hi everyone is jonathan from smart home sounds here we're one of the uk's
leading home audio retailers who specialize in creating content like this
to help our customers find the right speakers for them today we're looking at
the multiple award-winning sonos beam so hopefully this video will help you to
determine if it's going to be the right sound bar for you if you are interested
in finding out more information about it then please check the links below or get
in contact with one of our sonos specialists he'll be happy to help so
let's get into it
the Sonos beam is a smart sound bar released back in July 2018 we've had it
for just over a year now and we're going to be talking about what we really enjoy
about it what we don't so much and ultimately answering the question is it
still the best sound bar under 500 pounds in addition to the Sonos beam, Sonos
also have two other options for TV audio the play bar and the play base and
they're priced at £699 so they were really reserved for people that were
looking for an extra special sound quality something a little bit better
than the average sound bar so we would normally say to customers if you've got
a larger sized living room or you're just in pursuit of the best sound
quality then go for the play bar or play base that's going to give it a better
experience whereas if you've got a small to medium sized living room then the
beam is is really ideal for that at 399 RRP the Sonos beam is still in the
premium end of the sound bar market but it does make access into the Sonos
ecosystem much more affordable and it does make a great first Sonos speaker as
well and if you do have this sort of money to spend on a sound bar its
quality is backed by a couple of awards that it's won such as the WhatHifi 2018
award for best sound bar under 500 pounds and also a t3 award this year in
2019 for the best sound bar and it's also got many many five star customer
reviews as well and it's not only one of Sonos' best products to date it also
dominates the sound bar category under 500 pounds so let's have a closer look
at the Sonos beam then I think as sound bars go that the Sonos beam is a very
stylish product and it's modern design should stand the test of time for many
years to come it's compact and it does address one of
the concerns that its larger sibling the play bar had with the fact that it was
encroaching into the bottom of some people's TV screens when it was lying
flat the beam is slim enough so that you can stand it in front of almost all TV's
with no problems at all so as you can see there's a cloth fabric that goes all
the way around the Sonos beam which hides the grill you've also got the
Sonos logo on the front and on the top you've got a touch control panel and on
there you can play pause you can skip to next track or play the previous track
just by sweeping your finger across you can also volume up and volume down
and you can even mute the microphone as well if you wanted a complete privacy so
you would just tap the microphone symbol like this the mic is muted tells you
that it's been muted and to turn it back on the mics back on there you go so on
the back it's really simple all you've got is a power port and you've got a
pairing button for connecting to your Wi-Fi wirelessly you've also got an
Ethernet port if you want to hardwire directly to your router for a better
connection and then finally you've got an HDMI ARC
input to connect to your TV now let's take a look at the internals of the
Sonos Beam now due to the fact that the end two speakers are pointed outwardly
you do get a surprisingly wide soundstage for a speaker of this size
and under the hood it's got four oval-shaped
woofers now woofers are normally circular in shape but the reason they've
designed them in an oval shape is to be able to fit them in a slim form factor
whilst also retaining great sound quality it's also got three passive
radiators for your bass and mid-range and finally it's got a single tweeter
that sits in the center here for you of your dialogue now I'm going to play a
personal favourite of mine just to show you how wide the sound stage is so hey
Google Play Pink Floyd money
okay playing money 2011 remastered version on Spotify so hopefully you can
see a bit of stereo separation coming across there where it was bouncing back
from the left and the right channels so there's five far-field microphones
built into the Sonos beam and that's so that your voice assistants can hear you
over longer distances or background noise a massive part of the sonos beam
is its voice control so Sonos is the first-ever audio company to provide
users with the choice of voice assistants so you can opt for Amazon
Alexa or Google assistant as part of the initial set up so it all owes to the
promise from sonos that they want to remain an open platform so as well as
using your voice assistant to start playing music on the beam like I
demonstrated earlier you can also use it for general things like news or weather
or traffic or telling funny jokes or stories the list goes on and on so I'll
show you quickly now hey Google tell me a joke okay here you go
I once fell in love with an encyclopedia I was completely "infactuated" not bad
tell me a fun fact absolutely according to NASA astronauts grow up to
3% taller during their time in space I did not know that I learn a lot from the
internet it can also integrate with many smart home products as well so that
includes things like nest thermostats philips hue lights and even security
cameras and many more than this as well so as your voice assistant gets smarter
so does your smart speaker so the great thing about the Sonos beam is that it's
not only a way of improving your TVs audio quality but you can also stream
music to it as well as radio audio books podcasts etc so if you've got a
