Sonos roam
Best: Overall
Rating: 9/10
- Size and weight: 168mm x 62mm x 60mm, 430g
- Battery life: Up to 10 hours
- IP rating: IP67
The Sonos roam is the rational next step for the multi-room titan. With the Sonos move (£399, Amazon.co.uk), the brand started to flirt with portability, but the still-large Bluetooth speaker was more of a garden feature than a back of the car road-tripper.
The roam has taken the beginnings of Sonos’s portable revolution and run with it. It manages to pack all of the smart capabilities we expect from Sonos into a small, attractive product that fits nicely in your grip and adds another level of durability to the brand’s products.
For such a compact product, the sound is expansive, to the extent that bass can sometimes verge on overpowering the overall sound signature. However, this proves to be an advantage in an outdoor setting, where bass can easily be lost to the open air, and the roam’s trueplay tuning can adapt to your surroundings using built-in microphones for the right balance.
The battery life could be better, but you’ll still get almost 10 hours of use out of the roam – enough for a day’s hiking or, more likely, lazing. The best waterproof Bluetooth speaker on the market.