The Sonos Move came out in 2020 and it checked every box on my wishlist for a portable speaker.
- Large soundstage that can fill a room or the outdoors
- Wifi enabled
- Bluetooth enabled
- Hi fidelity sound – not cheap tinny sound
- Portable with a battery
The moment I saw the Sonos Move announced, I ordered one. I probably received one of the first ones to ship. I expect maybe a few bugs with every new electronic device I purchase, but wow, this was an adventure.
I received the device, charged it all day while I was working and then set about going through the setup motions. Typically there’s some sort of pairing, connect it to wifi, open a music app and play.
The Sonos ecosystem was foreign to me. I had never purchased a Sonos device. Once I got the Sonos Move to play music, the sound was phenomenal. I still cannot believe just how good the sound was – it was one of the best single speakers I’ve ever listened to. But… and there’s a major but here, I had to return it.
The Sonos Move is brilliant audio hardware paired with the absolute worst software engineering I could imagine. This was like putting Windows Me on a modern smart speaker. This is the only electronic device I’ve probably returned in at least a decade. And it was all because of software. I waited hoping there would be a software update, but it became clear just an update would never fix the issue.
The Sonos Move was advertised as a portable smart speaker. What it’s really good at is being a portable smart speaker that NEVER LEAVES ONE HOUSE. The Sonos app on a smartphone or iPad is REQUIRED to use the Sonos Move on wifi. And get this – it’s required for bluetooth too. You actually have to setup the Sonos Move on wifi first, in order to even turn on and use bluetooth. If you take it outside your house, say to another house – you have to re-setup the device from the beginning all over again.
You also are pretty much forced to use the Sonos app to play your music. You can’t just use Youtube Music or any other music app off your phone. Nope, you have to use a Sonos App that seems to have been last updated in 2004. Once you went through a very painful setup process, that takes multiple tries to get to work, you are presented with a software system designed for a fixed setup in your home.
If you move the Sonos Move outside of wifi range… no go. And good luck “switching to bluetooth” as if that’s a possibility. The manual says so, but most likely you’ll end up having to setup the device from scratch again by moving it back to wifi, then turn on bluetooth.
And forget about Chromecast audio. While the devices support “Google Assistant” and it connects via wifi, the Sonos Move does not support Chromecast audio. I spent hours trying to hack something together. It will not work. Which is unbelievably dumb in 2020.
When you think of what technology will be like in a decade like “2020” … the Sonos Move offers so much promise and so much disappointment. For Sonos to ever win someone like me over as a customer, the Sonos App either needs a massive upgrade or start supporting modern options for playing music. The sound and hardware are amazing. The software is a nightmare.
