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Sonos Unveils Its First Portable Bluetooth Speaker, Supports AirPlay 2

Funny people complaining about weight. I'd rather have some decent speakers and something slightly heavier than the typical tin-sounding Bluetooth speaker. With this you pick it up and put it down for several hours. Not for a picnic outside of your home area.

Water resistance not enough? IP56 is "Protected from high pressure water jets from any direction."

Temp rating to 14 to 131 degrees.

Specs look pretty good to me. May be overpriced but as someone said that's usually not a problem with this crowd.
 
az431 said:
Doesn’t weigh much more than the average laptop. If lifting 6 lbs is an issue you may want to see a doctor.
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a non issue since it syncs with Apple Music and just about every other music service on Earth.
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Great snark, but not well thought out. Some of us travel and every pound counts. the Bose soundlink resolve for example is 1.5 pounds but even that sometimes has to be left behind. And continuing the trend, some of us actually digitize our our CD collection and iTunes does not store that for you. Streaming is still a thing.

on topic, this appears to be portable in the sense of the backyard or loading it into the car, not in the sense of traveling with it on a plane.
 
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G5isAlive said:
Great snark, but not well thought out. Some of us travel and every pound counts. the Bose soundlink resolve for example is 1.5 pounds but even that sometimes has to be left behind. And continuing the trend, some of us actually digitize our our CD collection and iTunes does not store that for you. Streaming is still a thing.

on topic, this appears to be portable in the sense of the backyard or loading it into the car, not in the sense of traveling with it on a plane.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree that's not the market here. I'd get a $40 Bluetooth speaker for that or for high end a $150-200 Beoplay speaker. This is for home or near-home use, and for that I'd rather have some heftier weight and better sound.
 
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I'm not brining it on an air plane with me (I got headphones and an iPhone for that), I just want something with great sound for around the house. So I'm good with the weight... weight means more battery, which means more power to drive a bigger speaker for a longer time.
 
Great for camping. And when at home it integrates with my sonos system. I'm just thankful my company gets a 20% discount on sonos products.
 
G5isAlive said:
Great snark, but not well thought out. Some of us travel and every pound counts. the Bose soundlink resolve for example is 1.5 pounds but even that sometimes has to be left behind. And continuing the trend, some of us actually digitize our our CD collection and iTunes does not store that for you. Streaming is still a thing.

on topic, this appears to be portable in the sense of the backyard or loading it into the car, not in the sense of traveling with it on a plane.
Click to expand...

Yeah you wouldn’t want to travel too much with this thing. It’s ten inches tall as well. So significantly bigger than the Sonos One.
 
I've got two Sonos Ones and the Beam that cover my house. I was looking forward to this to take out on my back deck. But for $400 I'll stick with my Bluetooth Bose Soundlink Mini.

edit: a word
 
No direct support of Apple Music and Siri, absolutely no interest.

I suspect Apple might have a battery powered HomePod someday.
 
One thing the article doesn’t discuss, (besides offering a link to Sonos), is that it does have an ‘IP56 rating’, which the “Move stands up to humidity, rain, snow, dust, salt spray, UV rays, and extreme heat and cold.”

So I think it’s great that Sonos made a portable Bluetooth speaker that definitely sounds like it can take a beating, and for anyone being outdoors camping/near a pool/ocean, I think that delivers a peace of mind for part of the price point given it’s durability.
 
Butler Trumpet said:
Sonos supports Apple Music. I use it every day. Open the Sonos app, click play.
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But that isn't directly supporting Apple Music and Siri.

With my HomePod I don't need to have a device or computer nearby to engage it. I (or anybody else in the room) just need to say something like, "Hey Siri, play Sonny Boy Williamson." And then I get a huge play of his music out of HomePod.

For me, that direct support of AM is key.
 
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So I guess with this ‘charging ring’ out goes the possibility of wall mounting it out in my covered backyard patio. I was excited for this speaker specifically to be able to safely have a dedicated Sonos speaker for the patio.
 
What’s the difference between the new Port and the old Connect? Other than $50 more it looks like it does the same thing. Clearly I must be missing something here.
 
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citysnaps said:
But that isn't directly supporting Apple Music and Siri.

With my HomePod I don't need to have a device or computer nearby to engage it. I (or anybody else in the room) just need to say something like, "Hey Siri, play Sonny Boy Williamson." And then I get a huge play of his music out of HomePod.

For me, that direct support of AM is key.
Click to expand...

Do you have a thing against verbally speaking the name Alexa?
 
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Dizzy714 said:
So I guess with this ‘charging ring’ out goes the possibility of wall mounting it out in my covered backyard patio. I was excited for this speaker specifically to be able to safely have a dedicated Sonos speaker for the patio.
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it charges via USB-C too, so it may still be possible?
 
I was really looking forward to this product ever since the rumors started. A bluetooth-capable and portable Sonos would round out my home nicely. But wow, sticker shock. I get that since the normal Ones cost $200, this product might be more for the extra stuff that goes into adding bluetooth and a battery, but was hoping for $250 or so. Heck, I convinced myself I'd even be ok if the sound quality was slightly below the One, if it would help keep the price on the lower end. $400 is an instant pass unfortunately, since at that price it won't be 'wife approved' as an occasional patio / take on a rare trip bluetooth speaker. The much-less-than-$400 options will have to do for now again.
 
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BUT THE HOMEPOD IS TOO EXPENSIVE! (Even though it's selling at cost or a slight loss.)

Of course I haven't heard this new Sonos yet but I guarantee you it doesn't have one quarter of the tech in the HomePod, and probably doesn't sound half as good.
 
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mudflap said:
BUT THE HOMEPOD IS TOO EXPENSIVE! (Even though it's selling at cost of a slight loss.)

Of course I haven't heard this new Sonos yet but I guarantee you it doesn't have one quarter of the tech in the HomePod, and probably doesn't sound half as good.
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What has the margin got to do with how consumers value the product?

If consumers thought the HomePod was good value Apple would probably have sold a few more of them.
 
mudflap said:
BUT THE HOMEPOD IS TOO EXPENSIVE! (Even though it's selling at cost of a slight loss.)

Of course I haven't heard this new Sonos yet but I guarantee you it doesn't have one quarter of the tech in the HomePod, and probably doesn't sound half as good.
Click to expand...

I'm as big of an Apple fan as any, but Sonos really are good speakers with great native support of Apple Music. While I would love 'hey siri' native functionality on the Sonos unit itself (similar to their Alexa and Google support), Siri can control Sonos through an Apple device. Not only native support for Apple Music, but Spotify, Audible, and so many more: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3459?language=en_US. And don't forget support for AirPlay 2. So there is definitely some tech there.
 
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haplain said:
I dumped Sonos after they recently stopped supporting streaming from my phone. That was a very disappointing move.
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To be clear for others who read this, they stopped supporting streaming of files stored on your phone, from the Sonos app, because there were cases where it didn't work. Streaming those files via AirPlay2 works just fine. And streaming anything else still works. The Sonos support article on this says:

The ‘On this iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch’ feature has been removed from the Sonos app for iOS. The way this feature was originally architected has become unreliable with newer versions of iOS.​
 
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