Sonos - Beam (Gen 2)

I went from a Beam 2 to an Arc Ultra (both paired with a Sub Mini and two Era 300s) and I hear a noticeable improvement in the music I listen to (mostly metal)

It’s amazing, I have mine paired with two play ones as surrounds, it’s just works straight out of the box and doesn’t need any tweaking, but you can if you like. I upgraded from a gen 1 never had any issues.

I got a beam gen 2 first, was always a bit dissapointed on the sound quality on the arc. Beam gen 2 has alot crispier and better sound even if not as may effects . Hope to get that good sound but in a bigger bar with more surround effects

I had normal arc just sold it, arc ultra coming today. Got a beam gen 2 also, sub gen 3, era 300 as surround. Beam gen 2 punch a very clear and powerful sound for that price and its newer then old arc. The sound quality in beam gen 2 is better then Arc but Arc has more effect for atmos/surround. If you dont look alot on movies, tv shows its not worth changing. We usually look 95% on movies, tv shows in my home so easily worth it. The era 300 x2 is also 10 times better for music then arc soundbar. Depends on what you use system for but most people get complete package mainly for movies, tv shows. The bass is very bad in normal arc, so not worth it over beam gen 2 If you want more bass

Got A Sonos Beam gen2, Arc that i sold and now Arc ultra arriving tomorrow, sub gen 3, x2 era 300. After i bought a good router instead of the basic free crap you get from internet supplier i had 0 problems for 2 years. My speakers never lost connection or had any other problems everything worked 100% perfect, i dont use any voice functions though so cant understand what people complaining about it are doing wrong. Im extremly happy with Sonos and only- was that Arc had less crispy clear vocal/dialoge sound then beam gen 2 but seems they fixed it on arc ultra. The app have some- and some + but depends on how and what you will use it for. If you mainly look movies and play playstation 5 like i do 0 problems. Can get small delay sometimes if you play music app and change song

I have a beam 2 and a few Ones dotted around the house Whilst I mostly loathe the Sonos system the beam is actually awesome and the only thing that doesn’t cause me troubles. It has never missed a beat and as it’s plugged directly into TV it works a treat. AirPlay and controlling via Sonos app also seem to be ok. It’s the other speakers in the system that make my fucking blood boil. Daily.

Good point. Thanks for taking the time to explain the subtle improvements of the Sonos Ultra. The Beam Gen 2 is hard to beat in terms of quality and price.

I got a beam gen 2 last week and a sub mini. No regrets.

3 weeks into the Beam 2 and not faced any issues whatsoever, had the symfonisk for comparison when they were launched and was plagued with connection drops which have been fixed. Use it and see if you like it and then decide what you wanna do, don't jump on the bandwagon or off of it by reading reviews or feedbacks. Be your own judge.

I just made the upgrade from the Beam Gen2 to the Arc Ultra. May it depends on your room, your setup and your TV. For me I can say that the upgrade is noteable. The sound is much brighter, better high tones and the bass is stronger. I also moved to a bigger appartment and now I have a larger living room with 25 m^2. but I also have two One SL as surrounds and a Sub Mini for the deeper sounds. Long story short, I definetly would say that you can hear the difference. Brighter sound and the Atmos Effects are clearer. For me it was worth the upgrade. But the Beam Gen2 is still a very good soundbar. If you have the money and its worth to you, go for it. But if you stay with the beam you also won‘t be disappointed.

I would say it depends on your room, your TV and especially your needs. The Arc Ultra is a good soundbar and won‘t disappoint you. If you plan to add a Sub and Rears you can also buy that stuff later, because the system is modular. Maybe listen to one. And maybe compare the Beam 2. I just upgraded from Beam 2 to Arc Ultra. I‘m happy with it. And its good if you want to upgrade to some multi room features in future.

Great review thanks, Era 300s aren't an option in my room , don't have space for them and the sofa is right up against the back wall. Currently have a beam gen 2 (with sub mini) and not impressed with the atmos performance and hoping the ultra might address that but it's not a cheap upgrade. I was planning on getting some ikea symfonix picture frames for rear surrounds as I like the aesthetics (and they sound decent enough by all accounts) but I gather they aren't compatible with the ultra. Could possibly find space for the era 100s but ideally I think I'd prefer up just have the ultra and hope it creates a decent enough atmos soundfield with movies to tick that box , and Atmos music would be nice as well.

