Sonos’ Roam SL drops the mics and brings its price down to $159

Image: Sonos

The portable smart speaker, the Sonos Roam, was introduced last year and it gave you access to a number of assistants, including Amazon and Google. The price was raised to $179 last fall because of the global chip shortage. If you're interested in the product but want to save a bit of money, Sonos has a mic-less version that costs less than the OneSL it released two years ago.

Losing the microphone doesn't mean that support for either voice assistant is lost. It also means no automated Trueplay sound tuning, and living without the Sound swap feature that lets you pass off audio from the Roam to a nearby speaker by holding down the play button.

Image: Sonos

Stereo pairing with another Roam speaker or the original Roam speaker is supported when you are streaming music via wi-fi. If you don't need to talk to a voice assistant while playing music at the beach or by the pool this summer, or if you purchase a second speaker to pair with your original one, that could come in handy. It is still compatible with the optional $49 wireless charging pad sold by Sonos.

Everything else appears to be the same for a compact speaker that we enjoyed despite some limitations when we reviewed it last spring. It still has an 18WH battery with 10 hours of continuous playback, a quad-core 1.4GHz CPU, IP67 waterproof certification, and Apple AirPlay 2 compatibility. Preorders are available now from Sonos, with shipments scheduled to begin on March 15th.