Sonos - Beam (Gen 1)
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Reddit Reviews:
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Last updated: Aug 8, 2025 Scoring
Liked most:
8
2
"We moved the 2 small speakers, as you suggested, and that made an immediate improvement. ... I turned center speaker up to 9 and we are hearing everything crystal clear. ... I'm shocked at what a difference this made. ... For now, we are sticking with the Beam."
"perfect dialogue"
"It's really good on the Beam. ... My Arc went to storage mostly because the Beam is cleaner with speech by itself."
15
3
"Once it’s set up I literally never run the Sonos app and I still don’t know why people need to."
"one thing I do really like about Sonos is modular expandability. Start with just a Beam today. Add a sub or maybe add surrounds depending on what ’s important to you. Maybe one day you want better Atmos surrounds and now your old surrounds can be kitchen or bathroom speakers."
"Sonos on the TV (LG vie eARC HDMI, plus paired surrounds) always "just work" and sound great."
25
5
"I still blown away to this day when watching DA content."
"perfect dialogue"
"I use a beam 1 for my pc sound in my office. It sounds really good up close. ... Definitely better than it did from afar when I used to have it in my living room with surrounds."
8
1
"Yep, that spot is just screaming for a Sonos bar."
"For a bedroom will suit 95% of people."
"I live in an apartment and don’t need anything crazy. ... AVR + wiring surround sound speakers just sounds like a hassle for an apartment."
9
1
"Not unless my wi-fi goes out. It’s been incredibly consistent."
"Once it’s set up I literally never run the Sonos app and I still don’t know why people need to."
"I use Spotify. I also have it tied into my Apple TV and PS5. Works great."
Disliked most:
1
5
"He said all I needed was an HDMI cord and no internet was required. He was wrong. ... where I live the internet has a firewall preventing those kinds of things from connecting to it. ... When I had the Beam it did work but only for about 30 minutes at a time before shutting off because it wanted to be set up. ... I also tried the hotspot thing using a friend's hotspot but the beam could not detect it, we then tried my hotspot and setting it up through her phone and it didn't work either so I don't know what was going on there lol. ... It's not a network issue, the network I have has a firewall that prevents things like that and they aren't gonna do anything to change it. ... I can't make changes to my Wifi. It's up to the people who run it which I've asked them before and they said no. ... I decided not to because what was the point in having a smart bar if I couldn't use the features lol."
"Not happy you cannot shut it off without unplugging or disconnecting from WiFi so the soundbar is always on. ... I don want it on all the damn time."
"All Sonos speakers require internet to setup."
0
2
"No bluetooth"
"no pass through"
"no bluetooth"
5
4
"No. The beam Gen 1 does not support virtual surround. It doesn’t even support Atmos."
"It can’t support 5.1 as you DO NOT have surround speakers. ... Negative. Not when the soundbar can only handle 3 front channels."
"The reality is that anyone who wants to be able to support all audio codecs should be using a traditional AV receiver and passive speakers. I have two Beam setups in my home (family room and bedroom), but when we want to watch movies or games with audio in mind we use the rec room with a traditional 5.1.2 setup. Especially when playing Blu-ray discs, it's the only way to guarantee that the audio codecs are supported. ... It's just that I don't expect to be able to use the full suite of audio codecs in that setup."
2
8
"But you really should not buy anything Sonos, they may be bankrupt in some monthes with the app debacle."
"I have a TV setup (beam, one SL, sub mini) and a single other speaker, still problems (new app only, old app works fine)."
"the app sucks"
3
2
"The Beam definitely doesn’t have more bass than the Arc Ultra."
"the beam without a sub on top is also just ok."
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