Sonos Beam Soundbar Review: Speaker Full of Innovations

The Sonos Beam speaker is small enough to attach itself to most televisions, and it has impressive audio performance.

Sonos Beam: Fast Talk

The Sonos Beam is a great speaker, it is one of the smartest devices on the market thanks to the features it contains, as it supports everything from Alexa to AirPlay 2 from Apple.

The amplifier also introduces Sonos’ multi-room sound technology, which is easier to use and delivers great performance.

The Sonos Beam has impressive and intelligent capabilities, its multi-room basic system is impressive and impressive, in addition to a new operating system and companion application that provides support for the high-resolution sound of the latest wireless speakers.

But of course it lacks some things, as it is not filled with the latest and latest home theater technologies, such as Dolby Atmos or DTS Virtual: X.

FOR

• Cool compact design
• HDMI ARC Compatible
• Great sound

AGAINST

• The app is not suitable for home theater
• There is no Dolby Atmos
• Setup on TVs without HDMI ARC is difficult

Sonos Beam: Sleek Design

The Sonos Beam amplifier fits within the Sonos product family, as well as four home theater audio settings.

Sonos Beam is a popular entry-level speaker for its lineup. The Sonos Beam size, it’s a speaker that sits happily in front of a 32-inch or 40-inch TV.

Measuring at 650 x 100 x 68.5mm, it is extremely thin as it is considerably smaller than its larger sibling, the Sonos PlayBar at 60%, but has the addition of an HDMI connection.

It is a very elegant speaker that takes its design cues from the Sonos One, and the controls are located on the top that are touch sensitive.

The controls include a four-point box on the left to turn the volume down, the same on the right for the top and a play / pause button in the middle, as well as the ability to turn on and off the speakerphone’s microphone.

Sonos Beam supports both Google Assistant and Siri. Sonos, which is a smart move by the company.

You can place the speaker or install it in front of the TV. At 100mm deep, it will not take up any space and will make most televisions happily sit in front of it without touching the actual screen.

The Sonos Beam amplifier

inside has four full range motors, a center amplifier and three passive radiators, and these programs work together to help the speaker deliver sound somewhere in between.

The subwoofer can create real surround sound thanks to Trueplay 3 channels, a software feature that calibrates the sound for the room.

And when using the Trueplay feature, the room is filled with sound, it provides great performance in all aspects, such as the loudspeaker, because the radius is much larger, but you will not deal with this technology if you are an Android user.

In terms of ports, there is an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a power button, and Wi-Fi.

Sonos Beam Setup: HDMI ARC , The App

Setting up the Sonos Beam is a little complicated. If your TV has an HDMI ARC, this is a breeze, as the HDMI ARC allows the beam to synchronize the picture and sound and play everything through the TV remote control.

This is important since the Sonos Beam amplifier does not come with a remote control as we are used to with all Sonos products, and you will have to use the Sonos app to control the volume, connect the headphones, and the like.

But if your TV doesn’t have HDMI ARC, things will get more complicated, but Sonos has added an optical adapter to the setup, just connect this to the supplied HDMI cable and you can use the beam through the optical port, but first you have to go into the Sonos app settings.

Where you can, through the application, automatically turn on the speaker when the TV is turned on, instead of entering the application every time, and we found the TV auto-play setting in the Room> TV setting.

There is also the ability to configure the remote control setting, through the application as well, and you must have the remote control that works with Beam.

After doing many tests, we prefer using HDMI Arc even though the app is fun enough.

The Sonos Beam app contains more than 60 compatible audio services, as well as a number of great home theater options.

There’s Night Sound, which controls booming bass, and speech enhancement.

There’s also an EQ option for Bass slides, Treble, and Loudness, and TV Dialog settings that let you sync the audio.

Voice Control, Alexa

One of the great features of the Sonos Beam amplifier is that you can emit action using your voice, and this is one of the great advantages of Beam is Alexa integration, and what is new here is that using Alexa to control a part of the TV is a new thing.

Alexa voice control is now available with the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick and is also available on the Amazon Fire TV Cube only.

To get the most out of Sonos Beam’s audio functionality, you’ll need Amazon products like Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.

And once you’ve connected one of these devices to your TV, Beam offers the ability to search Netflix and Amazon Prime – which is a lot of fun.

You can use the voice controls for things like volume or requesting radio stations, and to pause and play everything you listen to.

Another great thing is that there are a bunch of smart assistants that you can call if you don’t want to use hands, as there is Alexa integration, AirPlay 2 and Siri, and now the Google Assistant is there too.

Performance: Great Sound

As for the Sonos Beam’s performance, we tested with a scene from Wall-E, a fairly loud clip from WestWorld, all of which sounded great, delivering richer, deeper sound that contrasts with the volume of our speakers.

And with TruePlay, the results were still quite impressive. For example, our favorite series was The100.

When devastating bullets and fiery conflicts between tribes, the Sonos Beam was able to produce clear and truly impressive sound.

We also paired two Sonos: 1s as rear amplifiers, and the performance and surround effect were amazingly impressive.

And in a televised dialogue, the distorted sound effects sometimes mask the ambiguous dialogue, but separating itself so well from the vocals, the vocal enhancement really helped a lot.

We listened to many podcasts like Chvrches’s My Enemy, and the bass was a bit blurry, but overall the sound was clear and very detailed.

Conclusion

That Sonos Beam amplifier gave us great performance, and Sonos PlayBar technology is a good start for the company’s 10, but the amplifier’s lack of an HDMI slot and dense industrial appearance made it a frustrating AV accessory.

But overall, the Sonos Beam is a great speaker for its price. It takes full advantage of the Sonos ecosystem and is fun to use. The smaller form factor is a device that sits comfortably next to a 32 ”TV and produces enough sound, which is great.

The voice control feature also works well, it is an innovative speakerphone at an attractive price.