Had an arc ultra for 24hrs and sent it back, preferred the beam gen 2 , I didn't like the sound from the arc ultra especially with music, the beam gen 2 sounds nicer to me

Tienes la Arc o la Arc Ultra? Porque también noté algo más de bajos en la Beam 2 comparando a la Arc de primera generación, mejor relación costo beneficio. Pero menos separación de sonido por su reducido tamaño y cantidad de drivers

Agreed. Beam 2 good. Huge upgrade from what I had before. No issues about 6 months in. Yes app bad, but you’re mostly gonna use it for good sound out of your TV right? The upgrade is legit if you’ve never had any other than TV speakers. You will be happy. Also app bad but Beam has voice control and that for me has always just worked.

This sounds like a reasonable upgrade of sound experience if that was what you were looking for. It was never going to be 100% better. The Beam 2 is totally underrated, anyway.

Beam 2 owner here with one rears and sub mini. No issues at all. Love my set up. Yeah there was some minor issues with the app but honestly the only reason I go on the app is to lower the eq or check if Atmos is on No regrets!

If you are going to compare, you would compare it with the arc, not the beam.

The Q990 and Beam Gen2 are in two completely different categories.  I own a Q930 and Beam Gen 2.  The only reason I even have the Beam Gen2 is because it was on sale for $250 and I was trying to maximize value for dollar for a spare bedroom and needed something physically smaller to attach to the underside of a wall mounted tv. 

Sonos beam 2 A sub mini - pair of 100s. Sounds amazing!!

I've recently bought the sony bar 8 with sub & rears and regret it massively(for my bedroom) I wish I bought the sonos beam gen2 along with another era100. Despite the shitshow of an app the sound quality is great

Beam 2 is a really good one for smaller rooms A friend of mine has Beam 1 paired with 2 ikea bookshelves and at times I envy how good it sounds for the price. So you won’t regret buying Beam 2. Be mindful though that some people report issues (with LG TVs mostly) when switching between HDMI out to Sonos soundbars and Bluetooth headphones. I personally never had any problems, using Bluetooth headphones several times a week for years in my setup (Arc-based full set plus Sony TV)

It will be a notable improvement over the arc as a stand alone sound system, aside from that any other sonos system with sub and rears will remain a much better option than ultra alone. Also I predict ultra plus sub and rears will be a really minor upgrade from the same setup with regular arc, similar as the latter showing very little to no improvement except for a bit better soundstage over the equivalent system with a beam 2 instead.

With sub and surrounds the only noticeable difference between the regular arc and beam is just a slightly better soundstage and nothing else, wouldn't be surprised that the ultra isn't a worthy update...

If you already have the sub mini and 2x era 100s, the beam gen 2 would be a perfect fit. I have that exact setup in my room and love it!

I haven't tried it alone, but paired with the mini sub and era 100's, i was pretty satisfied with the sound, and I would say it filled the room.

I have used a Sonos Beam Gen 2 and a Samsung S60D with my 48" LG C4. I kept the Samsung with the TV for slightly better dialogue clarity, and use the Sonos as a table speaker for the slightly better music. The Samsung lets me Chromecast music without needing the TV on, Sonos would require me to use the Sonos app. I agree with what rtings.com has written about both of them (they are both good). The Sonos app issues were irrelevant to anyone just using the beam connected via HDMI ARC. The Sonos app is better than the Samsung/Smart Things app, but once I had them set up I didn't really need to use the apps anyway. If I had a 65" TV I'd be looking for a Sonos Arc Ultra, but there are probably lots of people upgrading to that and selling their older but still very good original Sonos Arc bars.

Yup. I haven’t tried the Ultra yet, but the Beam IMO was a much cleaner sound. Especially with music which for whatever reason the arc struggles with.

I have a Sonos Beam Gen Two which does a decent job, don't feel the need to upgrade from that.

Quality Atmos and soundbars are kind of opposites so the high end recommendations are really not far off. Maybe a Samsung q800c with some 9200s rears. Probably above budget. Sonos beam 2 with Sonos era 100s and a mini sub. Expensive but decent. Not really for Atmos though. Sony a5000 with sw3 sub and rs3 rears. I honestly quite like that Sony setup. But with all those prices and extra pieces you may as well just get the q990c and call it a day. You may not be using all the power there, I doubt most people have it past volume 25/100, but you'll be enjoying it a lot. And at basically the same price or cheaper on sale given everything is packaged in together. Otherwise grab the lg s95qr which is probably cheaper. Solid performance for the price, like the 990c lots of height channels. Just worse performance than the 990c almost across the board. Maybe more bass ironically but that can be turned down.

