SONOS MOVE PORTABLE
SONOS MOVE BLUETOOTH

Who It’s For: The Sonos Move won’t be for everybody. Not the end of the world, but something to watch out for.

SONOS MOVE BLUETOOTH

Basically, you’ll have to visit the Sonos app if you want to regroup your speakers after using the Move as a Bluetooth speaker. If there’s one caveat to this “Sonos experience,” it’s that the Move will automatically connect back to your home’s Wi-Fi when switching back from Bluetooth mode, but it won’t regroup with your other Sonos speakers. Because it’s the first Sonos speaker that has automatic TruePlay, it arguably makes the Move even easier to set up than other speakers. The biggest thing, at least for me, is that the Move doesn’t really complicate or change the Sonos experience. According to Sonos, the Move can stay in this “Suspend mode” for up to five days before needing a visit back to the charger. Anytime the speaker is not powered and it’s not playing music, meaning it could be in either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth modes, the Move will automatically turn off after a few minutes. That said, it has a pretty neat trick to save battery life. When it’s not on its charging dock, or charging via USB-C, the Move has a ten-hour battery life – which is decent. All this happens in the space of a few seconds and, again, it requires nothing out of the listener (the microphones have to be on, though). For example, when you move the Move from an open space to a closed-in space, like a media cabinet, you can hear the speaker lower its bass and crank up its mids and treble. It’s convenient and you can hear the difference. Instead of going through the app and waving your phone around (typical TruePlay behavior), the Move uses its built-in microphones and automatically tunes itself ever time you move it. Sonos knew this would be a pain in the ass with the Move, to have listeners set up TruePlay every time they moved the speaker, so they developed Automatic TruePlay.

TruePlay is the in-app feature that helps tune each Sonos speaker so that it sounds best for the room it’s in it’s a typically a one-time process that requires you to wave your smartphone around while the speaker makes some strange noises. The other neat thing about the Move is that Sonos rejiggered TruePlay technology so that it works with the Move. (Fun fact: even though the Play:1 and Sonos One speakers have a dotted grill that wraps around most of the speaker, both are still forward-firing and not omnidirectional speakers.) In terms of sound quality and power, the Sonos Move sounds more closely to the Sonos One ($199) rather than the larger and more expensive Play:5 ($499) but it’s definitely in-between the two. Sonos specially designed it with a downward-firing tweeter and forward-firing woofer, and the result is that the Move has more of a 360-degree sound than any other speaker. The Good: The Sonos Move has that “Sonos sound” – it sounds warm, lively and punchy, both inside and outside, just as you’d expect from a Sonos speaker. So the fact that the Move can be constantly be moved around, switched between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modes – does that negatively impact that Sonos experience? The biggest question, at least for me, has to do with the “Sonos experience.” The audio company is so beloved because its speakers sound great and work with almost every music streaming service, but, most importantly, they’re easy enough for anybody to use.

SONOS MOVE PORTABLE

In terms of sound quality, how does it compare to other Sonos speakers? And how should the Move be used? Is it more of a traditional Sonos speaker that, instead of being tethered to the wall, can be carried from room to room? Or is it more a portable Bluetooth speaker, designed to be listened to outside? There are a couple of big questions surrounding the Move. It’s also a smart speaker, just like the Sonos One, so you can speak to Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant and request a song, adjust the volume or ask about the weather. It can connect to your home’s Wi-Fi network and, via the Sonos app, be grouped with other Sonos speakers in a multi-room system. Of course, the Move is still a Sonos speaker and it’s designed to work as such. And if you’re wondering, yes, the Move is weatherproof and drop-resistant, making it Sonos’s first truly rugged speaker, too. Unlike all other Sonos speakers before it, the Move is designed to be listened to in, around and outside the home. It’s the company’s first Bluetooth speaker, its first portable speaker and, thus, its first speaker to have a built-in battery (which Sonos had to build from scratch). The Sonos Move ($399) represents a bunch of “firsts” for Sonos.

Sonos move