Sonos Move review: Sonos finally lets you take its brilliant sound absolutely anywhere

Sonos Move review: Not without its faults, but this is a stunning entry in the Sonos lineup (Image: SONOS)

Sonos Move packs the superb sound and performance you expect from Sonos, but encased in a durable water-resistant design

What we love

  • Room-Filling Sound
  • Charging Cradle Is Elegant
  • AirPlay 2 Support
  • Durable, Water-Resistant Design
  • Built-in Handle Works Well
  • Sonos App Remains Unmatched

What we don’t

  • Battery Life Could Be Longer
  • More Colour Choice Needed
  • Expensive

Sonos Move is one of just two speakers from the popular US brand that works inside and outside of your home. Like the brilliant , the Sonos Move offers a huge amount of flexibility – with its water-resistant case making it a perfect choice for pool and beach parties, while its stylish minimalist design looks superb back at home too.

The Sonos Move sounds stunning, whether you’re blasting your favourite playlist, listening intently to a podcast or audiobook, or streaming the radio.

Combining the smarts we’ve come to expect from Sonos with the flexibility of both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming and a durable, IP56 water-resistant case, it’s not difficult to see why the Sonos Move is one of the out there. If you’re looking for a single speaker to listen around the house and take anywhere with you, Sonos Move ticks all of those boxes.

Although, with a price tag of £399, the Move isn’t the cheapest portable speaker on store shelves.

If you’re heavily invested in the Sonos ecosystem and want to take phenomenal sound quality on the road with you, Sonos Move is a brilliant choice. With far-field microphones for Alexa and Google Assistant, the Move also doubles up as a smart speaker that lets you control lightbulbs, thermostats, video doorbells, and control music playback with a quick voice command. If we’re nitpicking, we’d like to see a few more colour options, like the more affordable Sonos Roam, but that’s not a major issue.

Sonos Move offers superb sound quality, pairs perfectly with existing Sonos speakers, boasts a gorgeous (and surprisingly durable) design, and flexible ways to stream music wirelessly. Highly recommended.

Sonos Move review

For most people, listening to your favourite radio station in the kitchen, catching up on a podcast while tidying the bedroom, and streaming your favourite playlist over a picnic in the park requires at least two different gadgets. But the Sonos Move is designed to do it all – and much more.

Like the more affordable Sonos Roam, the Sonos Move is designed to fit seamlessly into any Sonos home audio system.

As such, you’ll be able to synchronise playback on the Sonos Move and other speakers throughout the house or use these connected speakers to play from a different audio source in every room. Volume can be adjusted for all speakers simultaneously or individually from the brilliant Sonos companion app on iPhone, iPad, Windows, Mac and Android.

When the Sonos Move is nestled in its wireless charging cradle, it works exactly like a Sonos One or Sonos Five. You’ll be able to start streaming to the speaker from the Sonos app, combine the Sonos Move with any speakers that are already playing, and wirelessly beam lossless audio using Apple AirPlay to the Move too.

sonos move review

Sonos Move has a reassuringly durable design that’s resistant to drops and water (Image: GETTY)

It’s worth noting that Sonos bundles the wireless charger for the Sonos Move in the box. That’s not the case with the more affordable Sonos Roam, with Sonos charging an extra £44 for the wireless charger in its store. While it’s possible to recharge the Sonos Move with any USB-C cable (handy when you’re travelling with the speaker) the wireless charging dock, which lets you pick up and drop the speaker to recharge is a nice luxury to have.

Sonos has built a handle into the back of the Move, so it’s simple to lift the speaker from its charging cradle and take it anywhere with you.

If the Sonos Move remains connected to your Wi-Fi network, it’ll continue to work like any other Sonos speaker. This meant that, while redecorating a few rooms over the course of a weekend, we were able to lift and carry around the Sonos Move with us as we made progress with our paintbrushes – all without interrupting the playlist streaming across the Move and a Sonos One in another room.

Of course, this would’ve been feasible with a Sonos One …but not without the hassle of unplugging the speaker and finding a new outlet each time we wanted to move it around between coats of paint.

Sonos Move is like having 1.5 Sonos Ones in a single, portable package

Unless you’ve invested in a Sonos One for every room of the house, the Sonos Move is a convenient way to bring your music with you as you move around.

Of course, that’s also possible with a Bluetooth speaker, but the advantage of using Sonos’ system is that streaming over Wi-Fi is much higher quality, and you won’t be interrupted each – bleep! – time that – ping! – you receive a notification to your phone, building playlists on-the-fly with multiple people queueing songs from their collections, and the ability to synchronise playback across multiple speakers scattered throughout the house.

That’s not to dismiss the merits of Bluetooth. After all, the Sonos Move has the ability to switch to this wireless technology whenever you’re out of range of your home Wi-Fi network and it’s a great backup.

Anyone with a Bluetooth-enabled phone or tablet can pair to the Sonos Move and blast their favourite songs, podcasts, or audiobooks. Sonos Move relies on Bluetooth 5.0. In our time with the Move, we always got a solid connection between our iPhone and the speaker. When using the Move outside, even in areas with plenty of other people – and plenty of other Bluetooth-enabled gadgets clogging the airwaves, our tracks played without stutter or interruption.