streaming service like Spotify Apple music or Amazon music or any of the
other 60 music services that's supported on the Sonos app you can actually import
that account into the Sonos app and control it from from that app or some
services like Spotify or Deezer even let you control the music from their native
apps themselves meaning you can continue using the apps that you've always known
and loved the beam also supports Apple AirPlay 2 so if you've got an Apple
device such as an iPad an iPhone or an iPod what you can actually do is cast
any audio from whatever you're watching on your device straight to the Sonos
beam and listen to it that way so it's great for YouTube or any other services
that you like to use regularly this is all made possible by using Wi-Fi as
opposed to Bluetooth so you're free to roam around your home and you don't have
to worry about being out of range from the beam also no calls or push
notifications from your phone will play through the beam so it's a completely
uninterrupted experience as with all Sonos products setup is really easy and
you can have one of these set up in no more than five minutes all you'll need
to do is plug it into the mains power and then connect the beam directly to
your TV's HDMI Arc now if your TV does not have an HDMI arc Sonos do provide
an optical audio adapter which means you can use your TV's optical connection
also known as a digital audio output so any other things that you have connected
to your TV such as Sky Q boxes virgin fire sticks anything like that they can
all output by the beam next all you need to do is download the Sonos app to your
chosen devices and then follow the on-screen instructions you'll be asked
to do things like put in your Wi-Fi password and import any streaming
service accounts you have like Spotify Apple music and things like that the
Sonos beam does not come with a TV remote instead what you can do is pair
your existing TV remote with it because it does actually have an infrared sensor
built-in and I would definitely recommend doing that for a seamless
experience it will also ask you if you want to true play your speaker if you're
using an Apple device now what that means is that it will scan your room for
its acoustics and also adjust the sound so that you're getting the very best
sound for the size and layout of the room all you'll need to do is walk
around the room for a minute holding up your phone or tablet going up and down
with your arm like that you can also choose your preferred voice assistant out
of Google assistant or Amazon Alexa as part of the initial set up but if you
did change your mind and you want to switch to Amazon Alexa or Google
assistant you can do it really easily in the Sonos app at any time now let's talk
about using the beam as part of a surround sound setup now they've
actually made it really easy and really cost effective to get surround sound in
your very own living room so the beam actually acts as your front three
channels so you've got your front center front left and front right and it's
really easy to add a subwoofer or two rear speakers such as play ones or sonos
ones for your rears and then that will create a 5.1 Dolby Digital system all of
these components would then be set up wirelessly as the same room so then all
of your TV audio and your music would play on all of your speakers at once in
perfect sync now Sonos does only support 5.1 Dolby Digital so if you are watching
anything other than Dolby Digital it will output in 2-channel stereo but the
reason that they've done this is because Dolby Digital is still the most commonly
supported codec so giants like Netflix Amazon Prime and many
TV shows still record in Dolby Digital so if you do have a large collection of
blu-rays that are running DTS or Dolby Atmos then maybe the beam is not going
to be the soundbar for you so a couple of other great features to mention about
the Sonos beam is that it's got night mode and speech enhancement so night
mode means that if you're watching TV or listening to music late at night what
you can do is enable it and it will suppress the louder parts of the audio
and in turn bring out the quieter parts of the audio so that you don't have to
worry about waking anyone up in your house speech enhancement enhances the
vocals so if you're hard of hearing or you don't want to have to enable
subtitles it basically brings out all the vocals so you can hear everything
clearly we feel that this is one of the best sales products to date it's able to
combine excellent sound quality with the ease of use with of the Sonos eco system
and being able to combine both music and TV audio all into one speaker really
adds to the experience and makes you take advantage of what's available to you
these days another positive is that you can
wirelessly add a pair of sonos surround speakers for under 700 pounds all in
which is the same price as a play bar or play base so a couple of negatives with
the Sonos beam some people might argue that because it's still only supports
dolby digital this is quite disappointing and I would agree with
that to some extent because Dolby Digital is one of the oldest audio
codecs however it is still popular amongst Amazon and Netflix so it does
depend on the sort of content that you're watching now the beam is more
suitable for small to medium sized living rooms so if you do have a larger
size living room you may want to go for something like a play bar or play base
because it's just able to fill the room a lot better than the beam would be able
to but they do cost 300 pounds more we are aware that there are many other
great sound bars in this price bracket but when you consider the sound quality
and the features that you get as we discussed earlier in the Sonos beam it
is really hard to disagree with the likes of what HiFi and t3 that it is
still the best sound bar under 500 pounds