Sonos - Beam Soundbar with Voice Control built-in - Black

The Beam is great because it sounds good for movies, music, gaming, and sports. Most soundbars sound good for movies but no soundbar this size or in this price range sounds better for music. To hook it there are 2 wires...one for power and an HDMI to the TV. You can adjust all the settings through the Sonos app. Here are the pros and cons: Pros: 1. Great sound quality. The sound is full and distortion free. 2. Easy to setup. It took less than 10 minutes to get it working with my TV after taking it out of the box. 3. Compact size but powerful. It takes up very little room on my TV stand and it gets loud. I stream video from my Apple TV 4K and Roku Ultra and the sound is clean, vocals are clear, and the bass is full on both streaming boxes. 4. Expensive but worth it. The fact that I can use this soundbar as a speaker to play music when the TV is off adds value over the long term. Software updates also keep the soundbar at peak performance...most other brands can't make that claim. Cons: 1. No Dolby Atmos sound. I do like up firing speakers on Atmos soundbars but in a bedroom without high ceilings you can hear directional sound from left to right. 2. I highly recommend adding a subwoofer. You do get some bass but once you add the subwoofer the overall sound is like night and day. The only problem is a Sonos gen 3 subwoofer is expensive. You can add it later though and it's worth every penny. Soundbars that come with a subwoofer have a subwoofer that sounds like trash and are generally bad for playing music. 3. I wouldn't recommend this soundbar for a living room, den, or any room with high ceilings. The compact size works against it in bigger rooms. Bottomline...this is the best compact soundbar you can buy. You can add more speakers over time to build an even better sound system. I'd easily recommend to family and friends.

My soundbar hunt has been enlightening. Started with an inexpensive vizio 5.1 set up. Really good for price. My main seating arrangement is a powered recliner for 2 set up. The vizio was ideal because of placement options for rear surrounds and sub. The weakness of this set up was always the center channel as its most important for dialogue and the remote I despised. I broke down and bought a closeout samsung top of the line atmos system. After spending too much time researching best hookup method for atmos, etc and experiencing low surround speaker volume for all dolby encoded sources I was just frustrated. The bottom line was I had invested almost 1,100 $ on a system that had too many issues and this is being kind. My main source is a 4k apple tv hooked to a 65" samsung with 1 connect. After watching several atmos movies I was scratching my head. I re-hooked up my 200.00 vizio and watched greyhound off apple tv in 5.1. It was so much more involving than the over 5 times expensive atmos set up that it was almost laughable. Much of this can be attributed to speaker placement and the individual channel adjustments on vizio. Hence I returned the atmos set up and purchased the beam solely to try to bolster my need for a better center channel. System is now balanced and sounds phenomenal. I have arc running to vizio and optical adapter running to sonos. Once properly calibrated my apple tv remote controls both vizio and beam. I would put this system at around 650 up against anything at twice the price. Yes it destroys the atmos set up which in my sincere opinion is a total load of crap unless you have low ceilings and a perfectly symmetrical room which 95% of us don't. I was amazed at how many open box soundbars are available at best buy of all brands. I am a big fan of best buy as being an elite member has its perks. Buy with no risk and there is no way I would buy from anyone else with there service and return policy. The sonos beam is a great 400.00 3.0 speaker. Atmos in my opinion is nothing more than another marketing gimmick in most rooms. Its a step back based on my experience. The beam sounds nice for music also as tested some latin jazz off spotify and sounded very nice with nice clean midrange and highs. Highly recommended for intended purpose.

Growing up in an audiophile home I was very quick to scoff at the Sonos products. But like most young men, I had a young lady start hanging around and my large Klipsch speakers with a “confusing” receiver had to leave the living room. Little did I know that Sonos products were an easy, user friendly, and surprising high quality sounding solution. I bought this Beam first to help keep my setup clean and was so impressed I added two Play1s as my surrounds! Setup was a breeze (no running speaker wires a breath of fresh air) and once I tuned the system I was very impressed with the sound.

Highly satisfied with the Beam. On its own, it is a perfectly capable soundbar which is helped dramatically by the Trueplay tuning system. Decent width of soundstage, great highs and mids (I did boost treble +2 in the app after Trueplay) and the bass is surprisingly good for its size. Now don’t expect miracles - the laws of physics can’t be broken and this can only move so much air. That’s why I paired the sub with it. The Beam+Sub on Black Friday sale was barely more than the Arc, which is what I thought I was getting. While demoing each in store, it was clear that these speakers transform with the sub. The Beam + Sub is way better than the Arc alone, and only marginally below the Arc + Sub. It sounds fantastic as our complete 2 piece home theater and audio system. The magic is in the fact that the speakers change their signal processing when you attach a sub - the highs and mids just explode with more detail as it hands off lows to the sub. This is noticeable at all volumes, no matter how soft or loud. Trueplay lights things up yet again as it all retains a perfect balance in the room. Our living room is 15’x19’ with 18’ ceilings and it all flows with a semi open floor plan to the kitchen. This can fill the space with luxuriously detailed sound and I’ve yet to max it out because above 80% or so, it’s LOUD. I never expected so much. Seriously. Sonos isn’t necessarily great because they make the “best” speakers, they’re great because they make good speakers and do more with them by optimizing to their environment and signal processing. That’s what pros do in the audio world and it works for a reason. We will be sticking with and enjoying our Sonos system!

Purchased the Beam soundbar along with the wireless subwoofer. After connecting the soundbar, we questioned whether or not we even needed the sub....that's just how amazing the sound is from the soundbar. This soundbar far exceeded my expectations and we could seriously have lived without the sub--that is, until after we connected it and experienced the absolutely incredible sound of the two together! And I love the way the soundbar simply 'disappears' underneat our TV! We are hooked! Going back to get a couple of the surround sound speakers next!

For the record, I have 4 pairs of standalone tower speakers by different brands but I don't use them since you need to be hooked to the power plant directly to run them. Sonos does speaker optimization like no other. You can listen to this speaker at 45db (quiet library) average and enjoy all the nuances of the proper recording. Deezer offers you 5 band EQ just in case you are not happy with the Sonos one. So unless you are a bass chaser this does not require the Subwoofer as most other small speakers do. TV aspect I won't even review since it covers a wide gamut of bad broadcast quality. If you are not an "Audiophile" snob you'll agree this is the best bang for the buck.

I was a little reluctant on this system because I was used to the traditional "theater in a box" systems with 5 speakers. I am using this Beam Soundbar with a Sonos subwoofer and only two side speakers. The sound is far better than my old Samsung 5-speaker system. As for the setup ... there are absolutely no instructions other than "download the app and follow the instructions." That is frustrating when the app doesn't find some of the products. It found the subwoofer and the bar but had trouble locating the side speakers. You have to do things in the correct order. I had to delete the app, download it again and start over. When I was finally successful I was pleased but it was frustrating.

We’re a small business Home A/V Installation Service that focuses on practical solutions that are future proofed to a certain degree. Sonos offers ease and practicality with a level of precision like no other. I tell my customers all the time it won’t literally happen but on the level of product comparison; Sonos has the tech and product level that redefines music and could put Bose in their place to out of business. Sonos is to retail shopping what Amazon has done to the world.