More details have leaked around the imminent Sonos Roam Bluetooth speaker, which is due to be officially unveiled on Tuesday. Last week, The Verge published the existence of the portable product, complete with the name (Roam), an image (above), pricing ($169) and dimensions (6.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 inches). Now, the site has more to share…

The Sonos Roam will reportedly, and as expected, feature a number of Sonos-centric functions, some of which it shares with the larger, pricier Sonos Move. For example, there’s Auto Trueplay, a new version of Sonos’ automatic calibration technology that uses the speaker’s microphones to measure the frequency response of its surroundings whenever it detects being placed in a new location. 

We found it effective in the Move: “During testing, we move from our soundproofed test room to a noisy office environment and outdoors. The speaker’s real-world transformation is audible, the Move never sounding out of place once it reconfigures itself.” Needless to say, then, it’d be a welcome feature in a product that’s designed to be even more nomadic.

• Sonos Roam: release date, price, and all of the news

An all-new ‘Sound Swap’ feature is reportedly coming too, as we suspected it might in future Sonos products. It will supposedly allow the Roam to ‘hand off’ whatever music it’s playing to a nearby Sonos speaker simply by holding down its play/pause button. Perhaps the biggest new Sonos ecosystem integration feature, however, is its ability to connect over wi-fi and Bluetooth simultaneously, allowing owners to play a song from, say, a phone to the Roam (over Bluetooth) and then to the rest of their Sonos system (over wi-fi).

These unique selling points will no doubt help the Sonos Roam stand out from the dense crowd of Bluetooth speakers on the market.

With the Roam’s dimensions alluding to a very transportable, outdoor-friendly speaker, it comes as no surprise that it will be waterproofed. According to the newest leak it will be IP67-rated for dust and water resistance, meaning total protection from sand and from being immersed in water between 15cm and one metre for up to 30 minutes.

Finally, like the Move, the Roam won’t be able to be configured as surround speakers with the company’s Beam or Arc soundbars, leaving that job to the Sonos One SL and Sonos IKEA speakers.

So, it seems all that’s left for us is to hear the thing. Fingers crossed the Roam’s sound quality doesn’t let down what otherwise seems to be a well-featured, well-designed speaker. 

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