Go for a Sonos Beam gen2, sounds perfect for what you’re looking for

Great post. I can relate to the journey in that I followed a similar path from the original Playbar to Sonos Amp to the original ARC — with a several years frustrating flirtation with HomePods — to my current setup up with the Beam Gen2 + Mini Sub. I was never impressed with the ARC and it just didn't cut it for music. The Beam was/is amazing as a music and TV staple. Our great room isn't conducive to surrounds though I've got a new Era 100 in my office and love it. Our TV is built into the wall and at eye level which is where TVs ought to be (no over-the-mantle-mounting for us). The Beam is under it and fairly low — not ideal but I used the bracket to extend it out into the room slightly. Still, I wanted better music since we listen to a lot of music. So, I sprung for a new Five (I owned a pair of the original Fives which I sold earlier in the journey.). My setup is now perfect. The single Five is more than adequate for music and you've made the case for the Beam Gen2. First time I've felt like I don't need to tweak any more — at least for awhile.

I'd pick the sonos. That being said you won't regret either one. Both sound great, but the bose surrounds are dated as fck if you ever intend to expand. Best thing bose has is that awesome sub which I think blows Sonos sub out of the water.

I had the Sonos beam gen 2 with a sub for years until I upgraded to arc ultra it’s the best bang for your buck.

If you’ve never had a bar before.. get the arc , use it for 2 years, grab the ultra on a sale or on its way out with a price drop :) No point fomoing.. you’ll never land on one thing if you keep fomoing. Arc is now at a good price drop.. better still get a used arc and used sub 3 and enjoy. My philosophy is to never pay retail for any product. I always wait for the iPhone to launch to get one or two gen older iPhone fresh from the store with a 30-40% price drop. Still enjoy better tech than I did before.. still keep my warranty and consumer law rights, and then the next best thing is not the best any longer.. I grab it :) Had a beam 2 for 2 years. Sold it off for the same price I bought it 3 weeks ago.. got a discounted arc new from the store. :) happy camper. Wider sound stage etc.. waiting for the ultra to now go on sale , and enjoy my new arc until that happens :)

I made the jump from the Beam Gen 2 to the Sonos Arc Ultra last night, and I wanted to share my experience so far. Set up: two 6" Sonos ceiling speakers and a Gen 3 Sub, paired with an 85" TV in a larger living room. So, naturally, I was expecting a world of difference with the Ultra. After a few hours of use, I was ready to be blown away. But if I’m being honest, the differences aren’t as drastic as I had anticipated. Here’s the scoop: Dialogue Clarity**:** This is where the Arc Ultra shines. Conversations are crisp and clear, which makes a huge difference. Fuller Sound**:** The overall sound feels more robust in the room, and I do appreciate the added depth during music playback and action scenes. It’s definitely an upgrade in terms of spatial audio, it is a significantly larger speaker after all. For my average ear, I feel like the main takeaway is that I could have lived with the Beam Gen 2 and still enjoyed a solid audio experience. I guess my main disappointment is that I expected a much louder speaker than my Beam. But maybe that Beam is just that good. If you have a similar setup to mine, you might find the improvements subtle overall; more like a nice refinement rather than a night-and-day difference. But if you’re satisfied with your current setup, you might not need to rush into an upgrade. I gotta say, setting it up was a breeze. As mentioned in other posts, I had to disconnect the surrounds and sub from my previous soundbar first, but I had no issues at all, which was surprisingly smooth.

My thoughts exactly. Very underrated soundbar.

Yes. I felt that too. I expected the Ultra to be much louder than the beam, which is not the case. Did you have the same impression ?

I just added a sub mini to my beam 2. Set up got so good you might not have to upgrade the bar, depending on your room size and layout. Honestly I was surprised how good it was compared to my arc ultra and dual sub set up

I got a Sonos beam gen 2 and it’s honestly pretty great especially with the voice enhancement feature… it’s probably not the cheapest solution but damn if you just want a single soundbar this is the fucking one man.. I’ve never been wowed by a soundbar like the Beam… it’s crazy good! Packs such a punch! It gets so loud I don’t think I’ve ever went above 70 volume lol HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend!

