Sonos Beam  Soundbar Review

The Sonos Beam's soundbar has a fairly plain design, mostly solid plastic. A mesh-like fabric cover surrounds the whole bar, which can get dirty or tear. On top of the bar, there are three touch-sensitive buttons.

This bar doesn't include a subwoofer. However, you can purchase a separate subwoofer to upgrade your setup.

This bar has no satellites, but you can upgrade your setup with additional satellites.

The Sonos Beam is a small and compact soundbar that fits easily between the legs of a 56" TV stand. It isn't very tall, either, so it doesn't block your TV screen unless your TV sits flush against your table.

You can mount this bar to your wall, but the brackets aren't included, so you'll have to purchase these separately.

This bar has great build quality. It's mostly plastic, which feels very robust and solid. Unlike the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), however, it has a fabric cover to protect the drivers instead of a plastic grille. This design choice makes the bar prone to collecting dust and coming loose over time.

• Manuals
• Bar power cable (6.2 ft / 1.9m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)
• HDMI to Optical adapter (9 cm)
• Driver CDs

The Sonos Beam's stereo frequency response is decent. Like many premium bars on the market, it comes with a room correction feature to adjust its sound based on your room's unique acoustics—Sonos calls this feature TruePlay. It's worth noting that this feature is only available on iOS devices.

With room correction on, its sound profile is fairly well-balanced, producing a bright yet neutral sound. Updating the bar to firmware version 14.18 adds some extra emphasis in the treble, too, so vocals and instruments sound crisp and detailed while sibilants like cymbals sizzle. This sound is ideal for dialogue-centric content without a lot of bass, like podcasts and TV shows. That said, like most standalone soundbars, it can't reproduce the deep thump and rumble in the bass range, which can make action-packed scenes and musical genres like EDM and hip-hop feel lacking. You can improve its bass reproduction by adding on Sonos' separate subwoofer, though.

There are bass and treble adjustments in this bar's companion app, so you can customize its sound. With the bass set to '0' and the treble set to '-6', dialogue and instruments become less harsh without losing their detail or clarity. It still lacks the deep rumble in the low-bass, even when you adjust its bass.

This soundbar has a great soundstage. Its side-firing speakers work together with its center channel speaker to produce a soundstage that feels almost as wide as home theater speaker towers. However, you can't disable this setup, and while this soundstage widening effect works well, it feels like the sound is coming from a general area rather than a specific location. If you're looking for a soundbar with a wider soundstage, check out the Bose Smart Soundbar 700.

This soundbar gets fairly loud, so it can still fill an average-sized living room with sound. However, some compression artifacts are present at max volume, especially in the bass range. These compression artifacts persist, even after updating the bar to firmware version 14.18. As a result, cranking up the volume results in a sound that isn't as clean or pure as at lower volumes.

This soundbar's THD performance is decent. There isn't much distortion present at a normal listening volume, resulting in a clear and pure sound. That said, there's a slight increase in THD at max volume, even after updating the bar to firmware 14.18. Distortion is hard to hear with real-life content, but astute audiophiles will want to keep it in mind.

This soundbar is a 3.0 setup with a great center channel performance. It has a dedicated center speaker that improves vocal reproduction overall. Its sound profile is pretty balanced, too, especially in the mid-range, where most voices reproduce. However, updating the bar to firmware 14.18 adds extra brightness to the mix, which you may want to adjust with its treble dial to get a more even sound. Also, it lacks some low-bass, but this isn't noticeable with dialogue-centric content since voices aren't usually reproduced in the bass range.

As expected, this 3.0 setup has a poor surround performance. As a standalone bar, it downmixes everything into a stereo signal while using the left and right speakers to produce its surround sound. It struggles to produce an accurate and clear representation of surround objects like dialogue or individual instruments in an orchestra, which feel like they're coming from in front of you rather than around you. Luckily, as the L/R drivers are on the side of the bar, it can make the surround experience slightly better. You can also upgrade this soundbar with separate satellites to improve its surround performance. If you mostly listen to surround and Atmos content, you'll want to check out the Nakamichi Shockwafe Ultra 9.2Ch, which produces a much more dimensional surround experience.

This setup doesn't support Dolby Atmos content. If you want a small bar with Atmos support, check out the LG Eclair QP5 or the Sonos Beam (Gen 2). There are other standalone bars with Atmos support, too, like the Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 3.

The Sonos Beam doesn't offer a lot of customizability like an EQ or presets, but you can adjust the bass and treble if you like to tweak your sound. There's a dialogue enhancement feature for producing clearer speech and a night mode for adjusting the volume level of different content as it changes. It also offers a room correction feature that automatically adjusts the sound profile to the acoustics of the room it's in, although it's only available on the iOS app. If you want a small soundbar with a graphic EQ, check out the Samsung HW-S60A.

This soundbar has a limited amount of physical inputs. It has an ethernet port and an HDMI ARC in port. While limiting, you can use the HDMI ARC in port with external devices that have an Optical Out by using the HDMI to Optical adapter included in the box. If you're looking for a 3.0 setup with more physical inputs, consider the Bose Smart Soundbar 300.

This bar supports surround sound via its HDMI ARC port. Unfortunately, it only supports Dolby Digital and DTS content, which you'll often find on Blu-rays and streaming platforms. This bar can't play back object-based sound formats like Dolby Atmos or DTS:X.

If you want a small soundbar with a Full HDMI In port, check out the JBL Bar 5.0 MultiBeam.

This soundbar can play back Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound, which is common in Blu-ray discs and streaming media. It uses its Optical out connection via its included HDMI to Optical adapter.

The Sonos Beam has an outstanding latency performance. It has low latency via its ARC and Optical ports, making it suitable for watching videos and movies. Some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience may vary.

Unlike the Vizio M-Series M21d-H8R, this bar doesn't have a Full HDMI In port, so it doesn't support video passthrough to devices such as a TV.

While this bar lacks Bluetooth connectivity, it can connect to external devices using Wi-Fi. Some apps like Spotify have direct support built-in, so you can easily cast your favorite songs from your mobile device. If you have an iOS device, you can also cast using Apple AirPlay. If you have the Sonos app, it connects you to several music sources that you can use to play audio.

This soundbar's interface has two lights. The main light blinks and changes color according to your input source. The second light, found above the microphone icon, turns on when you activate the mic.

The Sonos Beam's touch-sensitive controls are fairly basic, including play/pause, volume up/down, track skipping, and enabling/disabling the microphone.

The Sonos Beam doesn't have a remote. Instead, you can use your TV's IR remote to control the bar's volume if you program it through the app's 'Remote Control Setup' feature. You'll need to download the Sonos S2 app on your phone to access additional features.

This bar comes with Alexa and Google Assistant built-in. There's also a mic mute button on top of the soundbar if you want it to stop listening to you.