Customer Ratings & Reviews

We have a fairly large Sonos system at home with various Sonos speakers in just about every room. Some are stationary, some are mobile and some I even take with me when traveling. I love the flexibility to play virtually anything I want on any single or group of speakers. A few years ago I bought a Sonos Beam (Gen 1) for the master bedroom TV. Not only did this improve on the audio of the TV’s typically bad built-in speakers, but the Beam joined my Sonos ecosystem and could also just be bedroom music speaker when I wasn’t watching TV. It worked fine but there was no surround sound - just noticeably better stereo audio. I later added a Sub Mini to improve the audio with 2.1 but it was still just good but not great. Enter the Beam Ultra. It’s a bit wider but still compact enough to fit in my bedroom under the TV. While the old Beam Gen 1 had 5 speaker drivers (4 full-range woofers and 1 center tweeter), this new Ultra model has a whopping 9 drivers including 5 toward the front, 2 towards the sides and 2 that fire straight up for Atmos. It still connects to the TV via HDMI ARC (audio return channel) but now also has a USB-C port for connecting to other local sources. The Ultra dropped the old Beam’s Ethernet port, but WiFi works well enough and saves having to run the cord. Setup was even easier than I remembered from the Beam Gen 1. The app immediately found the new Ultra after it was plugged in and joined it to my existing system. As part of the setup, I was able to link the Sub Mini to it as well. Unlike the old Beam which just fired audio out of its front, this Beam Ultra has top-firing speakers for surround sound like Atmos so placement is a bit more of a concern. It’s best to slide it just a tad forward of your TV so the Atmos speakers have an uninterrupted path to the ceiling for optimal sound. Even if this is your first Sonos speaker, the new app makes it super easy to route nearly any source to your Beam Ultra. Turn on the TV and the speaker immediately switches to TV audio. Our Den home theater setup has a receiver and discrete speakers for a true Atmos surround system and this setup sounds almost as good. Seriously! For some extra punch, you can even link up a pair of Sonos Play speakers as surrounds. The Plays have batteries and a wireless charging dock or you can plug them in via USB-C for power. They are also just wireless Sonos speakers in your system and when linked to the Beam Ultra, they form a “Home Theater” group. You can play surround-encoded music to the group for an awesome listening experience or turn on your TV and now you have a full surround setup with the Plays as back-channel speakers. That alone would be good enough for an amazing listening experience, but this is Sonos and you get so much more flexibility. The Play speakers are wirelessly linked to the Beam Ultra but this link is not permanent. In fact, Sonos built in some cool smarts since the Play speakers are themselves wireless battery-powered speakers. Leave them in the room where the linked Beam Ultra is and they form a Home Theater group for music and TV. Pick up either Play speaker and walk it out of the room, and the two surrounds automatically unlink from the Beam Ultra and return to being individual speakers that you can use anywhere in your home singly or grouped with other Sonos speakers. When you’re done listening to them elsewhere, stop what they were playing and put them back in the room with the Beam Ultra and they automatically re-link back to the Home Theater grouping. Way Cool! But that’s not all! I also have the Sonos Ace Ultra headphones which themselves are great headphones. Building on the prior Ace’s cool TV Swap feature where you could transfer the audio from the Beam to the Ace for private listening and back again with a single button press, the Ace Ultra also can do this swap trick with nearly any other Sonos speaker in your home. This feature is still in “early access” and I found a few times that it had difficulty transferring the audio, but most of the time it worked within 2 seconds of the request and was like magic. Sonos speakers have always enabled easy flexibility in choosing what you want to listen to on each speaker, but this new Beam Ultra just takes that to the max with the audio swapping to the Ace Ultra and the ability to use the surrounds as mobile speakers when you’re not watching TV. Plus, the audio is genuinely impressive for music, movies and TV. It’s especially good if you’re listening at night and don’t want to bother others - just transfer the audio to the Ace Ultra or use the “Night Sound” feature to reduce loud sound variations in the Beam Ultra. If you find yourself straining to hear spoken audio in a movie or TV show, the “Speech Enhancement” feature bumps up the vocals in one of 5 levels of enhancement. If you already have a Sonos system at home and need to improve the audio of your TV, this Beam Ultra will do that and so much more. It sounds amazing on its own, but when paired with a Sonos Sub and a pair of Sonos Plays as surrounds, music and movies become an immersive experience. The new Sonos App makes setup, configuration and daily use a breeze to direct just about any source to any speaker or group speakers for multi-room audio. For my iPhone, the Sonos app now takes advantage of Live Activities and the Dynamic Island to keep what’s playing visible and accessible without even having to open the app. Sonos flexibility really is the secret sauce on top of great sound. Want to have a movie playing in the Den and listen to it while cooking in the kitchen? Easy. Not watching movies on the TV connected to the Beam Ultra? Just pick up one of the surrounds and bring it to the back yard for some ambient music. With very few exceptions, everything just “works” and sounds great doing so. This is so much more than just a great way to improve the sound of your TV. It greatly extends and improves a Sonos ecosystem as well.

