Sonos has announced the Move 2, a portable battery-powered speaker able to link up to the company’s multiroom audio platform when used at home.
It is the follow-up to the original Sonos Move, which was released in 2019. The key internal difference in the new speaker is a stereo driver array. Sonos’s Move 2 has two tweeters, angled outwards to separate the left and right sound channels.
Tweeters provide the higher-frequency elements of music, which are also the most directional. The Sonos Move 2 still has one lower-frequency woofer speaker, sitting in the middle of the speaker’s body.
You can also team up two of these Move 2 speakers as a stereo pair for a much more immersive stereo image.
Sonos Move 2 features
Battery life increases too, from 11 hours to 24 hours in this new generation. Sonos says these figures relate to use at “moderate volume while connected to Wi-Fi”.
The Sonos Move 2 has Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi for when you are in the middle of nowhere, rather than just in your garden.
It is a moderately rugged and water-resistant speaker, specced to the iP56 standard. This means it is largely dust-proof and can handle water jets from all directions. A spot of rain should be no problem.
The Sonos Move 2 will also function as a smart speaker, with a far-field microphone array and voice assistant support, when connected over Wi-Fi.
Like other recent Sonos speakers, the Move 2 has TruePlay 2, a calibration tool where tones are played so the integrated microphones can “listen” to the environment. This lets Sonos tweak the speaker’s tone to suit different rooms.
As in the last generation, the Sonos Move 2 includes a wireless charging dock, one with a slight design tweak this time around.
The original design had a cabled-in power adapter. This new version ends in a USB-C cable, letting you disconnect the supply and, if you like, use it to charge your phone instead.
There are a couple of other little usability tweaks like this. The Sonos Move 2 can now connect to non-wireless sources. There’s no dedicated 3.5mm aux input but the USB-C on the speaker itself can be made into such a connector using Sonos’s £19 line-in adapter.
This accessory is also used with Sonos’s Era 300 and Era 100 home speakers.
Sonos has redesigned the Move’s up-top touch controls, most notably the volume slider. Again, as in the Era series, the Move 2 has an indented virtual slider to give volume alterations a more tactile edge.
The Sonos Move 2 is available to order now, ahead of a September 20 release date. It costs £449, £50 more than the original Move, and is available in white, black and olive.
