The Move 2 remains a unique offering from Sonos – but is it too expensive now?
Wireless speaker | £449 | whf.cm/SonosMove2
Bucking the trend of small, rugged, carry-in-your-bag portable Bluetooth speakers, Sonos’s original Move was a chunky beast that you could realistically only shuffle in between rooms or venture out into your home garden with.
The Move 2 is similarly packed with all of the usual Sonos wireless streaming and multi-room smarts, while Sonos has fully embraced its uniqueness in this market by sticking to its bulky size and bulging feature set, improving the sound quality and offering it at a premium sum of £449.
It is now priced near-identically to the Sonos Era 300 wireless speaker. The Era 300 was designed from the ground up, with a unique internal driver arrangement dedicated to spatial audio playback, boasts hi-res audio streams over wi-fi and represents the peak of Sonos’s premium wireless speakers. The Move 2, while incorporating many of the design and feature upgrades introduced in the Era 300 remains an evolution rather than a whole reinvention, but in price alone it now sits alongside the brand’s flagship speaker models as an equal.
Being part of Sonos’s much-lauded ecosystem means it’s furnished with a vast array of streaming features. Alongside Bluetooth 5.0, you can also play music wirelessly using Apple AirPlay 2 and Wi-Fi 6. There is support for streaming in up to 24-bit/48kHz quality, and if you prefer the wired route, you can now connect external audio sources (MP3 player, turntable) into the Move 2’s USB-C connection, though you need a specific and separate line-in adapter from Sonos at an additional cost.
If you have used a Sonos product recently, you won’t be surprised by how easy it is to use the Move 2. For those unfamiliar with Sonos, you will enjoy just how slick and user-friendly it is, especially when using the well-organised app. From the initial set-up to general playback and daily use, playing music through the Move 2 is straightforward no matter what method you use. Through the app, there is access to a huge number of streaming services and internet radio stations, from Absolute Radio and Apple Music to Tidal and TuneIn. You can also tweak various speaker settings, add the Move 2 into a greater Sonos multi-room ecosystem (if you have more Sonos products in your home) and create a stereo pair with two Move 2 units.
One point of difference between a standard Bluetooth speaker an