The Beam Ultra is a compact compact soundbar, that now does true 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos, and it sounds like a much bigger set of speakers. Setup is easy and worked without issue on a newer LG and HiSense tvs. Plug in the power cable, open the Sonos app, and it walks you through getting it on WiFi. Connect it to your TV with the included HDMI cable (there's an optical adapter in the box if your TV is older). For Atmos you need an HDMI eARC port, so check that before you buy. The app clearly shows when you're actually getting Atmos, which is nice because a lot of soundbars leave you guessing. Placement matters more than you might think. It fires sound in several directions, including up, so it needs some open space around it. If it's sitting on a tv stand, pull it toward the front edge so the sound isn't bouncing off the furniture. Then run Trueplay in the app (you’ll be prompted for that when setting it up). It measures your room and adjusts the sound. The sound quality is even better than the previous Beam (which was excellent). There are more drivers and Atmos in movies sounds awesome. It really does give a feeling of sound coming from all around - with just the soundbar in front of you. One thing I really enjoy is that dialogue is clearer and there is also a speech enhancement setting in the app. Bass is deeper but not overpowering. You might almost think that there is a subwoofer in the room. Of course, adding the Sonos sub makes this even better. This is where the Sonos ecosystem comes into play. Add two Sonos Play or Move 2 speakers and they become rear surrounds. Pick two of the same model in the soundbar settings, set them behind the couch, and the speakers figure out which one is left and which is right on their own. When you want music on the patio, just pick one up and take it with you. Put it back behind the couch and it goes right back to surround duty. That flexibility makes the surrounds a much easier sell than dedicated rears that never move. The updated Sonos app is easier to get around than the last version. It has simple tabs at the bottom, you can pin the rooms you use most to the top, and you can twist two fingers on the album art to change the volume. Lock screen controls work well too. The Beam Ultra is a big step up for a compact soundbar. It's simple to set up, dialogue is excellent, and the bass is strong enough to skip a sub. Add a pair of Play speakers and it grows into a full system without much effort. Easy recommendation.

The Sonos Beam Ultra has quickly become one of my favorite upgrades to my home entertainment setup. It replaced a Beam Gen 1 and it easily integrated with my existing system which uses Sonos One speakers for surrounds. It sounds great whether I’m watching kids’ shows with the family, sitting down for a movie, or simply listening to music. For kids’ shows, the Beam Ultra is surprisingly impressive. Dialogue is clear and easy to understand, which is especially important when watching animated shows where characters can sometimes sound compressed or overly processed through built-in speakers. Voices are crisp without being harsh, while music and sound effects have enough separation to make everything feel more engaging. It gives kids’ shows a much fuller sound without making them unnecessarily loud. Movies are where the Beam Ultra really shines for me. There is significantly more depth and presence than I get from typical television speakers and it is a noticeable upgrade from my Beam Gen 1. Explosions have impact, background effects are easier to pick out, and dialogue remains prominent even when the soundtrack gets busy. Watching action movies, in particular, makes the room feel much more immersive. Music performance is another major strength. I listen to a variety of music, and the Beam Ultra handles everything from vocals and acoustic tracks to electronic and bass-heavy music very well. Vocals sound clean and natural, instruments have good separation, and there is enough bass to make music enjoyable without overwhelming the rest of the mix. I have various solos speaker throughout my home and I route only play music throughout the house. Being able to retain that feature with the Bean Ultra is a huge plus. I was able to add the beam to speaker groupings to ensure specific rooms are playing music while others are not. Setup was straightforward, and the overall experience feels polished. As an iPhone user I followed the steps in the app and walked around the room while the beam tuned itself to the room for optimal audio. Overall, the Sonos Beam Ultra delivers a noticeable improvement over built-in TV speakers while also being a capable music speaker and a great addition to a larger Sonos ecosystem, especially if you're rocking a Beam Gen 1. Its combination of clear dialogue, immersive movie sound, enjoyable music performance, and effortless multi-room integration makes it a very versatile product