The Sonos Move is an impressive portable speaker from its spec sheet, to its size, to its price, to its many capabilities. But is it well designed?

Let’s find out together.

All of my reviews use the Design Critique Rubric and the Guidelines for Thoughtful Product Design. Any review without a rubric is just kind of a random person’s opinion.

I’m also a professor at the University of Maryland in user-centered design and human-computer interaction. I am constantly critiquing the design of products for lessons for my students, and I want to bring those lessons here.

Affordances and signifiers

Sonos really harnesses affordances well with the Move. What are affordances? Read up.

You can play music and control the Move with the Sonos app (on touchscreen and desktop devices), with voice, or with controls on the speakers themselves. This is nailing all of the affordances that a user would want in 2019.

I know that some people are wary of voice assistance, but voice is a great control mechanism, particularly for music, and it has some big accessibility implications.

Sonos even built in a handle on the Move to make it easy to move around and to encourage you to move the Move all over. It’s a really thoughtful affordance. It’s also subtly done so that you only see it and feel it when you need it.

Sonos also made the handle very obvious to use. It’s just formed into the product. There is nothing to pop out or anything complicated. It’s a really great affordance.

On the signifier front, Sonos could do a better job of labeling their icons. There are very few icons in the world that are universally understood, and the ones here aren’t it.

Even ones that you think would be pretty straightforward for a music device are a little hard to make out. Sonos relies on icons all over the Move. Most icons, when not matched with words, are low understanding. You can discover that the icons exist, but you have to do trial and error to see what each one does.

Even the audio up and down icons are somewhat inscrutable. I get into this more in the visual design section of this review, but I feel that Sonos is prioritizing visual design over usability. Both are important for user experience, but a balance must be struck.

Sonos’s decision to go with touch controls makes for a very clean look, but you can’t operate them in low light situations. Sonos speakers do support some more advanced swipe actions, but I can’t get them to reliably work, so I skip using them.

The discoverability of the advanced touch controls is very low, and the understanding is also poor. Ideally, features should both be discoverable (can a user even find that a product can do X), and understandable (once a user discovers something, do they understand what it can do)?

The touch controls aren’t critical to using the Move or any Sonos speaker, so I don’t weight this issue that deeply. The basic pause, volume up, and volume down buttons work and reliably — once you figure out which one of the identical icons makes the music got louder and which makes it go softer.

Usability

Sonos makes the best-designed speakers on the market. The Move builds upon that heritage of being well designed but also has some usability issues. This is the area where the Move is the most uneven in the rubric.

As I tell people, if you really care about music and design, Sonos is the first company you should look at. Their products tend to be really thoughtful. I can tell a lot of people agonized over every little detail and feature.

The decision to add Bluetooth to a speaker was a controversial one for Sonos, but you can tell that the product design team really tried to make all the different ways that you can use the Move work well.

Sonos speakers sound great, are easy to set up, and are pretty reliable. Where the Move can struggle a bit with usability is in the interplay between the normal Sonos wireless modes and Bluetooth. Some of this is just straight up an issue with Bluetooth in general, which is probably a huge reason that Sonos employees resisted Bluetooth for so long.

If you can use the Move over Wifi or AirPlay, you should. No doubt. But Bluetooth does provide a nice way to use it on the go and out of wifi range.

Bluetooth is at the heart of the most critical usability issues with the Move. This was not made clear to me before I attempted it, but you need to have your Sonos speaker setup over wifi before it works on Bluetooth. I took the Move to my office and couldn’t get it to play music, and there appeared to be no way to get the Move to play music as just a dumb Bluetooth speaker without first setting it up on the Sonos app over wifi.

This is a big usability fail. I had to look up on the Internet what the issue was to get Bluetooth to work. If people need to read a manual to use consumer a product, it’s not as well designed as it could be.

I also ran into an issue where I pressed the pairing button after my speaker had been initially paired, and I was unable to switch back to Bluetooth mode. If you accidentally hit the pairing button (or a kid does) and you are nowhere near wifi, you will brick your Move until you get back to wifi.

