SonosRoam 2 Ultra Portable Smart Speaker

Great speaker, bad user experience

I bought this as a portable, waterproof Alexa speaker so I could listen to music, hear the news, send and receive messages, and otherwise stay connected hands-free while swimming in my pool and hanging out in my yard. I had been using my phone and bluetooth speaker, but that never worked very well. This is a four-star product for performance. The microphone picks up commands from a distance, even with outdoor winds and noise and the speaker quality is excellent. The battery life is around seven or eight hours in my use, not the claimed ten hours, but plenty for my needs, even as it declines with age. I knocked off a star for useless instructions with a confusing app and near illegible button markings. There's no battery strength indicator other than a red light that's supposed to go on when it gets down to 10%, but it acts up when the battery gets that low, with the volume going up and down on its own from zero to moderate. I needed some YouTube and AI assistance to figure out how to make it work, and I need my phone to learn its battery charge or reset anything.