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Jul 17, 2023

Sonos Move 2 reportedly coming in September — 5 biggest upgrades

Sonos Move 2 tipped for improved battery life and more this fall The Sonos Move is one of the best smart speakers out there, but it’s not quite perfect. Luckily, Sonos is coming out with a brand-new

Sonos Move 2 tipped for improved battery life and more this fall

The Sonos Move is one of the best smart speakers out there, but it’s not quite perfect. Luckily, Sonos is coming out with a brand-new version — the Sonos Move 2.

We already had some inkling that the Move 2 was coming this fall thanks to an FCC filing for the upcoming Bluetooth speaker, but The Verge has now published a massive leak that pegs the release date as sometime in late September.

The Sonos Move 2 is expected to launch at $449 in the U.S., which would be a $50 increase over the original Move. The good news is that it looks like it’ll be worth the money to upgrade to the Move 2 over the previous generation.

The leak reveals a ton of new features and upgrades coming to the Sonos Move 2, and personally, they have me pretty excited for Sonos’ next portable speaker.

Here are the five biggest upgrades to expect from the Sonos Move 2 this September.

Features are great, but none of it matters if the Sonos Move 2 doesn’t sound great too. And thankfully, the Move 2 is getting a serious boost to the Move’s already superb audio quality.

According to the leak, the Move 2 will get two tweeters rather than one — rather apt given the name. These angled tweeters should give the Sonos Move 2 true stereo audio playback rather than the mono audio playback the first generation Move was limited to. Combined with the Move 2’s woofer, which will be brought over from the original Move, the Move 2 should continue to provide excellent audio quality.

And the woofer isn’t all that the Move 2 is stealing from its older sibling. It’s also keeping Sonos’ Auto TruePlay, which uses microphones to automatically tune the Move speaker’s sound output for its surroundings.

The original Sonos Move had pretty decent battery life. It originally promised 10 hours, though a later update boosted this number by an additional hour. Our testing found that the Move managed to hit this mark, with the battery dropping around 10% every hour of audio playback.

But the Move 2 will reportedly double the Move’s battery life — and then some. The Move 2’s projected battery life is now rumored to be 24 hours, giving you 24-hour party people an entire day of audio playback.

The Move 2’s battery will also remain replaceable like the Move’s battery was, but the wireless charger is also getting a boost. The wireless charging base for the Sonos Move 2 will reportedly be removable rather than hardwired, which is a small but welcome improvement.

Speaking of welcome upgrades, the Move 2 is getting a significantly more useful USB-C port. If this leak is true, the USB-C port on the Move 2 will be able to turn your portable speaker into a portable charger as well, giving you the ability to charge mobile devices with the Move 2’s battery. Of course, this will drain the Sonos Move 2’s battery, but if you’re in a pinch it’ll be a nice feature to have.

And if you’re willing to spend up for a proprietary adapter, you can also turn the Move 2’s USB-C port into an audio line-in port. This adapter already exists for the Sonos Era 100 and Era 300 but didn’t work with the original Move.

There had been a few upgrades we were already expecting for the Sonos Move 2. The FCC filing from June hinted that the Move 2 would be able to connect via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth simultaneously rather than requiring you to toggle between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

This is a feature that made it onto the Sonos Roam but was notably absent from the original Move. This latest leak seemingly confirms that this feature is indeed coming.

However, there is still one connectivity feature we still have yet to see get confirmed. When we reported on the FCC filing, we mentioned that the Move 2 may also borrow switching connectivity modes based on location, another connectivity feature that the Roam got but Move missed.

While this feature may still ultimately come to the new Move 2 speaker, this latest leak didn’t give us any new information on that front.

Finally, the Move 2 will reportedly get one other minor tweak. According to this new leak, the Move 2 is going to ditch the controls of the original and instead steal the controls of the Era 100 and 300. This doesn’t change too much, but it does add the volume slider control, which is an improvement.

Aside from the volume slider, the Sonos Move 2 will also get a new switch on the back that can disable the Move’s voice assistant microphones.

This does bring us to the lone downgrade we have to highlight — Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control are reportedly supported on the Move 2, but it appears Google Assistant remains left out of the party, which it has since the launch of the Era 100 and 300 speakers.

Will it all prove true? We'll have to wait until September to find out.

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Malcolm McMillan is a staff writer for Tom's Guide, writing about the latest in tech, gaming and entertainment with a particular focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-based tools like ChatGPT. He has written up much of our coverage on the latest AI tools including ChatGPT, the new GPT-powered Bing and Google Bard. He also covers A/V tech such as televisions, soundbars and more, in addition to covering VR headsets from the Meta Quest 3 to the PS VR2.

Before writing for Tom's Guide, Malcolm worked as a fantasy football analyst writing for several sites and also had a brief stint working for Microsoft selling laptops, Xbox products and even the ill-fated Windows phone. He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently. He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most.

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