That’s a pretty huge usability fail.

One of the core guidelines of good product design is that users are given proper warning before committing destructive actions, and destructive actions are reversible. I was afforded neither of these when I pressed the pairing button away from my house. The Move just let me do it and wouldn’t let me undo it.

Now that I know about this, I haven’t run into the issue since. But imagine bringing this camping with you and having this happen to you. That would be incredibly frustrating.

But back to what works from a usability perspective. Setting up the Move over wifi in the app is as easy as ever, thanks to using Bluetooth to help with initial pairing. Score one for Bluetooth.

It is also easy to group the Move with other speakers when on wifi. The ability to group Sonos speakers together so that you can play the same music throughout your house and outside of it is the standout feature. This is great for parties, obviously, but also great for when you want to hear music throughout several rooms without needing to blast your music.

The handle is integrated at the top here. This shows off the buttons on the back, which could all benefit from additional signifiers.

The handle is integrated at the top here. This show shows off the buttons on the back, which could all benefit from additional signifiers.

The handle on the back of the Move makes it easy to pick up and move around your house and yard. I find myself moving the Move around all weekend while visiting my in-laws — from different rooms in the house to the deck.

Once you get the Move setup, use it, and learn about it, it’s pretty easy to use, but before then it has some issues.

This gets into discoverability and understanding — two key usability areas for user experience.

The discoverability of how to use Bluetooth for the first time is virtually zero. I was unable to figure this out without looking it up on the Internet. Now most people will first setup the Move on wifi, making this a moot point, but for those who want to buy a Move to use a tailgate the day of a game and don’t have time to go home, this might be a less than enjoyable experience.

There is one area of usability that I don’t want to take for granted. Sonos sells wireless, powered speakers. This means you don’t have an amp or receiver and you don’t need to run wires. This is a huge usability win, and Sonos was a pioneer in this space.

Another big usability win that Sonos has over Bluetooth-only speakers is that when over wifi, you can have your Sonos speakers play music without needing your phone to stream to it. This means you can still use your phone to play audio while you and others listen to music.

The Move builds upon this rich history of usability for Sonos and adds the ability to go beyond wifi. I’d recommend that Sonos work on tightening up the Bluetooth experience to match the typical Sonos experience.

Sonos’s TruePlay has been a great way to tune your Sonos speakers to sound their best in your house. But it had some usability issues. Namely, you could only use TruePlay if you had an iPhone or iPad, and it required you to walk around a room for a minute while it calibrated. And any time you move your speaker or change where stuff is in your room, you should redo it.

Auto TruePlay changes all of that. The Move automatically tunes itself. This is a huge usability win. It doesn’t work on Bluetooth, and I’m not sure why exactly, but it’s fantastic on wifi. Sonos should bring this to all of their speakers.

Last, but not least, Sonos’s decision to include an inductive charging ring instead of just a charging cable is a huge usability win. One of the core problems that users of portable speakers face is keeping them charged.

Sonos has solved this by including a stand that charges the Move. When your Move is in its primary location, it will be charging, ready to use. The Move gets 10 hours of battery life, which many smaller speakers beat, but those speakers only get better battery life when you remember to charge them.

I never had an issue with the Move running out of battery, because Sonos made it so easy to keep it charged. This is one of the most thoughtful usability wins the Move has.

This image shows off the Move on its charging base.

This image shows off the Move on its charging base.

Utility

This is where the Move shines. The Move has the highest utility of any speaker I have ever seen. What can’t the Move do?

You can use the Move at home or in the yard or on the go. You can use it on their wireless networking, on AirPlay 2, or on Bluetooth. You can control the Move with touch, voice, and an app.

You can use the Move in the rain, bathroom, or leave it in the sun all day. The Move is by far Sonos’s most rugged speaker. It can be used inside and out and can be hosed off if it gets dirty. It can’t be submerged like some Bluetooth speakers, but I don’t see that as a big use case, and the sealing needed for that kind of waterproofing negatively impacts audio quality.

