Sound makes action come to life
What’s better than watching great-quality TV? Being able to hear it well, too, writes Blayne Slabbert.
Watching television is largely a visual experience but you shouldn’t discount the value of good sound to make it more enjoyable.
But great sound can be hard to achieve with today’s slim televisions which tend to forgo front-facing speakers in favour of stylish aesthetics.
That’s why TV reviewers and even television manufacturers themselves recommend buying a dedicated speaker to enhance the quality of your television’s sound.
A few years ago that meant buying a home theatre system with several speakers, a subwoofer and a lot of cables.
Now, if you want a TV speaker you’re better off getting a soundbar such as the Sonos Beam ($699) which recently went on sale in New Zealand.
It’s a standalone unit that sits underneath your television and delivers sound significantly better than your television.
It’s a great product but it does come with some features – such as voice control – that you may not need along with a few quirks.
Design
The Beam is a good-looking piece of tech with a minimalist design. It’s about 65 centimetres long, 6.8cm high and 10cm deep.
If you’re lucky it’ll slip between the legs of your television. If not it can sit underneath or above in a cabinet. It can also be mounted on a wall using a dedicated bracket ($99) from Sonos.
There’s no remote and it only has a few touch controls on top. It comes in black or white.
Using it
The Beam is simple but requires a modern television to work to its full ability. Your television will need an HDMI ARC port which allows it to ‘‘talk’’ to your TV, use features such as voice control (more on that later) and allow you to use your TV remote to control it.
I did find one problem with this setup – the Beam overrides any other sound source. That means if you try to go back to using the TV speakers it’ll automatically flick back to the Beam.
This also means you can’t connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones to your TV as the Beam will take priority and flip back and select itself as the source. The only way to solve this is to disconnect the Beam when using headphones.
If you don’t have an ARC port then you’ll need to use the optical audio port, which is found on most modern TVs. The advantages of doing this are that you can use wireless headphones but the downside is that you can’t use some smart features. It’s also a bit fiddly to set up as you have to use the Sonos app to get the Beam to ‘‘talk’’ to your remote.
Sound quality
I found the Beam’s sound quality to be impressive and it significantly improves on what your TV can produce.
Everything is better: speech is nice and clear and the booms and bangs are full of oomph. If you, like a lot of people, have trouble hearing actors speaking then this will really help.
Lovers of blockbuster movies will also enjoy it as it delivers enough deep bass to make action scenes come to life.
It’s recommended for a small to medium-sized room but our lounge is quite large and it had no problem filling it.
For music, the sound is good enough for most people and a lot better than small Bluetooth speakers. Audiophiles will prefer something more high-end.
Features
The Sonos comes with a few interesting features.
The first is the ability to connect your music service app, such as Spotify or Apple Music, to the Sonos app so you can play music easily through your Beam. This means you don’t need a Bluetooth speaker any more.
The second feature is voice control, which is done via Alexa, Amazon’s digital assistant.
You’ll need an Alexa account but once set up it will allow you to do things such as adjust the volume by just asking.
It works well enough but you’ll need to understand the privacy implications of using Alexa.
You can also connect Siri to use your voice to control your Apple Music account so you can ask it to play certain songs.
Voice control is neat but often it’s just as easy to use the remote or the app.
Verdict
The Beam best suits someone who can make the most of all its features. That means having a TV with an ARC port and a subscription to a music streaming app.
I consider the voice control an added extra which most people won’t use.
However, if you just want a speaker to improve the sound of your TV then the Beam does that really well, too.
So despite a few niggles such as the headphone quirk, the Beam does its core job – producing great sound from your television – very well
Everything is better: speech is nice and clear and the booms and bangs are full of oomph.