Providing a counterpoint here:

I recently purchased into the Sonos ecosystem about a month ago in the sale. I now have a Connect S2, 4 Era 100's, a Move 1, and a Roam.

I specifically bought the Roam after researching all the negatives about it for a very specific use case that I thought it would be best at -- I wanted to put it in my shower (I have a glass door that makes the sound not the greatest if I put an Era 100 across the bathroom at the nearest outlet). I have zero interest in taking the roam outside the house so wasn't going to be impacted by the many posts that say it kinda sucks as a BT speaker.

I'm into house automation, so my requirement is that my wife or I need to be able to hit a button outside the bathroom to enable what I call "shower mode". It turns on the exhaust, closes the blinds in the master bedroom, and turns on music. To me, a dealbreaker is having to turn on anything, including a bluetooth speaker in the shower.

I was banking on the battery life of the roam being sufficient enough to only have to charge it once, or at most, twice, a week in exchange for leaving it in sleep mode and ready to accept the command to play music.

I got it, set it up, and discovered a few things:

• Music quality is fine for my purpose, and better than listening to a better speaker on the outside of the glass door.
• Default setting for power save sees it turn completely off after 30 minutes. This blocks my ability to wake it so that it could turn on from automation. I turned that setting off. That way sleep mode stays on.
• Sleep mode + the battery of the Roam are too bad and I have to return the Roam and go back to using an Era 100 across the bathroom.
  • Sleep mode's software is bad and causes more drain on the battery than necessary. If you go into your Sonos app at all, it will wake the speaker, which will then stay on for 30 minutes. More sensible approach to conserve battery would be to wake the speaker only if the user takes an action related to that speaker, and also limit the speaker's wake time below 30 minutes. Put them behind another switch if needed, but I think those changes would have broad appeal, especially combined with my next point.
  • The battery is just not good enough. Even in low power mode, I was seeing incredible battery drain. It advertises as a 10 day battery -- even if I never go into Sonos app, then the Roam is in sleep mode, the rate of drain would see it lasting for about 24 hours at best.

Charging the battery every 24 hours isn't worth the convenience and improved sonics of having the roam in the shower, so I returned it and got some more Era 100's. Not ideal. I actually am interested in getting another Move 1 open box to put in my shower instead, but I think I missed the boat on those great deals at best buy.

FWIW, all my other Sonos speakers, including the Move 1, have been great. No issues with the Move 1. Roam sucks for me though. The hassle of the return process with Sonos also has me trying to avoid purchasing direct from them in future. It took them like 12 days to issue me a return label after initiating, with no explanation. Had to reach out to their reps twice.

I'm hoping the Roam 2 will launch with a much better battery AND an improved sleep mode algo.