Sonos struck the right balance here between ruggedness and sound quality. The Move sounds fantastic (better than the Sonos One), is portable, and is rugged. That’s the core pitch for it.

If you want the best-sounding portable speaker, the Move is it. If that’s all you care about, stop reading, and buy one.

Because Sonos has chosen to be platform-agnostic and not try you to lock you into anything, the Move really has a lot of utility. Sonos supports Alexa and Google Home voice assistants and has said they will support others if those companies work with them. You don’t have to use voice with the Move, but it’s an option available, and Sonos doesn’t force you to choose which one you want to use. It’s easy to switch back and forth.

I really like being able to ask Alexa to play a song or an artist. It’s very useful when your hands are full or dirty. It’s also a nice accessibility feature.

Sonos also supports a ton of audio services. Just use what you are most comfortable with. I have switched back and forth between Spotify and Apple Music myself.

The new auto TruePlay that tunes the Move for the environment you are in is great too. I don’t think I would buy a speaker without tuning ability like this again, and the ability to have this automatically done is really nice.

Apple and Google have technology like this on their high-end speakers, but this is not a capability we usually see on battery-powered speakers. It’s fantastic to put your Move on your stoop and have it tune itself to sound best out there.

The Move being weatherproof and wireless (while sounding very good outside) brings a lot of utility to people who want to listen to a high-quality audio experience in their yards without needing to buy dedicated outdoor speakers and run cabling. That’s a hassle and often quite expensive.

You can set up a Move (or two in stereo mode) in minutes and have great outdoor sound. Speakers like the Move are going to bring outdoor listening to a lot more homes.

Functional Integrity

Overall, I’d say the Move has pretty good functional integrity, but it varies. Why does it vary? There are a lot of moving parts in what the Move can do, and a lot of opportunities for things not to work as intended.

Using the Move as home or yard wifi speaker with the Sonos app? You’ll have high functional integrity like any other Sonos speaker. Occasionally there may be an issue with a streaming service or the Sonos app, but the Sonos speakers almost always play their music and play it well.

Using voice control adds complexity and more opportunities for bugs to crop up and stuff not to work. It’s not super uncommon to ask Alexa to play a song or an artist and for it to just not happen. This is something Sonos needs to work on tightening up.

The issues with Bluetooth that I mentioned above can be considered functional integrity issues. If Sonos allows you to enter a pairing mode that prevents the speaker from being used on Bluetooth, that feels like a bug to a user.

Visual Design

Sonos makes really good looking speakers. Most speakers and audio equipment have traditionally not been that good looking, which has been a barrier to their adoption in many homes.

A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into their houses looking nice. Ugly speakers that look like toys mar that experience. Speakers have also traditionally required wires, which is something that many people don’t want to deal with visually.

The Move looks good at home or on the go.

The Move looks good at home or on the go.

The Sonos Move is no exception to Sonos’s tradition of attractive wireless products. I don’t think it is Sonos’s best-looking speaker, but it is still good looking by speaker standards. I’d like to see it in white like the Sonos One, and the Sonos logo on the front is a bit shouty for my tastes. I find that Sonos’s white speakers are very refined looking and blend in with decor very well, and I’d like to see a Move that has that aesthetic.

Blending in and looking good is a key part of the Sonos appeal in a lot of ways. Sonos wants you to put their speakers in every room in your house. This means that they need to make speakers that look good on their own. Some companies make speakers that look good enough for a home theater room or right beneath the TV, but Sonos is trying to sell speakers for every room of the house.

My biggest complaint with the visual design is that Sonos occasionally puts this above usability. Usability and visual design need to be in harmony. In particular, the touch controls on top of the Sonos Move look nice, and they also have user experience issues.

Sonos’s older products used to have physical controls that you can operate in the dark or if you weren’t looking. The new Sonos speakers have gone with touch controls that look nice in the abstract but lack tactility and use rather abstract icons that are a bit confusing.

