A WiFi and Bluetooth speaker with big sound

Sonos is finally venturing outside of the home with Move, a new smart speaker that can be taken outside and connect to devices over Bluetooth.

The $399 Move, available on Sept. 24, still works indoors over WiFi for high-quality sound, but with Bluetooth support (a first for Sonos), you can take it with you to a beach or the park.

Weighing 6 pounds, the Move is far from lightweight. It’s also not very portable, seeing as it’s wider and taller than a Sonos One ($199). However, it makes up for its size with durability and sound quality.

As with all of its products, Sonos prioritized sound quality above all else on the Move. I’ll spare you the geek speak on “class D” amps and tweeters and a custom downward-facing “waveguide” that helps boost bass in the woofer.

The bottom line is the Move sounds great — comparable to a Sonos One when music is streamed over WiFi or AirPlay 2. On WiFi, the Move works just like any Sonos speaker. You can stream up to 100 different music services to the speaker, control it with the Sonos Control app, and group them together with other Sonos speakers for a multi-device listening experience.

A push of a button on the back puts the Move into Bluetooth mode and once it’s paired to a device, it works like any other Bluetooth speaker. I got a brief sampling of the Move in Bluetooth mode and while Sonos admits the sound quality isn’t as clear as over WiFi, I can’t say I noticed any serious degradation. 

I didn’t get to crank a Move up to the highest volume to hear for distortion, but I’ll give Sonos the benefit of the doubt until I can listen to the speaker in my own spaces. What I do know is that Sonos is not using any software to tune the Bluetooth sound; how well audio sounds will depend largely on the source quality.

Sonos says the Move runs for 10 hours on its internal battery, but that’s only for Bluetooth. The company didn’t list the battery life for the speaker in WiFi mode when its not on its “Loop Dock” charging ring. The Move takes about two hours to fully charge.

Built-in far-field microphones allow for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice controls. And on the top, there are capacitive touch-sensitive buttons just like on the Sono One.

The feature that impressed me the most was Auto Trueplay. On other Sonos speakers, when you move them, you can calibrate them to the room for the best acoustic experience. The problem is, the Trueplay calibration requires you to wave an iOS device (Android isn’t supported) around to scan the the room.

On the Move, Auto Trueplay, as its name implies, automatically calibrates the sound every time it’s moved (no silly iOS device waving necessary). The calibration takes about 15-20 seconds (not instant like Apple’s HomePod) after the speaker’s been repositioned.

I got a brief demo of this with a Sonos product person moving a Move from on top of a media cabinet to inside of a bookshelf. At first, the Move sounded muffled and muddy inside of the bookshelf, but after auto-calibration, it became fuller.

Like Trueplay, Auto Trueplay is an optional setting and you can turn it off. Sonos tells me it’s using the microphones and AI to listen and construct a virtual space for the Move and then matches it to computer models of rooms that’ve been saved onto the device to provide sound corrections.

For a premium wireless speaker, the Move doesn’t scrimp on sound. Nor does it cheap out on durability. With an IP56 rating for dust and water resistance and the ability to withstand serious drops (Sonos claims they dropped a Move on concrete and the speaker survived but the concrete cracked), the Move’s clearly tough enough to take a beating outdoors.

I’m a little concerned by the size, but the doesn’t matter since it’s not competing with cheaper, punier-sounding Bluetooth speakers. If the best portable sound quality is what you’re after, the Sonos Move is it.

Alongside the Move, Sonos is also announcing the $179 One SL — a One speaker without any microphones, meaning it doesn’t support Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. 

The One SL (the company told me the SL doesn’t stand for anything) will replace the Play:1 speaker when it arrives on Sept. 12. 

Apart from not having microphones, the One SL is identical to the Sonos One — same design, capacitive buttons, and sound quality. 

Sonos product manager Sara Morris told me there are many customers who don’t want or need voice assistants in their speakers because they care about privacy or already have other devices with them.

When asked if the microphone-less One SL is, perhaps, a response to the recent backlash against voice recordings being reviewed by humans, Morris said the speaker is about offering more choice.

And lastly, the Sonos Port is replacing the Connect, which lets you hook up non-Sonos speakers and devices like a record player, with the $399 Port. 

The Port is a more compact and affordable solution to the Sonos Amp, which does the same and will continue to be sold.