Sonos Announces New Play Portable Speaker

Sonos Play is a new portable smart speaker that sits between the Sonos Roam 2 and Sonos Move 2 in both size and capabilities.

“This is a speaker designed for play in every sense of the word,” Sonos explains. “It’s small enough to go wherever adventure calls, and powerful enough to fill a room with impressive bass and clarity. It’s rugged enough to take on the trail, and refined enough to hook on your living room wall.”

Sonos Play costs $299, compared to $179 for the diminutive Roam 2 and $499 for the Move 2. It offers up to 24 hours of playback on its replaceable battery, similar to the Move 2, and its offers IP67 water protection like the Roam 2. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, as expected, and a wireless charging base (like Move 2). And its USB-C port can be used to charge the speaker, reverse-charge a phone, or, with an adapter, as a line-in port.

For fans of Sonos, the Play name is a nod to the heritage of the Sonos Play: line of products from the past. Of course, those speakers were not portable and not future-proof, so it’s fair to say that Sonos has also learned from some past mistakes.

As with the Roam 2 and Move 2, you can integrate Play with an in-home (non-portable) Sonos speaker setup and use the speaker in multi-room playback. But like those speakers, I don’t believe you can use a Play as a rear speaker in a home theater setup. But it does offer a unique feature the other Sonos portable speakers lack: You can pair two to four of them for a more immersive setup without access to a Wi-Fi network.

You can preorder Sonos Play in black or white now. It’s expected to ship at the end of March.