Why are the volume up and down icons identical? It makes for a clean look, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is very little mapping to users’ mental models going on here. At a minimum, there should be fewer dots on the down icon as opposed to the up icon. The additional dot or dots would signify more or increase in volume.

Persuasiveness

We typically refer to persuasiveness as conversions, but in this context, we will discuss whether or not the Move persuades you to use it and listen to more music.

The Move is very persuasive. It sounds fantastic. Most Bluetooth speakers don’t sound good enough to find a place in my home.

I have owned a UE Mini Boom for years that I got to play music when my wife was in labor. We used it then and a couple of times since then, and that’s it. Yeah, it’s pretty portable, and it didn’t cost that much, but it produces music without emotion or feeling. A lot of cheaper Bluetooth and portable speakers are like this — nice novelties that you will soon let capture dust.

Not the Move. You will use the hell out of this because first and foremost, it’s a good speaker. The fundamental flaw of most portable speakers is that they always have the qualifier of “for a portable speaker.” But good design should transcend perceived use cases.

Many people are trying to use portable speakers at home. They like the idea of not having wires, and they are cheap to get into, but they soon realize that they don’t sound good enough.

The Move sounds very good — and it happens to be portable. That is getting the order of operations correct.

It’s easy to take around with you everywhere (just throw it in a backpack or the bottom of a stroller). I took it between home and the office, to the park, to another state to visit my in-laws, etc. Throughout it all, I really enjoyed using the Move, and I found myself listening to a lot more music than I usually would.

Anyone who tells you that the Move is too heavy to take beyond the backyard apparently has never heard of a bag before.

My mother-in-law has a deck that overlooks a river. I put the Move on her deck, drank some coffee, and watched the day role in. What made the Move so impactful at this is that it sounds really good.

Most Bluetooth speakers don’t sound good enough for meaningful music listening. They can work for tailgates or parties where you want some background noise or have the ability to play some songs that people will sing along to.

But music is meant to be felt, and most Bluetooth speakers don’t make you feel the music. The low ends are often non-existent, and the mids are often scooped out as well to make the meager low-end pop.

Here is the Move at my desk. Unlike a UE Boom or one of the cartoonish looking portable speakers, the Move looks good even in an office.

Here is the Move at my desk. Unlike a UE Boom or one of the cartoonish looking portable speakers, the Move looks good even in an office.

Is this well designed?

Overall, the Move is well designed.

From an industrial design and hardware perspective, it’s very impressive. It feels great, and the built-in handle is really well done.

The software and wireless capabilities are best in class.

The built-in handle that doesn’t look like a stupid beach bucket handle is a really thoughtful touch.

Sonos just needs to work on making Bluetooth more of a first-class citizen. Since Sonos has a long history of pushing software updates to improve its products, I expect many of the issues I brought up here to be addressed in time.

I’d like to see Bluetooth work with TruePlay, if possible. I’d like to see the ability to pair with Bluetooth without first setting up over wifi. I’d also like for Sonos to block the ability to accidentally put the Move into a pairing mode that blocks using it on Bluetooth.

I’d also like to see a party mode where people can suggest songs to be played and create grouped playlists. Sonos really needs to work on its software (by far, their big weakness as a company). There is a huge miss right now with not having the Sonos app be able to have a DJ mode for parties.

The Move costs $399, and many reviews have touched on this. I am not going to say much about the price because it doesn’t have much to do with how well designed a product is. $399 is well within what we would consider democratic design terms.

Most people could afford this if they really wanted to and saved up. Sonos doesn’t price their speakers in disposable ways, which is something that many Bluetooth speakers are essentially pitched as. Sonos has built and priced the Move as something you’ll use a lot and keep for many years. They even have a program to replace the battery, which is key to this device lasting a long time.

When you look at the totality of what the Move is, I highly recommend it. I hope Sonos works out some of the Bluetooth stuff mentioned here, but it’s an impressive product. I am a big music fan, and I have speakers all over my house. I now have a Move in my house, and will be bringing it with me lots of places.