The world of smart home audio definitely benefited from all this time we're spending indoors. Sonos has an eye on the future, though. We've just finished reviewing the $170 Roam, which Sonos pitches as a hybrid speaker for beach trips and vacations, and which also integrates with your at-home sound system. It also doesn't look like a giant kettlebell like Sonos' last attempt, the $400 (!) Move. According to Deputy Managing Editor Nathan Ingraham, it sounds good (and sounds even better in a stereo pair) and is as portable as the competition.

The wireless home-audio specialist Sonos has unveiled the Roam, its smaller, cheaper portable speaker with Bluetooth and wifi that works as well at home as it does outdoors. The rugged triangular Roam weighs 430g and is about the size of a water bottle. The aim is that it will avoid ending up stuck in a drawer collecting dust like most portable speakers by sounding good enough and working well enough to warrant being used at home too, connecting to Sonos' smart multi-room wifi system. That means it will work like any other non-battery powered Sonos speaker able to stream music directly via wifi from more than 100 different music services, including Spotify and Apple Music, and be grouped with other speakers to play music all over the home. It also supports Apple's AirPlay 2 and smart speaker functionality with either Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. The Roam has separate woofer and tweeter speakers with Sonos's Trueplay technology, which automatically tunes the sound accounting for acoustics, obstacles and position to sound its best at all times.