Sounds great on my Sonos Beam gen 2 as well lol

Check FB marketplace. Lots of soundbars are available on it because people are constantly upgrading. I got a Sonos Beam Gen 2 for $200 and I’m thrilled with the performance for the price. I would have went with Bose 600 if it was the same price in my area. Also remember you don’t have to get a crazy priced soundbar if you don’t have the space for it. With my small den the beam works great. (I am constantly looking for a cheap sub mini though)

I got a Sonos Beam Gen 2 for $200 off FB marketplace. (They were listed for more, I just sent $200 offers until someone took it) You can also find a Bose 600 for around $175.

Sonos Beam Gen 2 ✅

Well … this post resulted in me walking 30 minutes to BestBuy and buying a Sonos Beam Gen 2. Spent ages comparing it to the Bose Smart Soundbar 600, and ultimately it came down to three factors: * I live in a studio apartment. For the time being (and for the sake of my neighbors) I don’t need/want a Sub. If the day ever comes that I want a Sub, the Sonos ecosystem appears to be more expansive. * I read multiple reviews that say the Sonos app is consistently more reliable than the Bose app, which does actually impact user experience even if it’s minor * I preferred the buttons and look for the Sonos

Idk man. I wouldn’t call myself a true chronically-on-Reddit audiophile, but I do appreciate sound quality. I recently moved to my first apartment on my own and got an amazing deal on a Beam 2.0 for $200 on marketplace. At that price, for my small living room, and for how much little space it takes up, the package is unbeatable. That’s all to say, the title of this post feels a little extreme. It’s an easy and compact way to get halfway decent sound without having to deal with amps and freestanding speakers. I wouldn’t put it in a proper home theater, but I think it really depends on what you’re expecting and how big your room is

Go with q990d. I have sonos beam gen2 sub mini and 2xera100 s. Its really good and for my smallish living room they look nice design wise and not overtaking the room. But if your space allows it (samsung bar aand subwoofer are quite chunky) you ll be mega happy. All these systems are good but 2x money doesnt give you 2x performance difference. Diminishing returns

Depends on what you wanna do with your system and what’s your money situation. With many things in life, there is a diminishing returns thing going on in soundbars and hifi sound systems as well. I listened to samsung q990d at my friend’s house. We watched lots of atmos scenes and i was impressed. At the moment it’s cheaper but when 990f is out original price of sonos and samsung will be closer. In uk atm, 2.5 times more expensive, that is sonos. I dont have arc ultra but recently i swapped my 100’s and 300s , so now i have a beam gen2 and era300’s as surround. I was blown away. The bass, wide soundstage and height effects were truly impressive and i gotta say better than q990d surrounds. Is it 2.5x better ? Probably not. And that’s the personal choice. I say if you have the cash try sonos. Even better if you buy both, try and return the other one would be the thing to do. I also have a small living room and samsung bass and and shape of soundbar is not appealing to me. I am considering to get arc ultra for wider soundstage and height effects. Modularity of sonos system to me another amazing selling pount if you wanna have more speaker at the house. Last thing i’d say, when i moved 100’s to my bedroom, i was equally impressed how much sound, clarity and bass they produced as a stereo.. sonos does great speakers. App thing wasnt fun at all, i was a lucky one probably because of my more modern router.

The Beam 2 +100s +mini sub is the way to go for a small system.

Have a Sonos Beam 2 that works out of the box flawless with the Apple TV. As long as your TV supports HDMI CEC you can control the Apple TV / Sound bar volume + muting through the ATV remote. Note: a lot of people will say to pass on Sonos rn because of the app update fiasco, but I don’t use any other Sonos products so it hasn’t been an issue. Rarely ever open the app unless there’s a firmware update for the device itself.

Sorry, should have been more specific - the beam gen 2 is the only speaker/piece of equipment I’m using with my Apple TV - not in a surround sound setup.

