Sonos is a brand that’s known for breaking the mold, having originally done so by being among the first to offer multi-room speaker interoperability. The company continued to push boundaries when it broke into the home theater realm with its first soundbar products; now, rather than breaking the mold again, it’s taking the design of the original Sonos Beam Soundbar to new dimensions with the new 2nd generation Sonos Beam.
Available in either black or white, the 2nd gen Sonos Beam has a similar driver setup to the original, with four full-range drivers and a tweeter powered by five discrete Class-D digital amplifiers. Sonos boasts a new, faster processor than the original Beam, which enables Dolby Atmos support and facilitates virtual surround sound, creating a more immersive experience for your compatible movies.
If that’s not enough, you can expand the Beam with additional speakers such as a pair of Sonos One, One SL, Five, or the PLAY:1, PLAY:3, PLAY:5, or any pair of speakers powered by the Sonos Amp for use as surround speakers and add a Sub to boost the bass for a true home theater feel.
Aside from these enhancements to the surround sound experience, Sonos still kept stereo audio in mind when designing the 2nd gen Beam. Like other Sonos speakers, you can stream music, radio, podcasts, audiobooks, and more via AirPlay 2.
The onboard far-field microphone array uses advanced beamforming technology and multichannel echo cancellation to decipher your voice from anywhere in the room, even while music is playing. This enables simple, convenient voice control via Amazon Alexa, the Google Assistant, and—when streaming over AirPlay 2—Siri via your iOS device.
You can use your iOS device to customize the sound from the 2nd gen Beam with Trueplay technology, ensuring that soundtracks are heard as they should be. The Sonos S2 app enables manual sound customization, including enabling Speech Enhancement for enhanced clarity for times when onscreen dialogue might otherwise be indistinguishable amid other sound effects.
Setup of the 2nd gen Beam is simple; it connects to your TV with just one cable—either HDMI eARC/ARC or optical with the included optical-to-HDMI adapter. From there, just download the Sonos S2 app (if you don’t already have it) and follow the in-app prompts. The soundbar connects to your network via dual-band Wi-Fi 5 or Ethernet.
Which feature of the 2nd gen Beam are you most looking forward to? Is there something missing that you’d like Sonos to add in the next iteration? Let us know in the Comments section, below!
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