It’s been more than three years since I last reviewed the first Sonos Roam and as I type out this review, I find myself staring at its successor, the aptly named Roam 2. The two portable speakers are practically identical in aesthetics but of course, there are differences between them that are both nuanced and obvious.
What Am I Looking At?
The Roam 2 retains the same cylindrical shape as its predecessor. Aesthetically, the palindrome is now black rather than white, indirectly giving the speaker a more solid look than it already has.
Again, compared to the first Roam, the Roam 2 now has a dedicated Bluetooth button located at the back of the speaker, along with the power button and USB-C charging port. You also get the usual suspects: the play and pause button, volume control, and the microphone button.
As a sidebar, if you peer inside closely, you can see the honeycomb layer Sonos used to construct the Roam 2. It’s not something many would consider outstanding but for me, it’s a bit of eye candy.
The Trueplay feature has also been revamped and improved with the Roam 2 as well. Instead of having to manually run it, it now runs automatically when you turn it on, fine-tuning itself along the way and as tracks and content play.
What’s Good About It?
First off, you’ll be happy to know that the volume threshold of the Roam 2 is very impressive. At near or maximum volume, there’s no breaking in the highs and mids, nor is there any distortion in the lows.
In its default state (read: out of the box), the speaker’s strength is focused on its delivery of warm and clear highs, mids, and vocals. Listening to songs like Bear McCreary and Rufus Wainwright’s Old Tom Bombadil, Steven Sanchez’s Until I Found You, or Florence And The Machine’s rendition of Stand By Me sounds absolutely sublime. And that’s if you play music from it propped vertically.
Lay the Roam 2 on its side, and the sound profile changes a great deal, especially with the lows. Now, to be clear, lows on these speakers aren’t as gripping as the original Roam but don’t take that as it being non-existent. It’s still there and relatively strong, the main difference here being that, when laid horizontally, it gets boosted.
Case in point, listening to the baritone stylings of Teddy Swims’ Losing Control really thumps the chest, as does the classic Nina Simone song, Feeling Good. Heck, even Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelt’s Digging My Potato sounds really good here.
Lastly, Sonos has really improved the battery consumption of the Roam 2, especially when compared to the original. It certainly reaches the advertised 10-hour continuous use case but what is more important to me is how it now turns itself off completely when not in use – the original Roam never turned off completely unless I pressed and held the button for several seconds, and simply pressing on it just put it into a sleep mode that continued to drain its battery.
What’s The Catch?
If you’re reading this review and have been living under a rock for the past several months, one of the pain points dragging the Sonos name, never mind the Roam 2, into the mud is the state of the self-named app. Honestly though, the lack of support of previous features notwithstanding, it’s not entirely unusable; I can still access the equaliser although I really wish the brand made it a graph instead of a set of 10-stepped bars, one each for the treble and bass.
It’s also slightly more expensive than its predecessor, retailing at RM1,199, which is a whole RM100 more.
Should I Buy It?
At the end of the day, the Sonos Roam 2 feels more like an incremental improvement than a major upgrade over the first Roam. The dedicated Bluetooth button and the always-active Trueplay function, and improved power consumption: they’re definitive updates, but not absolute dealbreakers.
For those wanting to own a Sonos Roam portable speaker, get the Roam 2. However, unless you’re an absolute true-to-life portable speaker audiophile, or you already own the first iteration and are fine with its performance, you can actually skip this generation.
Photography by John Law.
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