The Sonos brand is quite well known in wireless audio and its new Beam Gen 2 brings that sound quality and connectivity to your TV viewing experience.
The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is both a wireless speaker and a sound bar in one.
You can listen to your favourite songs when you’re not watching TV but then enjoy the audio quality and Dolby Atmos when you are engrossed in a movie or TV show.
The new Beam sound bar has more processing power on board and has a new phased speaker array which can steer sound around the room.
This is now compatible with more than 100 streaming services which can be found in the Sonos app, so you do notice a massive audio improvement.
3D audio with Dolby Atmos provides a remarkable listening experience and puts you in the centre of the action so you are hearing sounds coming from every direction.
Later this year Sonos will support Amazon Music’s ultra-high definition audio so you can listen to tracks in lossless audio up to 24 bit/48khz through the soundbar
On the design side, the stylish Sonos Beam Gen 2 has an updated polycarbonate grille so it can blend into your home while still allowing for great quality audio.
In terms of looks and size, the device is almost identical to the previous model with touch controls on top of the unit.
The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is 65cm wide and 10cm tall, so it won’t look to obtrusive in front of your television.
But this small size doesn’t mean you aren’t getting decent output and depth of audio.
It’s really simple to link the Sonos beam to the Sonos app.
if you have an existing system, it will seamlessly integrate into your setup and become yet another part of your wireless speaker setup.
The app also makes it possible to link your music streaming services so they can be also played through the soundbar.
For our review, we found set up to be super simple.
it’s just a matter of connecting the beam to power and linking via a HDMI cable to the HDMI eARC port on your TV.
This means you can listen to your favourite movies and games in higher definition sound thanks to its support of a wider range of audio formats.
And once connected through HDMI eARC you can also adjust the volume using your TV’s own remote control.
But the soundbar only has a single HDMI port and no optical port.
Sonos does include a HDMI to optical adapter but that means you are still using the one and only HDMI port on the unit.
This means only a recent TV with HDMI eARC will be able to offer better quality and truly support Dolby Atmos.
if you have a TV that’s less than two years old then you’ll be happy with the outcome whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game especially if you are using the Xbox series X or a PlayStation 5 which requires the HDMI 2.1 bandwidth that comes with HDMI eARC.
If you have an older TV – the audio quality won’t be on par than when used with a new TV that supports HDMI eARC.
It will still work and provide decent surround sound but without Dolby Atmos.
The speaker arrangement under the hood Includes four front-facing mid woofers with the centre tweeter and all powered by five class-D amplifiers.
There are no upfiring speakers aboard the Sonos Beam Gen 2, but we were still able to enjoy a reasonable Dolby Atmos experience.
It wasn’t as good as other systems that did have dedicated upfiring speakers and rear speakers, but it still was able to create a respectable three-dimensional sound.
The surround sound effect is also impressive but nowhere near as effective as having dedicated rear speakers.
It is lacking in the bass department so if you really want to hear and feel explosions you can add the Sonos Sub to create spectacular results but that’s going to cost you more than the Sonos Beam Gen 2.
but the Sonos beam Gen 2 still enhanced the audio experience for our TV viewing.
And when just listening to music, it was superb and showed the typical Sonos audio quality.
To enhance the audio quality in your room, you can fine tune the sound with TruePlay using the Sonos app to detect and adapt the speakers sound and optimise it for your space.
The top of the unit also features a microphone array so you can talk to Alexa or Google Assistant and ask it to play music, the radio and find information.
It’s also possible to control your smart home devices using your voice as well.
The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is available now and is priced at $699.
VERDICT
The Sonos Beam Gen 2 will be welcomed with open arms top fans of the brand who want to improve the sound quality of the TV.
