Sonos Beam
The small smart speaker that packs an audio punch
£399 from Sonos, sonos.com features Siri and Amazon Alexa voice control, AirPlay 2, HDMI ARC, Ethernet port, Wi-Fi button, 65x10x6.9cm
The emergence of Amazon, Google and Apple in the smart speaker market has forced leading manufacturer Sonos to up its game. So it has launched the Beam, a soundbar with AirPlay 2 functionality. It’s pared down enough to be affordable, but corners haven’t been cut – merely trimmed and tidied.
Setup is simple: a four-dot square on the left for volume down, the same on the right for up and a play/pause button in the middle. Above this is the ability to turn the speaker mic on and off. That mic works with Amazon Alexa and Siri, but Sonos is promising future Google Assistant functionality.
Inside the Beam are four full-range drivers, a centre tweeter and three passive radiators that are there to add to the bass. These drivers work together to help the speaker deliver sound somewhere in between a Sonos Play:3 and Sonos Playbar.
The Beam is designed for three channels, but it can almost make them sound like a real surround sound system thanks to Trueplay, a software feature that calibrates the sound to your room. The magic happens during setup when the speaker asks you to use your tablet or iPhone to ‘scan’ the room, which essentially involves waving your device around while the speaker plays a series of sounds to perform the calibration.
If your TV has an ARC-enabled (Audio Return Channel) HDMI port, setup is a cinch. HDMI ARC allows the Beam to sync up audio and pictures, and have everything working through your TV’s remote in a matter of minutes. The Beam doesn’t come with its own remote – as with all Sonos products, the idea is you use the Sonos app to control volume, link up speakers and the like.
In our tests, we had to reconfigure the Beam so that it would automatically come on when the TV was turned on. The app has some nice features, though. Primary among these are Night Sound, which takes out any booming bass, and Speech Enhancement, which helps with vocal clarity.
Voice control
There is, of course, another way to control the Beam, and that is with your voice. One of the soundbar’s big features is its Alexa and Siri integration.
You’ll need an Amazon Fire TV or Fire TV Stick to get the most out of the Sonos Beam’s voice functionality. If one of these is plugged into your television, then the Beam offers up the power to search Netflix and Amazon Prime just by talking to it.