My favorite of the two was unexpected
The market for the best Bluetooth speakers isn’t exactly left short of options. All budgets are catered for and, as we’ve found, you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money to get a great-sounding portable speaker to accompany you at a party, at the beach or on your summer holiday.
Spending more can have its benefits, though, and the latest to join the more premium-end of the Bluetooth speaker market are the Beats Pill and Sonos Roam 2. Both have substantial brand appeal and plenty of style points, but as I found out when using them side by side, they’re in many ways two very different propositions. One is a ‘back to basics’ speaker that focuses on ease of use, while the other is feature-packed and offers more in the way of daisy-chaining.
I found myself in ownership of both speakers at the same time and, even before I began to use them, I had already made up my mind on which one I’d like best… perhaps naively. Style? Substance? How about both
Both the Sonos Roam 2 and Beats Pill are arguably great-looking Bluetooth speakers – the Pill, in particular, has a strong case for being dubbed ‘iconic’. I’d never really put much consideration into a speaker’s looks before – in fact, the only Bluetooth speaker I can recall owning is the JBL Charge 3, and that’s no looker. So when I had access to these two newcomers, I had to admire the attention that had gone into making them look as un-Bluetooth-speaker like as possible.
As with art, their looks will be subjective. One is a three-dimensional triangle… thing, and the other is an especially large pill that really would be hard to swallow. Truth be told, I actually thought the Sonos Roam 2 was going to be physically larger, so there was a brief “is that it?” murmur when I unboxed it. The Beats Pill meanwhile had an extra sense of grandeur to it and it felt like a truly special product – I think this can be attributed to the Pill’s extra weight, which makes it feel like a much more solid product. In my opinion, solid equals premium.
But the Pill’s extra weight – 680g vs 430g for the Roam 2 – did mean it was less portable-friendly. It’s obviously not going to be the same as carrying the 2kg Bose SoundLink Max around, but because of its larger size and weight, it did mean I had to put the Beats Pill into a bag whenever I took it outside with me. The Sonos Roam 2 meanwhile was small and light enough to slip into a jacket pocket.
I’m not someone who needs to take a speaker anywhere and everywhere, so ultimately I would choose the Beats Pill just based on the design. First (audio) impressions, matter
Looks are one thing, but how a Bluetooth speaker sounds is usually going to be what generates sales.