Sound Quality

While the Sonos Move offers a huge amount of flexibility – streaming lossless music, podcasts and audiobooks over Wi-Fi inside the home and pairing with any phone or tablet over Bluetooth outdoors – you’ll be pleased to know that Sonos hasn’t sacrificed any sound quality with this part-smart home, part-portable speaker.

Despite the need to squeeze an 18Wh battery inside the Move, Sonos has still found space for two Class-D digital amplifiers, one downward-firing tweeter, and one mid-woofer. Despite its portability, Sonos Move produces some impressively beefy sound. It’s undoubtedly more powerful than the Sonos One (and all of the Sonos speakers produced in collaboration with IKEA) and the amount of oomph behind its sound doesn’t change whether it’s resting in the wireless charging cradle or running on battery power outside.

Sonos Move packs more bass than some of the other speakers in the Sonos lineup, so those who like a deep rumble in their music will be better plumping for this speaker over the likes of the Sonos One or Sonos Beam. With the volume cranked to 75% or higher, the Sonos Move will start to rattle the surface that it’s resting on, including tables, chairs, chest of drawers, and even floorboards. At full pelt, you can expect an unplanned visit from a beloved neighbour.

sonos move review

Sonos has included a built-in carry handle, so you can take the speaker anywhere (Image: SONOS)

For those who already own Sonos speakers at home, we’d say the Sonos Move is like having 1.5 Sonos Ones in a single, portable package. But while it sounds great with all genres, the Sonos Move doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of the Sonos Five, which sports a dizzyingly wide soundstage and gloriously clear sound.

TruePlay, Sonos’ software wizardry that allows you to map out the shape and size of any room so the speaker can automatically tune itself to best fill the space, is packed into the Sonos Move …with a difference. While TruePlay usually requires Sonos owners to walk around the perimeter of the room, waving their iPhone up and down like they’re performing the loneliest Mexican Wave in sporting history, Sonos Move performs all of this magic in the background at all times. Without any input from you, Sonos Move will attune itself to every room.

This is perfect for a speaker that’s designed to be picked up and placed in any room in the house, gardens, pools, beaches, and more. Since TruePlay is never disabled, it’s difficult to judge how much to credit the brilliant sound quality from the Sonos Move to the components inside or the algorithms. Whatever the secret sauce is, Move is another brilliant addition to the Sonos lineup and won’t disappoint.

Build and Portability

Sonos Move boasts some of the best build quality we’ve seen from any Sonos product. From the first time you pick-up the Move, it feels incredibly sturdy. According to the US audio brand, the Sonos Move was designed from the ground-up to absorb shocks. We didn’t throw our review unit down any flights of stairs to thoroughly test that claim, but we’ve no doubt that Move will take a knock or two without grumbling.

Sonos has fitted rubber to the bottom of the speaker, which is reassuringly grippy and ensures the speaker won’t slip – even on uneven surfaces. It’s a really thoughtful touch and means you won’t need to worry about the Move toppling over when on a boat, on slippery tiles by the side of the pool, or a wonky chair or table.

sonos move review

If you’re away from Wi-Fi, Sonos Move lets you switch to Bluetooth with a single tap (Image: SONOS)

Move is rated IP56, which means that it’s shielded from harmful dust and strong jets of water. As such, you shouldn’t worry if someone splashes the Sonos Move by jumping into the pool, or the £399 speaker gets caught out in the rain for a few minutes during a typically British summer barbecue.

That should be immensely reassuring to anyone worried about taking their pricey new smart audio kit outside.

As mentioned above, Sonos Move can be recharged using any USB-C cable. If you’re taking the Move on a road trip, that means you’ll only need to bring a single charger for your Nintendo Switch, Sonos Move, MacBook Pro, Android phone, Kindle Paperwhite, and dozens of other gadgets. That really helps cut down on the amount of cables you’ll need to pack in your suitcase.

Sonos App

When you’re not relying on Bluetooth or Apple AirPlay 2 to wirelessly beam songs, radio, or podcasts to the Sonos Move, you’ll rely on Sonos’ companion app. Available on macOS, Windows, Android and iOS, this software is superb and packs a colossal number of features. In fact, the Sonos app is one of the biggest differentiators between the US brand and its rivals, like Bowers and Wilkins and Bose. None of these offers an app experience that’s as refined and packed with streaming services.

In total, Sonos supports a dizzying 60 different streaming services from its companion app. Sign-in to these services from within the Sonos app and you’ll be able to queue up tracks, albums, playlists, audiobooks, podcast episodes, and more. Better yet, you’ll be able to mix and match between different services – playing a few tracks from Apple Music, followed by a playlist found only on Spotify, followed by a podcast episode from Pocket Casts, and then your favourite album from TiDAL. Multiple people can collaborate in real-time on the same queue of upcoming tracks too as long as they have the Sonos app.

