I keep my Move 2 on a charging cradle by the back door. That tells you what kind of portable speaker this actually is. When I cook, it comes into the kitchen. When I sit outside, it comes onto the deck. When a rainstorm rolls in unexpectedly, I have left it out by accident more than once and it has survived. What it does not do, and what I gave up trying to make it do after the first month, is leave the house.
The weight is the reason. Three kilograms is what a half-gallon of milk weighs, and it is more than I want to carry in a backpack for a hike, more than I want to fit in beach gear that's already overloaded. Sonos itself recommends the smaller Roam 2 for the actually-portable use case, which is correct. The Move 2 is portable the way a kitchen mixer is portable: technically yes, in practice it has a home.
What the Move 2 gets right is the part where it is, fully, a Sonos. The same app, the same Trueplay room calibration, the same AirPlay 2, the same multi-room grouping with whatever else is on your Sonos network. When I walk into the kitchen and pick up where the living room left off, that handoff is seamless in a way no Bluetooth speaker manages. The 24-hour battery is more than double the original Move and is honest at moderate volumes; the user-replaceable cell means this is a speaker I'll still own in five years, which is more than I can say for most things with lithium-ion in them.
The sound is good, not great. Three internal amplifiers drive two side-angled tweeters and a front-facing mid-woofer, and the result is technically stereo, but the cabinet is small enough that the left-right separation is hard to hear at any normal distance. The tuning is bass-forward and a little boxy at low volumes — fine for podcasts and pop, less convincing for anything that depends on midrange detail. The EQ in the app is limited to bass and treble sliders, which means you can fix the obvious complaints and not much else.
The IP56 rating is the thing worth getting clear on. It survives rain, it survives dust, it does not survive being dropped in a pool. If your portable speaker needs to be submersible, look at a JBL Charge 6 or a Bose SoundLink Flex — both lighter, both cheaper, both rated for the dunk. The Move 2 is rated for the porch.
The price is the last hesitation. $449 list, around $399 on a sale, and the practical cost climbs from there: the carrying case is another $80, the line-in adapter is another $20, and if you don't already own a Sonos system the Move 2 becomes much less compelling as a one-off speaker. The Sonos network is a big part of what you're buying.
Verdict: Buy this if you already live in the Sonos ecosystem and want one speaker that moves between rooms. For actual portability, a JBL Charge 6 is lighter, tougher, and half the price.