The Sonos Move is surprisingly good.
Well.
Okay, maybe it's not surprising that Sonos made a great sounding speaker.
They've been doing that for a while now, but what has really surprised me over the past
six months using the speaker is how much I’ve found myself moving my home to play music
thanks to its Battery & Bluetooth capabilities.
But at $400 US dollars, which is the retail price of the Sonos Move, those features come
at a cost and I'm going to walk you through whether or not I think it's worth that cost.
And the first feature that has really stood out to me over the past six months with the
Sonos Move is sound quality.
If you’re buying a speaker, you want it to sound good and I don’t think you’ll
have any complaints with the Sonos Move’s sound.
The speaker features Two Class-D amplifiers, one downward-firing tweeter for crisp highs
and a wide soundstage and one mid woofer for mid-range and low frequencies.
It can easily fill a room with distortionless playback at high volume, and honestly it just
sounds good in any room I put it in now.
And one reason for this is a technology Sonos uses called TruePlay, which helps Sonos speakers
tune their sound and tailor it for the environment you place them in.
Normally with TruePlay you have to get your phone out and have it scan around the room
while your speakers emit a semi-loud sound, but, with the Sonos Move, Sonos introduced
Auto TruePlay.
Auto TruePlay will automatically retune your Sonos Move as you move it around by utilizing
the on-device mics.
The data collective from the mics is only used locally and not uploaded to Sonos's servers
or anything like that.
And it works on both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mode though weirdly if you have the Google Assistant
installed on the speaker, auto-play will not work when you put the speaker in bluetooth
mode.
Auto Trueplay can also work when you stereo pair two Sonos Moves together as well which
will get you even better sound.
And if you want to tweak the way your Sonos Move sounds by default, you can go into the
Sonos app to play around with the speaker’s EQ.
The Next thing I really like about the Sonos Move is that move part.
The portability of the Move is something I didn’t even know I wanted or needed, but
I really love it.
The battery life for me has been excellent, its rated for 11 hours, though depending on
a variety of factors such as volume level, temperature, etc, those can all impact your
real world battery life.
For me, I haven't used it for the full 11 hours of playback but it's at least lasted
me eight hours of playback.
You can check the battery level by either asking the speaker through Sonos Voice Control,
Sonos’ own voice assistant, “Hey Sonos!
What's the battery level?”
Sonos Voice Control: “The Battery is fully charged.”
or looking at the Sonos Move in the Sonos app.
And its easy to pack up on a trip and you can even put it in your carryon luggage, though
it might take up a good amount of your bag or luggage space compared to the smaller Sonos
Roam.
The Move will also net you around 120 hours of battery life when you leave it idle off
its wireless charger dock, which comes with the device and leaving the speaker on its
dock all the time will not negatively affect its overall battery health, and you can alternatively
charge the speaker using a compatible 45 watt usb-c charger.
And you’ll know when you need to charge it because the Sonos Move’s battery light
will start to blink orange.
If you want to save even more battery life you can turn on Battery Saver mode in the
Sonos app which will cause your Sonos Move to power off automatically instead of going
to sleep.
Now, one concern i had about buying a speaker with a battery in it is how long that battery
would actually last.
Sonos rates the battery for 900 charges or about three years.
Once the battery has started to go on your Sonos Move, you can purchase a replacement
battery kit for it which retails for $70 US dollars.
It's honestly great to have a speaker thatís designed to be both portable and durable and
have a replaceable battery which is honestly pretty rare in tech these days.
Another thing I really like about this speaker is it’s design.
I think first, it has a great aesthetic for a speaker, its very clean and minimalist and
comes in two great colors: lunar white which is the color I have and shadow black.
The touch controls on the top are easy to use and intuitive.
You can tap to raise and lower the volume, swipe between the volume buttons to skip forward
or skip back, and tap the mic button to turn the mic on and off.
And the Status light at the top will turn a variety of colors to give you info about
your speaker, it’ll turn green when the volume is muted, blue for when the speaker
has gone into it’s Bluetooth mode, white when it’s on Wifi, and the status light
will turn a brighter white when you talk to a voice assistant.
The WiFi Bluetooth toggle on the back makes it easy to switch between both modes, you
just simply hit it once to switch the device over to Bluetooth and then go into your device
to find and pair with the Sonos Move, which will make a sound confirming its paired with
your device.
Sonos also made sure to make this speaker durable, it has a shock absorbing design that
also carries a IP56 water resistance rating for occasional brushes with the elements like
splashes, rain, snow, but note, it is not waterproof.
