Review: Sonos Move Portable Smart Speaker

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The Sonos Move is the first ever portable speaker from Sonos offering the convenience of a built-in battery and Bluetooth. That also makes it the most flexible speaker in the Sonos family with three real use cases: 1) Add it to your existing Sonos network in your home and continue to expand your multi-room audio system as another tabletop speaker. The Move integrates seamlessly with other Sonos speakers. 2) Take it outside by the pool or patio - thanks to its durable, weatherproof design and IP56 rating - and continue streaming music via your Sonos network (so long as you still have a wifi signal). 3) Here's the standout differentiator: switch it over to Bluetooth mode and take it with you wherever you go. Now, this product is not a replacement for your pocket-sized portable Bluetooth speaker that you might use for your camping and canoe trips. At 6.6 pounds and 10 inches tall, the Move is not a speaker to shove in your backpack or suitcase. 

Let's face it, many of us have been taking our Sonos speakers outside for years. But, the additional convenience factor here is that this model has a built-in battery, eliminating the need for an ugly power cord getting in the way. So, now you can move with your move. 

The Move comes with a charging cradle and a USB-C port provides an alternative way to charge the battery. On top of that, it has the same cool features as the Sonos One Smart Speaker: you can control the Move with Airplay 2, the Sonos app, or your voice. With Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa built-in so you can play your music, check the news, set alarms, and ask questions when on WiFi, completely hands free. And automatic TruePlay tuning balances for optimal audio according to room placement.

Hats off to Sonos for developing a product that so well responds to user feedback by creating such a versatile speaker.

Video Transcript

"Hi everyone. It's Adam with World Wide Stereo. Today's video is about a speaker from Sonos called the Move. So, the Move is Sonos' first portable speaker. Now, Sonos is at the time of this video about a 15-year-old company and for about I'd say the last 7 to 10 years, everybody has been asking for this product.

Well, it's finally here. The Move is a truly wireless speaker, like all other Sonos speakers are, but, it now has a battery in it, and also Bluetooth when you don't have WiFi available you can use this speaker as just a Bluetooth speaker. You'll see it is black. I haven't heard of anything, that's it going to be available in white, but right now black only. You can see on the back here, I have a little handle so I can pick it up away from its charging base right here.

Okay, on the back of it you have these two little contacts here so when you put it down into the charging base, it starts to charge. Now, if you leave this inside, which is where you should probably leave the charging base, you can charge it on the back. You have a USB-C slot, you can get a USB-C cable and plug that into a computer, or a little power brick and you can charge it that way as well.

Right now it stands that it has a 10-hour battery when you're playing at moderate volumes. While you're inside the Sonos app, a nice feature for the Move is that it actually shows you the battery percentage that you have left on there. It will show it when you're in the room menu, or if you're inside of your room it will show it right at the top. So, a nice thing to know how much battery power you do have left.

Inside this speaker, you'll find a woofer and tweeter. And they say that they're able to kind of channel it so that it fans out really, really wide. It really covers a big area inside. A couple of the features that you'll see on top, you have the microphone array, which is great so that it can hear you while you're playing your music. I find most speakers are starting to switch to this that have that kind of skillset built-in that they can listen to you whether it's Amazon or Google which those are both built into here so this is an Amazon and a Google Assistant embedded speaker.

The microphones can pick you up while you're listening to your music. You can shut it off, you hit the button, turns red then you know the microphone isn't actually on if you didn't want to use any of those voice-controlled skillsets. Also on top, you have your play and pause button, and you have a couple dots here that represent volume up and volume down. On the back of the speaker, you'll see that you have your power button, and below that, the circular button is your connect button.

And right in the middle is how you switch between WiFi or Bluetooth. So, I could literally take this thing to the park, hit the Bluetooth button, you can hold it down that will start its pairing process for you and you can connect it to your phone, or your tablet, your computer. And this can just be a Bluetooth speaker. But if you're at home and you can actually connect to your WiFi network and the rest of your Sonos system if you have more, it can become part of that Sonos network as well.

Just for comparison purposes, here in my hand I have the Move here, and this is the new Sonos One speaker so you can kind of get an example of the difference in size here. And this one's a little bit heavier, but it should it be, it's got that big battery in it and you need battery power to make good sound. So, this guy plugs in only, this guy has a battery. It's a little bit heavier and heftier, but here you go the size difference right there.

Again, I mentioned that it was an Alexa-enabled speaker. It's Google Assistant, it's Bluetooth, lives on WiFi, so it is also an AirPlay-enabled speaker. So, from an iOS device, an Apple iPhone, or an iPad, a MacBook, any of those devices, you can over your network, send the music of whatever you're watching. It could be this YouTube video, it could be a Netflix thing, it could be just music from your Apple library.

