowing it to be submerged at a depth of one metre and for a period of half an hour. As for its sound quality, we can’t tell you that until we actually get a unit to test for ourselves.
Lastly, it seems that the Roam is set to support wireless charging, but the corresponding hub is expected to be an optional extra. At what costs, though, we have no idea.
In any case, SONOS is expected to make any official announcement sometime this week, and we’re still not sure if the brand even intends on launching the Roam in Malaysia. So, take this news with a large grain of salt.
(Source: The Verge [1] [2] // Image: The Verge)
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