The Sonos Beam stood out in 2018 as one of the first soundbars to feature the Amazon Alexa voice assistant. In addition to its smart speaker capabilities, the Beam offered strong audio performance relative to its small size, as well as easy multi-room integration with the rest of the company’s speakers. The same holds true for the second-generation Beam, which adds Dolby Atmos support with five-channel audio processing (up from three). It doesn’t significantly improve the sound signature or offer more audio power, however, and still requires anyone looking for more substantial bass to buy the company’s expensive subwoofer. It’s also slightly pricier than the previous version at $449, up from $399. Even with these qualms, the Sonos Beam (2nd Gen) is a powerful and feature-filled soundbar for anyone who wants to minimize the footprint of their home theater speaker setup.
Small and Smooth
The second-gen Beam shares the same wide, flat, tablet-like design and 2.7-by-25.7-by-4.0-inch (HWD) dimensions as the previous version. It looks clean and simple, in black or white variants to match your home decor. The only real physical change to the soundbar is the polycarbonate wraparound grille that replaces the fabric grille of the first Beam. The harder material is easier to dust and wipe down than the cloth, but of course, the Beam still lacks any IP rating and you shouldn’t expose it to moisture.
The front of the new Beam has the same understated Sonos logo in the middle. The top panel holds an identical touch-sensitive control surface as well, with play/pause, volume up, and volume down buttons positioned below lights that indicate microphone use and speaker status. The recessed connections on the back are similarly unchanged. Here, you get an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a connector for the power cable, and a setup button. Sonos packages an HDMI-to-optical adapter in the box if you prefer.
Like the previous Beam and the Sonos Arc, the new Beam doesn’t have a remote. Instead, you can control it directly with the Sonos app or with your TV remote. TV volume controls work automatically over an HDMI ARC/eARC connection with HDMI-CEC enabled, or you can manually program the Beam to recognize the IR commands of your TV remote through the app (a welcome feature for older TVs or if you run out of free HDMI ports).
Sonos System Setup
Setting up the Beam is relatively easy, but it requires you to go through the Sonos app on an Android or iOS device and create a Sonos account. The setup process walks you through connecting your phone to the soundbar’s ad-hoc network (automatically through NFC by tapping your phone to the soundbar, if your phone supports it), connecting the soundbar to your home network, performing any necessary firmware updates, and making sure the system works with your TV.
You can also set up your voice assistant of choice (Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant) in the process. Far-field microphones built into the Beam let you treat the soundbar like a smart speaker. The assistants’ respective wake words work as expected, and you get the same information, media access, and smart home device controls you would get from any other device that supports them. You have to choose between Alexa or Google Assistant, though; the Beam can’t use both voice assistants at once. Switching between the two in the Sonos app is relatively simple, but you need to log out of one and into the other with their respective apps each time. Of course, you can simply use the Beam without a voice assistant by not configuring either one.
I ran into a few Wi-Fi hiccups when setting up the Beam, but after a few tries, I got all of the connections to work. I also enabled Alexa in seconds, but Google Assistant required some wrestling, digging, and talking with tech support to narrow down the specific third-party skill in the Google Home app I needed to reset before I could pair the soundbar. To be fair, I use multiple accounts and work with far more devices than the average consumer, including smart speakers and displays, so the tangle of permissions and apps might not be a typical experience.
As with any Sonos speaker, you can listen to music, podcasts, and audiobooks from dozens of different services available through the Sonos app. All of the big music streaming names are available, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Audible, Pandora, SiriusXM, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn, and YouTube Music. Most of these services require you to add them through the Sonos app, though Spotify Connect lets you listen to the Spotify app directly. Apple AirPlay 2 is also built into the Beam, so you can stream any audio directly from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Like all non-portable Sonos products (the Move and the Roam are the two exceptions), the Beam doesn’t have Bluetooth, so direct audio streaming from an Android phone is limited to the Sonos app’s capabilities.
If you have an iOS device, you can set the Beam to automatically tune itself to fit your room with Sonos’ TruePlay feature. It makes the soundbar send out sound pulses, which the microphone in your iPhone or iPad measures in different locations in the room to better adjust the audio balance. The feature isn’t available on Android, however. I ran TruePlay with my iPad mini to get the fully calibrated surround sound experience from the Beam. It was a fast and simple process, though I had to run it twice because the first time I was waving my iPad too quickly as I walked around the room.
The Same Drivers and Options
The Beam’s internal components are mostly untouched compared with the previous version. It still uses the same combination of four elliptical midwoofers, a center tweeter, and three passive bass radiators, so the general audio balance hasn’t changed much. The biggest upgrade is a faster processor and the addition of two more speaker arrays for a total of five. Each speaker array on the Beam is a software-driven audio channel that produces directional sound using combinations of the aforementioned drivers. The two new arrays add surround and height detail to the left, right, and center channels the first Beam could calculate, as well as enable support for Dolby Vision on the soundbar. The second-generation Beam also adds eARC connectivity, which has much wider data bandwidth over HDMI than ARC for higher-quality multi-channel audio, plus NFC connectivity for setup.
From the start, Sonos has built its entire system around multi-room and multi-speaker streaming over Wi-Fi. Once you configure the Beam, it works as a part of any existing Sonos setup. For example, it lets you easily jump between listening to music on the soundbar in your living room to the Sonos One in your bedroom. This is for audio streamed through the Sonos app; you can’t take whatever’s playing on your TV and stream it out from the Beam to other rooms in your home.