Of course, all of the usual suspects can be found within the Sonos app – Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube Music, TiDAL – as well as some services that you might not necessarily expect, like meditation and sleep guide subscription Calm, audiobook streamer Audible, Plex, Soundcloud, TuneIn and Global Radio Player, to name a few.

You can also queue-up tracks from a good ol’ fashioned iTunes library too – perfect for those who have heavily invested in tracks from the digital music store and don’t want to make the switch to streaming.

sonos move review

The superb Sonos S2 app brings together a dizzying number of music services (Image: SONOS)

Sonos also has its own free-to-stream radio, called Sonos Radio, which is available to all Sonos app users.

Managing multiple speakers – playing from different sources in every room or synchronised together with the same track at the same volume – is a cinch with the Sonos app. If you own older Sonos speakers, like the first-generation Sonos Play:1, you might be stuck on the previous version of the Sonos app, now rebranded to Sonos S1.

While this app offers all of the features listed above, it won’t enjoy any new functionality, which will be rolled out to the Sonos S2 app. The Sonos Move is fully compatible with S2, but you might not be able to take advantage of the new features on the horizon if your household is being held back by a single, much older speaker.

One of the biggest benefits of picking Sonos over its rivals is that it won’t make you pick between one of the many competing voice assistants on the market – Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. That might not seem like a big deal, but if you invest £189.99 in an Amazon Echo Studio, you’re unlikely to buy a Google Home Hub as a smart bedside clock as it won’t be able to sync with your Amazon-powered sound system.

Price and Availability

The Sonos Move was introduced back in September 2019. It’s widely available in high street stores and online.

It carries a price tag of £399, although it is sometimes possible to find the portable speaker at a lower price point during sales, like those on Black Friday. Sonos also sells refurbished Sonos Move units at a reduced price. Since Sonos’ own engineers have worked on these refurbished speakers, they arrive with the same one-year hardware warranty as brand-new Sonos Move speakers. Sonos Move is available in Lunar White or Shadow Black.

sonos move review

Sonos Move is only available in two colours …and there’s not a lot of colour to be found (Image: SONOS)

Sonos Move Final Verdict

Sonos Move is a speaker that can do it all.

Want to blast your favourite playlist across the garden while barbecuing? Not a problem. Planning a trip to the pool and need a rugged speaker that won’t grumble when it inevitably gets splashed? Not a problem. Want a speaker compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant that can be carried around the house? Not a problem.

The Move handles all of these scenarios with aplomb. And crucially, it does so without sacrificing the gorgeous minimalist design or sound quality that Sonos is known for.

Of course, the Sonos Move is not without its issues. With no good Sonos deals in sight, the Move can be very pricey – you can buy a Sonos One and a Sonos Roam for the same price, with the latter offering the same portable experience with the same battery life …albeit less oomph in its speakers. For those without an existing Sonos system at home, that bundle is probably a better option.

The hefty 3kg weight of the Sonos Move means this speaker is better suited to road trips than backpacking holidays

The Move is also only available in Lunar White (a surprisingly warm, stone-like colour) and Shadow Black (just regular black), which is a little disappointing. Its smaller sibling, the Sonos Roam, is available in a wide variety of different shades: Shadow Black, Lunar White, Sunset (a rich orange), Sunset (a pastel blue), and Olive.

Not only does this mean you’ll be able to pick a colour that blends into your décor at home, but it also brings a splash of colour when you’re out and about too.

Sonos has fitted far-field microphones fitted into the Move, so you can equip Alexa or Google Assistant to control lightbulbs, thermostats, video doorbells, and control music playback with a quick voice command. By equipping its speaker with both industry-leading voice assistants, the Move is future-proofed. So, if you decide to ditch your Android phone and buy an Amazon Echo in a few years’ time, your Sonos speaker will be able to seamlessly fit into your new smart home set-up too …something that isn’t true of the Google Nest, Apple HomePod, or Amazon Echo.

Like the rest of the speakers in Sonos lineup, Move is powered by the superb Sonos companion app. Available on all platforms, Sonos’ software brings together some 60 different streaming services. Again, this means you can guarantee that your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled speaker will work, regardless of the music streaming service, podcast app or audiobook provider that you pick. Tracks and playlist from Spotify, Apple Music, TiDAL, YouTube Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, Deezer and more can all be jumbled together into a single queue for the Move… and any other Sonos speakers at home.

Thanks to the popularity of the brand, Sonos Move also enjoys a wealth of first- and third-party accessories, mounts and carry cases. That’s something that isn’t the case for some of its closest rivals, which have a much smaller ecosystem of extras built-up around them.

Whether it’s the hardware or TruePlay software wizardry, the Sonos Move is guaranteed to sound superb – whether it’s paired with another speaker inside your home or doing all of the heavy-lifting itself outdoors. Its 10-hour battery life could be a little longer, especially given the hefty 3kg weight of the speaker (this is designed for road trips, not backpackers), but the durable design, IP56 water resistant case, and unmatched flexibility of this speaker makes it a stand-out amongst the Sonos lineup.

Highly recommended for those invested in the Sonos ecosystem.

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