Sonos’s attempt to break into the portable speaker market has gone pear shaped with their dodgy Roam speaker now in need of some urgent upgrades.
Sonos who were desperate to take on the likes of JBL and Ultimate Ears launched their Roam speaker earlier this year, consumers quickly worked out that their so called expensive new speaker had serious charging and battery problems.
The US speaker Company who in the past have tried to nobble older wired Sonos speaker customers kit, in an effort to force a new sale are now rolling out four fixes in Update 13.3 in an effort to fix problems with their Roam speaker.
The fixes are available for Android, iOS, iPad OS, MacOS, Windows 8 and up, and Amazon Fire OS 7.
Several consumers who purchased the device found that when their Roam speaker, was not being used it was still draining power and a lot more rapidly than most portable Bluetooth speakers.
If you were walking out the door and wanted to take a Roam outdoors consumers were finding that the device was short of power because of the drain issue.
Some who were linking the device up to a Sonos network also found that it suffered power drain.
Sonos now claims that after installing the latest software update (with the Sonos app on Android or iOS), the Roam should last longer on a charge when it’s not doing anything.
“We’ve improved Roam’s power management to help extend Roam’s battery life when it’s not actively being used,” Sonos said in its update notes for the Sonos S2 13.3 update.
There was no explanation as to why the device had a power drain problem in the first place with some customers suspecting that it was constantly polling a Bluetooth connection.
Sonos in an effort to dress up their problems have also in some new features.
You’ll now be alerted if you’re trying to charge the Roam with an underpowered charger.
You can now wake the Roam via the top playback buttons, as well as with the main power button.
If you have two Roams in a stereo pair, they’ll reconnect automatically if one unexpectedly drops and then reconnects to the network.
To get the update onto the Sonos Roam itself, you’ll first need to update your Sonos app on any of the available platforms, and then update your full system from there.