The Sonos Roam 2 fixes the original speaker’s confusing button setup

Headphones aren’t the only new product Sonos rolled out today. The company also refreshed its cheapest portable speaker, the Roam. The Sonos Roam 2 has the same audio as its 2021 predecessor but adds more streamlined controls and a quicker setup. The $179 speaker is available today.

Sonos says the Roam 2 “delivers the same rich, detailed sound and bass” as the original model, so owners of the first Roam would only notice some subtle quality-of-life upgrades. One is a separate power and Bluetooth button, which solves a common gripe from its predecessor about its multifunctional power / sleep / Bluetooth button. Customers found that the overloaded button was confusing and often led to accidentally triggering the wrong behavior.

The company says setup is also more straightforward in the Roam 2. The previous model required you to set up the speaker over Wi-Fi, so you couldn’t quickly connect to Bluetooth until you’d gone through the (potentially cumbersome) process of pairing with a home network. That meant you couldn’t buy the speaker and immediately use it on a day at the beach or camping. The Roam 2 lets you quickly connect your phone or other device over Bluetooth, so you don’t have to mess with the much lengthier Wi-Fi setup until it’s time to pair it with a Sonos home system.

Besides adding a monochromatic logo that blends in better with the rest of the speaker, the Roam 2 appears to be the same as the original in other areas. It’s still rated for a solid 10 hours of battery life, has IP67 dust and water resistance and supports automatic Trueplay tuning to adjust its sound to any room’s acoustics.

As for sound, Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham was pleased with the original’s audio profile. “Fortunately, it sounds much better than its tiny size should allow,” he wrote in our review. “The Roam includes both a tweeter and a mid-woofer, rather than just a single driver, and that helps it produce clear highs and mids as well as more of a bass thump than seems plausible from a relatively tiny speaker. It also doesn’t distort or get overly boomy at max volume, a surprise for such a small speaker. Audio quality stays consistent throughout the volume range.” You can expect the same from the new model.

You can order the Sonos Roam 2 today from the company’s website and retail partners like Amazon and Best Buy. The $179 speaker ships in black, white, olive, sunset (orange-ish red) and wave (blue with a subtle gray tint) colorways.