Sonos Move 2: What we know so far

We still don’t know precisely when the Sonos Move 2 will make its debut, but we can make an educated guess.

Sonos generally serves up two big product announcements a year, in the spring and early fall. We already got our Sonos speakers for spring: the Sonos Era 100 and Era 300, which both arrived in March.

That means we’re still waiting on the Sonos product reveal for the fall, which typically happens in the September time frame.

Now, documents detailing wireless testing procedures and results for a speaker that’s most likely the next-gen Sonos Move were discovered at the FCC in June, and that usually means a release is only a few weeks or months away.

That leads us to believe that Sonos will unveil the Move 2 at the company’s fall 2023 product event, sometime in late August or early September.

The Verge, meanwhile, says it has narrowed down the announcement date for the Sonos Move 2 to late September.

We’d be surprised if the second-generation Sonos Move ended up costing much more than the original (pictured above), but don’t count on it costing any less than the pricey first-generation version, either.

The current Sonos Move is priced at $399–lofty by Bluetooth speaker standards, but par for the course when it comes to Sonos, which generally charges a premium for its wireless speakers, which can also operate as part of a multi-room audio system.

So yes, we’re guessing the Sonos Move 2 will arrive with a similar $399 price tag to the first Move. For its part, The Verge is pegging the Move 2’s price point at $449, a $50 premium over the original.

The first-gen Sonos Move is short, cylindrical, squat, and quite hefty, tipping the scales at roughly 6.6 pounds. That’s about the weight of a bowling ball, so it’s not a speaker you’d want to tote in a backpack (unlike the much lighter Sonos Roam).

It’s difficult to believe that the Sonos Move 2 will arrive with any sonic compromises versus the original, so don’t expect the new Move to be any smaller or lighter than the first one (physics is physics, particularly when it comes to speaker cabinets–and batteries).

Indeed, The Verge recently reported that the Sonos Move 2 will arrive with more or less the same form factor as the first Move, and yes, it will still weigh in at roughly six pounds.

The Move 2 will also have the first Move’s IP56 rating, The Verge claims, giving it protection from limited dust ingress and resistance to high-pressure water jets from any angle. So like the original Move, the Move 2 should be fine at a sandy beach and able to withstand splashes of water, but not a dunk in the pool.

One of the biggest rumors about the new Sonos Move (and later bolstered by the filings discovered at the FCC) is that it will support simultaneous transmission from its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, a feature that was notably lacking in the first Sonos Move. 

The original Move has a physical button in the back of the unit that allows it to switch between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. So, while the first-generation Move can connect to your Wi-Fi network at home or your phone’s Bluetooth radio when you’re out and about, it can’t seamlessly switch from Bluetooth to Wi-Fi, or vice versa.

The Sonos Move 2, on the other hand, is said to share the simultaneous Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities of the Sonos Roam (Sonos’s other portable speaker) and the new Sonos Era 100 and 300 speakers. That means the Move 2 would be able to smoothly hand over any on-the-go tunes it’s playing via Bluetooth to your Wi-Fi-enabled Sonos speakers at home.

In another interesting tidbit, the Sonos Move 2 is said to have a rear switch that lets you mute the voice assistants mics for privacy. On the first Move, you tapped the mic icon to mute or unmute the microphone.

Back in 2020, Sonos released a new version of its wireless software that supported a number of new features, most notably high-resolution audio, “room groups” of speakers, and immersive sound formats such as Dolby Atmos. 

The move was controversial, as it meant leaving behind a number of older Sonos speakers, such as the first-generation Sonos Play:5 and Sonos Connect.

While the original Sonos Move worked with both the current Sonos S2 app and the legacy S1 app, the Sonos Move 2 is rumored to only work with the Sonos S2 software. If that’s the case, you won’t be able to group it with aging Sonos products that are only compatible with the S1 app.

The first Sonos Move was a mono speaker, albeit a very good-sounding one. Could the Sonos Move 2 make the move to stereo, or perhaps even Dolby Atmos?

Well, Sonos did go the stereo way with the new Sonos Era 100, the speaker that replaces the mono-only Sonos One. Meanwhile, the larger Sonos Era 300 is a full-on Dolby Atmos speaker, Sonos’s first aside from its soundbars.

Given the design of the Sonos Era 100, it’s certainly possible that stereo sound is on tap for the (likely similarly sized) Sonos Move 2, and The Verge is reporting that stereo sound (via a pair of angled tweeters) is on tap for the new Move.

Dolby Atmos? You never know, but Atmos on the Sonos Move 2 is more of a stretch.

Put another way, stereo audio on the Sonos Move 2 is sounding like a yes, while Dolby Atmos is probably a no.

The original Sonos Move shipped with a nifty proprietary dock that offered wireless charging for the speaker. Again, we don’t know for sure, but there’s no reason to believe Sonos would drop the wireless charging dock for the Move 2. 

Speaking of charging, word is the Sonos Move 2 will support in-line audio via a USB-C adapter that could also deliver power.

The original Sonos Move arrived with the promise of 10 hours of battery life, which later got upped to 11 hours following a firmware update. Sonos also offers a battery replacement kit for the Move.

So, how will battery life on the Sonos Move 2 be? Even better, we hear, with The Verge reporting that the Sonos Move 2 will offer up to 24 hours of playback time.