Sonos Beam Gen 2 Review

The Design

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is exactly the same size as the original Sonos Beam and is available in black or white so you can find what best suits your lounge.

It’s compact size ( 2.7″/6.5cm high, 26″/100cm wide) means that it’s going to fit in most places, including underneath your TV, except for maybe some of the more modern OLED TV’s which tend to sit dead flush with your tabletop. Alternatively there is a wall bracket that allows you can mount it to a wall.

The speakers in the Beam 2 are covered in a polycarbonate grill, similar to what’s on their more expensive Arc soundbar. This addressed one of my issues with the original Beam that had a fabric grill that easily gathered dust and my cat clawed it a few times too! Not an issue with the new polycarbonate grill (on both fronts). So it’s a change I’m happy to see.

Setup

Setting up the Beam 2 is simplicity itself. Just connect the Sonos Beam 2 to an ARC enabled (or preferably eARC enabled if you have it available) HDMI port on your TV. If you don’t have an HDMI port on your TV then you can use the HDMI to optical out adapter that comes with the Beam out of the box, but you do lose out on some of the more advanced features of the soundbar if you connect using it.

After tham just plug it into your mains power and turn it on. Setup then continues via the Sonos S2 mobile app which is available for both Android and IOS devices. You do need to make sure that your mobile phone is connected to the same home wifi network that you want to connect the Sonos Beam to. You can alternatively also connect the Sonos Beam 2 to your network via the ethernet port in the back if you so wish.

Controls

Controlling the soundbar is really where the ‘smart’ part of the speaker really kicks in. You can use the touch sensitive buttons on the top of the soundbar to control your music, adjust the volume, and turn the mic on and off. However, you can also control your soundbar using either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa! You can also control the soundbar using the Sonos app on your mobile phone.

There aren’t too much sound customisation options with the Beam 2 as Sonos is well known for creating well-tuned speakers. There are a few options available though. You can adjust the treble and bass if you want to although I found no need to.

You can also enable a ‘Loudness’ toggle which provides additional bass emphasis, which is great for movies, and it provides more clarity and detail to the sound. So I definitely recommend keeping that turned on.

A ‘Speech Enhancement’ mode makes dialogue easier to hear. Whilst a ‘Night Sound’ mode reduces the intensity of loud sounds while increasing the level of quieter sounds making dialogue clearer to hear without having to turn up the volume. Great for when you’re watching TV late at night and the kids are in bed.

The Sound

The Beam 2 sounds great for its size. Sonos has managed to fit four full range woofers, three passive radiators, and a dedicated tweeter for vocals, into it’s small frame. It also uses psychoacoustic HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function technology) which gives the impression of height without the need for upward firing speakers. It’s not going to compete with a full-blown Dolby Atmos setup with dedicated upward firing speakers, but it certainly presents a sound stage wider and more expansive than it’s size would suggest. There’s a surprising amount of depth here and detail in the highs too.

Audio format support here is good. Some might lament the lack of DTS:X or DTS-HD support, but support for Dolby Digital, Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos and DTS will please most.

It is worth noting that if you use the optical adapter to connect to the soundbar you lose that support for Dolby Atmos as the optical adapter only supports PCM stereo and Dolby Digital. Connecting over an ARC HDMI port gains you support for most Dolby codecs, but if you want Dolby True HD then you need to connect using an eARC HDMI port on your TV.

Making the Sonos Beam 2 sound it’s best can be improved further using TruePlay which works in conjunction with the the Sonos app on your mobile phone to tune the soundbar to the acoustics of your room. It works well but unfortunately is only available for IOS devices. If you don’t have an iPhone then you could borrow a friends for 5 minutes to set it up as you won’t need to use it again if you don’t move the soundbar. If you can’t use Truplay at all though, it still sounds great, it just could sound better.

Taking it further

You can also extend the Beam 2 into a full surround sound system by adding a subwoofer and a pair of rear surround speakers. The Sonos Sub Mini is a great option here to pair up with the Beam 2 for room rattling rumbles. I have that exact setup in my lounge and it’s great! You can also add a pair of Sonos 100 or 300 speakers as your rears to take your home cinema experience even further. What’s great about this is that you don’t have to buy it all at once and so can add to it over time as needs, or finances, dictate.

As it’s a Sonos speaker, it not only functions as a soundbar but also as a media streaming speaker. So you can stream music from all the major streaming music services such as Spotify, Deezer, and even Amazon or Apple Music, straight to the speaker. If you have more than one Sonos speaker in the house then you can play from just a single speaker, a single room, or every speaker in every room in your house at the same time. It truly is a multi-room audio system and one that Sonos has been renowned for for years. So the fact that the soundbar doubles as both a soundbar and a multi-room speaker is an added bonus.

And last but not least, the Sonos Beam also operates as a smart speaker offering support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and their own Sonos Voice Control, but you can only have one voice assistant enabled at a time. The Beam 2 also adds support for Apple Airplay for those who are part of the Apple ecosystem to, although you can’t use the mic on the Beam 2 for triggering Siri.

So should you buy it?

The Sonos Beam 2 sounds great for movies and music. It supports various audio codecs, including Dolby Atmos. Can be added to a Sonos whole home speaker system. Can stream music to it, and can integrate it into your smart home through voice assistant support.

You will not find a better compact soundbar, with more versatility both sonically and feature-wise, than the Sonos Beam 2. For the price of only $449 or £449, it’s a sound bar I definitely recommend.