You can send it to this speaker. Here's something I was reading a lot about, a lot of buzz out there about Sonos recently took a feature away where you used to be able to play the music that was in your iTunes library directly through the Sonos app. So, they took that away and now you have to use AirPlay. And a lot of people are concerned with, "Well I have a lot of older Sonos equipment."

They have original Play:1's or Play:3's, you know, the older speakers that don't have the AirPlay technology built into it. Not to worry, we've got a little workaround. You can only buy one of these speakers or some of the other new speakers that have the AirPlay chip in it. You can AirPlay to that speaker, and then group this to one of the older speakers, You gain so much more with having AirPlay built-in, being able to like I said listen to YouTube or Netflix.

Anything like that, you don't have to replace everything, you just have to get one new speaker that has AirPlay and you'll be good to go. The Sonos Move is a weatherproof speaker as well. It has an IP56 rating, so it's pretty much the highest rating without being submerged. So you can't submerge this thing in water, but it will withstand getting rained on, or moisture from a shower, humidity from being outside during the summertime.

it can withstand some hotter operating temperatures, also some colder operating temperatures. So, pretty rugged design. I mean the feel of it right here is pretty good. On the bottom, it does have this kind of rubberized feeling on the bottom, or molding I should say. I did see a video where there was a drop test done on it, and I wouldn't go as far as saying I would drop it. But I guess if it got knocked over, it would be okay.

But yeah, definitely don't drop it. That wouldn't be good. The Sonos Move speaker can be paired with another to create a stereo pair in one room. So, you can actually have a true left and a true right. You can not right now connect it with one your sub-woofers and you also can't use it as we're using a surround sound system, so with the Sonos Playbar or the Beam this is not the speaker to choose to use as rear channels.

It can't be paired that way. It's really meant to be a portable speaker around the house. Take it wherever you want. So trying to pair and unpair it in a surround system is just kind of a clumsy operation, it's not as easy as you think. So, they decided not to allow for that. So, but you could buy eight of these things and group them together in the app and have tons of sound everywhere. But if you wanted to create a true stereo pair with a left speaker and a right speaker, you can totally do it.

I had the pleasure of having this thing for a couple days. I took it home to my house and I played around with it, and I was pretty impressed. The sound inside, it's really nice. It's rich, it's full sounding. This speaker has a feature called Trueplay Tuning. Now, previously Trueplay Tuning was only available if you had an Apple product and you had to use the microphone on your device, and you walk around your room and you would kind of tailor the sound of this to your room.

Well, now because it has the microphones on here, it has auto Trueplay Tuning because this is a portable product, right? You're not just going to keep it one area, it's got to go all over the place. So, the Trueplay Tuning is always tuning all the time using these microphones on top, so wherever you place it in your room, in a bedroom, in a kitchen, in a bathroom that could be a little more echoey.

You take it outside, it's always going to re-calibrate itself. When I was using it, that's what I noticed, it was the consistency in the sound no matter where I put this, it sounded the same which really let me know that that auto Trueplay Tuning was really working. So that's a great feature because you know, a room can change how things sound so much, so to have that built-in is really awesome. When I had it home the setup process was really simple.

Everything was laid out nicely inside the app for me to connect to it. Didn't have any trouble there. When I wasn't able to use my WiFi network, I went out back pretty far on my property, went out towards the back to make sure I wasn't on my WiFi network. I simply switched over to Bluetooth, pressed and held the button, connected it to my device and started playing music again. So, it's a versatile product it's really, really nice.

I found the handle on the back to be "handy." And, just moving it around, it's got a nice grip to it I don't feel like I'm barely hanging onto it. I've got a lot of grip there on it. Again, the rubberized bottom, so when I put it down on something, it's pretty sturdy it's not going to slip around. I kind of wish the Sonos logo you could read it straight up and down because you know, you're never going to put the speaker like that to be able to read Sonos, so minor thing but it's my thing whatever.

But it looks nice, the build quality is great. And again, I was impressed with how it sounded in the house. Now, when I got outside I'm not going to go as far and say this is a speaker that you can light up your entire back yard with. It's $399.00 it's a good speaker. It sounds awesome inside, you get outside I think it's great for, you know, maybe a localized area right when you're grilling or you have your friends over and you're kind of around that fire pit.

Something near afield and close by. I wouldn't put this all away on my patio and expect it to give me great sound all the way out by my fire pit. So, for what it is, this is a fantastic speaker, sounds great. The Auto Trueplay Tuning is great. You have 10 hours of battery power on this thing. Bluetooth when WiFi isn't available what a versatile product. Great job Sonos.

This is the Sonos Move speaker. It will be available online at worldwidestereo.com. Or if you happen to be in the area you can please stop by our Ardmore or Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania showrooms. We offer free shipping, a 60-day return policy and we're authorized dealers for everything that we sell here. If you have any questions about this video, please leave that in the comment section below, or you can call or email us at any time. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel, this is Adam with World Wide Stereo reminding you to listen to music every day. So long. ♪ [music] ♪"