Log in member
We've got our mitts on the newest iteration of Sonos' portable Bluetooth speaker, which is regarded as the most versatile model to date.
"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
It seems like a lot of years ago that we initially reviewed the Sonos Roam, which was Sonos' very first attempt at taking their sort of in-house Wi-Fi based speaker, make something that works within that context, but also when you want to just grab it from your house, put it in your bag and go out somewhere sunny and have a Bluetooth speaker with you."
"Since then, other companies have come in, but obviously Sonos is sort of the Wi-Fi speaker's grand old man.
And there is an inherent respect in the business and amongst media, like myself, for the way that they have integrated their speakers into their app and the way these just overly function."
"So now they've launched what appears to be a sort of spiritual sequel, because it's not called the Roam 2 or the Roam 3 or the Roam rebooted.
This is called the Play, but the basic core thesis of it is the same.
So this is the Play."
"Currently, if it was sitting at your home, you would have set it up through your Sonos app.
You would have enabled Trueplay, meaning that it would contextualize the sounds based on its immediate surroundings."
"You would be able to pair it into speaker groups with other Sonos speakers.
It would work like a Sonos speaker would.
But unlike those speakers, once you want to go for a ride or take it on vacation, you remove it."
"There is a rubber strap here on the back, and as you can see, it comes with a little charging pad with two thick pogo pins here at the bottom.
And what that essentially means is that it's kind of like wireless charging in a way, but it'll immediately dock because of the way this rubber base is designed and built."
"Even if you place it off-center, it will sort of slide into place.
So don't worry about those pogo pins immediately lining up.
You come home, you place it, you can hear the pogo pins connecting to their plates, and it will start charging."
"What they don't give you is a power supply, but Sonos would hardly be the first company ever.
You can't buy a smartphone today which actually gives you the necessary power brick to charge your phone, which seems like it should be illegal to sell you a product where all of the components needed for that operation isn't there."
"Be that as it may, will you have a power supply with USB Type-C ports on there that you can use?
Probably.
So I don't think it's that big of a deal, I just wanted to mention it."
"So the point is that you bring this, you bring it on vacation or to the beach, and when you're done, you slide it in and it re-contextualizes itself for a home Wi-Fi speaker setup.
Isn't that just so seamless?
And it works better than most other speakers that have attempted this just because of the strength of the Sonos ecosystem."
"In terms of the raw stuff here, 24-hour battery life from this, that's 24 hours worth of playback, which is really good when you consider that this weighs about 1.3 kilograms.
It comes in white as well, I should say.
It is IP67 dust and water resistant."
"You can also feel that by having this really soft touch rubber here, which is really impressive considering the fact that there's an open USB Type-C port here.
That USB Type-C port, you can just charge it, by the way.
So when you want to go on vacation, you remove this, this can just stay at home and you just charge it off the back of a computer charger, for instance."
"And when you get home, well, the base is currently waiting for it.
So I think that this is pretty fantastic.
You have the same basic three-button layout here, so play, pause, volume up and down.
A talking button here if you want to enable a voice assistant of some kind."
"There is a direct mute button here if you want to make sure that it does not listen in on your conversations, but it is there.
A basic Bluetooth pairing button, and then on-off, obviously, all cladded in this lovely soft touch rubber."
"The one downside is that Sonos insists on having this perforated design on their speakers.
I like it.
I think it looks absolutely gorgeous.
But one thing that I have noticed from owning Sonos products myself is that, let's say a splash of something kind of scatters against here."
"Very quickly, it'll look a little bit rugged, even if you handle it with your hands, like basic just skin flakes will be able to be visible within this perforated grill.
It's not a big deal.
I'm just saying that maybe a smooth surface or something like that would be better in the future, particularly if this is the kind of thing that you would carry to a beach, to a place where there might be rain, or mud, or whatever the case might be."
"We are looking like this was designed to be taken outside your home.
So presumably, the design should work for that goal rather than against it.
But the play is probably going to be fantastic.
Sonos knows how to do these things."
