Sonos is bringing more firepower to its Beam soundbar with a second-gen model coming out next month. It’ll feature beefier hardware, support for superior-quality standards, including Dolby Atmos, and streaming services. The bar will also come with a slightly higher price tag than its 3-year-old predecessor.
The Beam 2 has five speaker arrays to the original Beam’s three: a center tweeter flanked by four midwoofers and accompanying passive radiators, all backed by Class-D amplifiers which are highly efficient for processing digital signals though they don’t provide the highest fidelity. They should be more than adeuqate enough, though, with the help from a stronger CPU (unnamed, but with four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.4GHz) that can fulfill the Dolby Atmos standard for spatial audio delivery and DTS Surround Sound.
As with its other hardware, Sonos also includes playback adjustment modes including Trueplay to match music to the acoustics of the room, Speech Enhancement, and Night Sounds to even out the difference between loud and quiet elements.
The bar is spec’d to Wi-Fi 5, Apple AirPlay 2, and works with Alexa or Google Assistant. Hard inputs include 10/100 Ethernet, HDMI for audio (Sonos includes an eARC adapter if your TV only does optical HDMI), an IR receiver for remotes, and AC. It can be mounted on a ½” thread.
The Sonos Beam goes on pre-sale October 5 in 34 countries and regions including all of North America, most of Europe, and select markets in the Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The price will be $449, £449, and €499.
The company is also announcing support for the upcoming Amazon-hosted Dolby Atmos Music service as well Amazon Music Ultra HD across its hardware portfolio with streaming at up to 24-bit and 48kHz.
Amazon Music Ultra HD is coming to the following products:
- Amp
- Arc
- Beam
- Connect (Gen 2)
- Connect:Amp (Gen 2)
- Five
- Move
- One
- One SL
- Play:5 (Gen 2)
- Port
- Sub (Gen 3)
- SYMFONISK Bookshelf
- SYMFONISK Table Lamp
Dolby Atmos Music will be on the Arc and Beam 2.
