Tested: Sonos Beam (2nd generation) | A good boost

The new Sonos Beam isn’t the most explosive of soundbars. But it seduces with well-balanced acoustics, as effective for films as for music. A good addition, if your TV sound lacks tone.

Karim Benessaieh
Press

WE love

The second-generation Sonos Beam soundbar is small, barely 65cm wide by 6.9cm high, making it ideal when you don’t have a large cabinet for the TV.

But don’t be fooled by its size, this new version has been packed with capabilities. It first connects to an HDMI eARC input, which allows it to have greater compatibility of sound formats and better bandwidth, in particular for broadcasting high definition music. And it supports Dolby Atmos, combined with a more immersive sound environment.

If you do not have an HDMI ARC or eARC input, you can use the optical audio output of your TV, with the included Sonos adapter.

To configure it, we go through the application His bone. Our soundbar is added to all of the devices of this manufacturer in the house, which allows them to play the same content at the same time.

You can also adjust the sound according to the room with True Play. You walk your iPhone – Android devices can’t access it – around the room, and the soundbar emits “beeps” which are picked up and allow space analysis.

Finally, we can add to the Sonos Beam a voice assistant, Alexa or the Google Assistant, allowing all the home automation control, musical requests and the thousands of requests from these artificial intelligences. It is also compatible with AirPlay 2, which allows direct sound control with any iOS device.

On the top are touch-sensitive keys for volume, stopping or resuming music as well as a switch for the microphone.

Enough round the bush, let’s talk about the sound quality, first with the soundbar alone, without adding surround speakers.

We first note a beautiful precision in the sound, which allows you to hear all the nuances of a film, to better perceive the dialogues and to give tone to the noisier scenes.

The sound improvement is obvious with our mid-range TV in the basement which doesn’t have very loud speakers. But the Sonos Beam didn’t really improve a well-equipped TV like our LG OLED CX. The bass is rather discreet and the surround effect promised by Dolby Vision is not really there.

You can create a real surround sound effect by adding other Sonos devices and a subwoofer to the soundbar. We did the test with two Sonos One. Listening then changes completely. We really have a complete immersion here, and the bass picks up again. It’s very good home theater, with the precision and richness of sound that are hallmarks of Sonos. And we didn’t even add a subwoofer.

We like less

With some TVs, you cannot connect Bluetooth headphones when the Sonos Beam is connected. The audio signal, by default, comes out on the sound bar, which must be disconnected to switch to Bluetooth.

Sonos outrageously favors Apple devices, which are the only ones that have access to the True Play setting and streaming through Air Play 2.

One buys ?

Let’s first distinguish the two configurations, with the bar alone or connected to other Sonos speakers. On its own, it can significantly improve the sound of a mid-range television, and is a very satisfactory smart speaker for music. But it doesn’t have the wattage and bass to be a nice addition to a better TV.

This last observation is no longer true when we add surround speakers. Our Sonos Beam system combined with two Sonos One was quite remarkable. Obviously, we are talking at this time of an addition of $ 500 which will push us past the thousand dollar mark. But the home theater enthusiast will then get full value for his money.