You can also pair the Beam with One or One SL speakers for use as rear surrounds, as well as with the Sonos Sub for more powerful bass. One SL speakers cost $199 each, so using them to make a full surround system isn’t too big of an ask, but the Sub is nearly twice the price of the Beam at $749. Unfortunately, Sonos’ subwoofer is the only one you can connect to the system. I tested the Beam on its own, without a Sonos Sub or One SL satellites.
Strong Sound With Little Sub-Bass
Without a subwoofer, the Beam puts out appreciable, though not particularly deep, bass. Our bass test track, The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” got some palpable low-frequency response. The output doesn’t quite reach into sub-bass ranges, but still offers some decent thump considering the soundbar’s small size. The bass drum hits flirt with distortion at maximum volume, producing just a bit of pop without outright crackling. If you crank the volume up, the Beam won’t shake your walls, but it might annoy the neighbors.
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Yes’ “Roundabout” shows off the Beam’s very clean sculpting of low- and high-mids. The opening acoustic guitar plucks sound full and string textures come through with some punch, but they lack the resonance that powerful bass would offer and the higher frequencies lose a bit of detail. When the track really starts, the guitar strums, drums, and vocals stand out, while the bassline sits a bit back.
The Crystal Method’s “Born Too Slow” sounds appropriately harsh and imposing, with the powerful low-mids giving the ominous backbeat a strong presence without touching sub-bass thump. The riffs and screeching vocals also stand out and the track easily filled the 15-by-20-foot room I was testing in with frantic sound.
Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” sounds as good on the new Beam as it does on the first version. The steady heartbeat-like beat anchors the track, while the harpsichord notes come through with depth and presence as they fade in. Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals sound full and detailed. All three sonic elements receive equal attention through the soundbar.
I streamed stereo versions of all these songs and the Beam’s audio processing did a good job of generating a sound field for each that seemed larger than the soundbar itself. The mixing seems to focus on the Beam’s left, right, and center virtual channels, without shifting any elements or frequencies specifically to the wider channels. This limits the sense of directionality synthesized from stereo, despite the large overall sound field. None of this is surprising; surround sound comes through best on content encoded for it (primarily movies). Only a few streaming services even host surround sound tracks. One example, Dolby Atmos Music on Amazon Music, will work with the Beam, but not until later this year.
Dolby Atmos and 5.1-Channel Immersiveness
The effectiveness of the Beam’s surround sound depends on the geometry of your room and how well sound can consistently reflect off the walls. Of course, you won’t get the full experience of rear channels without adding an additional pair of speakers to your system. Height channels also won’t be properly reflected by the Beam at all, since there are no angled drivers to reflect sound off of your ceiling; Sonos offers the larger and more expensive Arc for this feature. Despite these limitations, the Beam offers a large front-facing sound field for its size and accurate directional imaging, especially for Dolby Atmos-encoded content.
I watched The Matrix with Dolby Atmos audio and the precision of the Beam’s imaging was spot-on. Dialogue and sound effects seemed to come directly from the location of their sources on the screen, with detailed and nuanced panning between the soundbar’s drivers. It produced a very immersive experience, even without rear channels and despite my living room’s sub-optimal geometry (with a cut-out for the kitchen on the right, and windows with curtains on the left).
Non-Dolby Atmos content doesn’t get quite the accurate, immersive imaging that Atmos content does, but the Beam still provides a good sense of front-facing directionality. I watched Mad Max: Fury Road with a 5.1-channel audio track, and the audio panning, particularly across the left, right, and center channels, worked well. The drums of war sounded full and imposing, while dialogue was easy to understand against the busy soundtrack. Without a subwoofer, however, the roar of engines lacked the low-end weight they needed to really growl and stand out. This is exactly the sort of film that would benefit from sub-bass, and, unfortunately, the only option to add that kind of power to the Beam costs almost twice as much as the soundbar itself.
The Beam is well balanced for crisp and subtle dialogue and sound effects, especially in the high-mids. This makes the Beam ideal for horror films such as The Conjuring, which I also watched with a 5.1-channel audio track. Voices, whether soft or loud, came through cleanly, and creepy noises like a crayon clattering on the floor also sounded realistic. Loud, low sounds like the banging on a door get enough low-mid power to sound forceful and jarring, but the bass doesn’t reach quite deep enough to give the low sweeps in the background music the ominous rumble they could benefit from; again, a subwoofer would appreciably beef up this sound.
Small, Stylish, and Slightly Specialized
The second-generation Sonos Beam doesn’t sound wildly different than its predecessor; that means it produces a big sound field that belies its small size, with strong low- and high-mids for punchy, forceful audio. It supports Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice assistants, and of course, it integrates with existing multi-room Sonos systems. The biggest draw for this new model is support for Dolby Atmos, which sounds impressively precise and accurate for a one-piece speaker system. It’s a compelling package, though you’ll get the biggest effect out of the Beam if you combine it with a pair of rear speakers and a Sonos Sub to shore up its relatively weak lows. The cost of this additional hardware quickly makes the soundbar less compelling from a value standpoint, though. That said, if you want a feature-filled speaker for your home theater that takes up very little space and sheer power isn’t your priority, the second-gen Sonos Beam is one of the best options.
If you don’t need a voice assistant in your soundbar and you aren’t committed to Sonos’ multi-room functionality, the Vizio M-Series 5.1 (M51a-H6) features true 5.1-channel audio with wireless rear satellites, a wireless subwoofer, and Dolby Atmos support, providing plenty of thunder and directional audio for just $350 and earning our Editors’ Choice award. If you want even more power and are willing to pay for it, the Sonos Arc offers bigger bass, a much larger sound field, and height channels, while integrating with other Sonos speakers for multi-room audio—but keep in mind it costs twice as much as the Beam and you’ll still need to pay for a subwoofer and rear satellites if you want them.