It cannot be submerged or exposed to pressurized water such as a shower or heavy rainstorm.
Also note, the wireless changing base is not rated to be used outdoors so you’ll want
to charge your Sonos Move indoors.
The Sonos Move is also easy to setup and I like how Sonos guides you through each step
and has helpful cards you swipe through during setup to get you familiar with everything
your speaker can do.
Another great part about this speaker is how easy it is to add the Sonos Move into a group
of Sonos speakers already playing music over Wi-Fi.
You can simply tap and hold the play/pause button and your Sonos Move will start playing
the same music as your other speakers.
But if you plan to use Bluetooth mode, do note that you can't stream audio from your
device to multiple Sonos speakers via bluetooth, as well as you can't actually group Sonos
speakers together via Bluetooth either.
Another thing I really like about the Sonos Move is it’s easy to cast music to your
speaker over WiFi through either Apple AirPlay from an Apple device or through the Sonos
app.
It’s easy to bring up AirPlay on my iPhone and group my Sonos Move with other Sonos and
non-Sonos AirPlay speakers like my HomePod Minis or my Onkyo Receiver to play music.
And when I was at the beach this year I was able to cast audio from my Apple TV to the
Sonos Move which vastly improved upon the garbage audio coming out of the TV speakers.
The last thing I like about the Sonos Move is you can choose between several voice assistants
to use on the device.
You can choose between the Google Assistant, Amazon Assistant, or Sonos’s own Sonos Voice
Control.
For me, I use the Amazon Assistant on my Move because you can use it and Sonos Voice Control
on the speaker, with the Google Assistant, you can’t also have Sonos Voice Control
installed on it.
Overall, Amazon’s Assistant is speedy and can play music from a variety of services
like Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.
Sonos Voice Control at the time of recording can only play music from Sonos Radio, Apple
Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Pandora.
Where Sonos Voice Control really shines for me is being able to control the volume of
an individual Sonos speaker within a group of Sonos speakers currently playing music.
It can also tell you the battery level of a Sonos device in your system.
“Hey Sonos, What's the battery level?”
Sonos: “The battery is fully charged.”
and you can use it to pair a group of Sonos speakers together.
“Hey Sonos, group bathroom speakers.”
Sonos: “Grouping bathroom speakers.”
So that's everything I've liked about the Sonos Move, but there are a few downsides
I've run into while using the speaker for the past six months.
The first major downside for the Sonos Move is lack of Google Cast support.
If you're an Android user and you want to be able to easily add your Sonos Move into
a group of speakers made up of Google cast speakers, like the Nest Audio or my Onkyo
receiver, you can't.
You can only group your Sonos speakers through the Sonos app or by using Sonos Voice Control.
Another downside I ran into with my Sonos move is when moving it from one Wi-Fi network
to another.
When i brought the speaker along with me to my beach vacation over the summer, I found
it was very difficult to use the Amazon assistant after I had successfully moved the Sonos Move
to the Wi-Fi network I had set up at the beach.
It just would not play any music.
Even after I did a soft reset of the device, reauthorized my Sonos account, i removed the
Amazon assistant from the device and then reinstalled it on the device.
It still just would not play music.
After trial and error, I finally was able to fix this issue by simply disabling the
Sonos skill through the Alexa app and then re-enabling it and then, the Assistant would
play my music again.
The last downside I’ve found with the Sonos Move is with Sonos Voice Control.
It’s less forgiving than the Amazon or Google Assistant when it comes to asking for a specific
song from a specific artist, it’ll often not be able to complete my request where Amazon’s
Assistant will understand what I’m asking for.
So that’s everything I like and dislike about the Sonos Move, and while it’s an
expensive speaker at $400 US dollars, it packs in a ton of features, is easy to use, sounds
fantastic, includes bluetooth and overall, its a much more versatile Sonos speaker than
I had originally realized.
If you have the money, I'd actually recommend going with these Sonos Move over the Sonos
One.
It's a bit larger and more expensive, but the ability to just pick it up and move it
to a different room or outside on a whim, that versatility is actually quite nice and
something you can't easily do with the Sonos One.
If you'd like to check the current price of the Sonos Move, I've left purchasing links
here and in the description below as well as in the comments, hit that thumbs up button
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And if you're looking for what to watch next, check out some of our other speaker reviews
like, the recent one I did of the Sonos roam.
The smaller portable speaker from Sonos.
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For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder, thanks for watching.