SONOS Roam Lands In Malaysia 21 April; Retails For RM1099

The SONOS Roam was officially announced today, during the wee hours of the morning. Now, the brand has provided the local pricing and availability date for its new portable speaker.

As per the official press release by TC Acoustic, the Roam will be available in Malaysia from 21 April onwards at an SRP of RM1099. For those who wish to purchase the portable speaker physically, it will only be on display at all Harvey Norman stores in Malaysia. For those who want to purchase it online, the product will be available for purchase via its official LazMall store on Lazada and Trysonos.my.

Internally, the Roam houses two Class-H amplifiers that are tuned to its “unique” acoustic architecture, a bespoke racetrack mid-woofer, one tweeter, a high-efficiency motor. And SONOS’ Trueplay Tuning technology that automatically adjusts the speaker’s audio quality and presence based on its surrounding environment. Battery-wise, the Roam provides up to 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge, and up to 10 days when placed in Sleep Mode.

The Roam also has an IP67 dust and waterproof rating, with the speakers able to be submerged to a depth of one metre, for up to 30 minutes.

Like all SONOS speakers, the Roam utilises both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity to provide seamless audio between the speaker and other SONOS branded products. Lastly, the speaker also works with more than 100 streaming services, including SONOS Radio, as well as assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple AirPlay 2.

SONOS Rumoured To Announce Roam Portable Speaker With US$169 Pricetag

It’s about that time of the year where SONOS is expected to announce a few new products. This year, one of the brand’s more anticipated products is actually a portable speaker, known simply as Roam.

Images and details of the Roam began to surface several days ago, along with its expected retail value of US$169 (~RM697). Thanks to The Verge, we now have some idea of what to expect from this new portable speaker.

Specs-wise, the Roam will inherit SONOS’ Trueplay, which is an audio tuning feature that was first introduced in its bigger brother, the Move. Basically, it’s a feature that automatically calibrates the performance of the speaker based on its immediate environment.

Like all SONOS devices, the Roam is also expected to house the ability to connect itself to a multi-room system via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing users to stream whatever they’re playing on their phone or audio source to another Roam over Bluetooth. While also streaming the same audio track to other SONOS devices in and around the room.

On that note, the Roam is expected to introduce a new feature called Sound Swap. There’s not a whole lot of detail about it, but supposedly, users will be able to send music that is played on the Roam to a nearby SONOS speaker by holding down the play button. Oh, and the writer seems to make it explicitly clear that the Roam cannot be used as an impromptu surround speaker for the SONOS Arc or Beam.

In terms of performance, the SONOS Roam is expected to have a battery life that supports up to 10 hours of continuous playback, as well as IP67 dust and waterproof rating, the latter allowing it to be submerged at a depth of one metre and for a period of half an hour. As for its sound quality, we can’t tell you that until we actually get a unit to test for ourselves.

Lastly, it seems that the Roam is set to support wireless charging, but the corresponding hub is expected to be an optional extra. At what costs, though, we have no idea.

In any case, SONOS is expected to make any official announcement sometime this week, and we’re still not sure if the brand even intends on launching the Roam in Malaysia. So, take this news with a large grain of salt.