My bad, didn’t realize it was about the built in. I absolutely see atmos and 5.1 content. Screenshots below. First is ‘Leave the World Behind’ on Netflix app, second is an episode of ‘Love is Blind UK’ on Netflix app, and third is a random song from a Spatial Audio playlist on Apple Music, fourth is the toggle in the new Sonos app incase you missed it. https://i.imgur.com/sm5thuS.png https://i.imgur.com/ezteZUP.png https://i.imgur.com/I3OzFP1.png https://i.imgur.com/EMtYJw9.png

i bought a beam last night even though i'm supposed to be on a new sonos product hiatus... it sounds so much better than my arc ultra lmfao. for a 3rd of the price. it has the playbar sound signature which i consider one of sonos' best. warm, loud, yet bright

Sonos arc or flexus core 200. I was in the same boat wanting just a sound bar and went with the beam gen 2. Returned it after a week, vocals are great and direct, but lacks depth, satisfaction. Made me appreciate bass more after that. Sonos arc @$600 is better then the core 200 @$400-$500. If you want to add a sub down the road, Sonos subs are expensive. The core will allow you to add 3rd party subs.

Sonos Beam gen 2 or 600c, avoid those d60 from Onn or those cheap ahh ultimea bars.

Arc is designed to also be used without a woofer so its speakers are tuned accordingly. Hell, even a beam gen 2 sounds great lol because samsung is counting on always having the included subwoofer to sound along the other speakers. But the current situation with sonos app is not a good look for the company as of now. The beam and era 100s i had on my room was able to play movies fine but if you ever tried to play music with their (previously) amazing app with included stream services like Apple Music to play Lossless isnt currently working right, era 100s get disconnection errors all the time... So yeah, pricewise 990 series aint getting beaten anytime soon. Sure, Sonos ultra inmersive setup will sound better, for the money it fucking should.

I have a Beam gen 2 and I’ve been nothing but happy with it. I started with the soundbar and eventually added surround speakers and a subwoofer. I have not noticed the issues you speak of so I don’t know what to tell you. What I can say is that no matter how good a product can be, you won’t be happy if you are constantly looking for issues.

I didn’t have the arc and went from the beam gen 2 to arc ultra paired with sub and 2 era300’s and oh my what a difference

2 Sonos Fives > 2 Era 300s> 1 Sonos Five > 2 Era 100s > Sonos Arc Ultra > 1 Era 300 > Move 2 > Beam Gen 2 > 1 Era 100 > Sonos Arc >       (2x) Ikea Symfonisk Bookshelf speakers >                           Roam. This would be my ranking for music. 

The Beam Gen 2 has a lot of fans here, especially for music. I only tested the Beam Gen 1 and was a bit underwhelmed, though it was still better then the Arc for Music. The Arc Ultra does great however, due to a better speaker arrangement and Sound Motion which gives a much better transition from  low-frequency to high-frequency. This is noticable especially for music and gives the Ultra the edge (vs the beam, which excels with its mids).

I’ll wait for reviews. Happy with my beam 2 since I got an optical HDMI cable for it. The Arc made dialogue too difficult to hear for me. I’m the type of ADHD person that can not focus on dialogue easily and the beam has been a godsend. If this arc fixes that for me, maybe I’ll upgrade next year (still have ones as surrounds so the height channel won’t matter to me anyway, but the extra stereo separation of the arc was nice)

The beam 2 sounds clear, while the arc sounded muffled for me.

Very clean setup, love how you hide all the wiring. I recommend Sonos systems. I have Beam 2 paired with sub mini and it sounds great.

Yeah I’ve switched from the beam 2 to the arc ultra and the ultra is better in every way - especially bass. Beam 2 was great though

Just got a C4, and paired it with a Sonos Beam Gen 2. I love it, very impressed with the Atmos capability.

It depends, I wanted a easy and wireless setup and I went with a Sonos Beam Gen 2 and 2 Era 100’s as sorrounds and I can’t complain. Very good sound and very immersive.

It depends, I wanted a easy and wireless setup and I went with a Sonos Beam Gen 2 and 2 Era 100’s as sorrounds and I can’t complain. Very good sound and very immersive.

Thanks for that. What's the biggest different in sound quality between the two? Big change in bass? I have Beam gen 2 which I love, and will move it to bedroom wall mounted when my arc ultra plus sub gen 4 come.

I'm running a Beam (Gen 2) with a Sub Mini and two old Play:1 satellites and honestly, it's as good a set-up as I could hope for. I have a small living room, rarely ever get louder than 50%, and this system does nearly everything I ask of it. (My only wish is that it had more flexibility in terms of added HDMI inputs, but that's a common complaint.)

Yes, just the Beam Gen 2. And I'm very happy with it, probably because (A): I've never had a proper sound system before, and it's much better than my tv speakers, which is what I used prior to getting the beam. And (B), my home theatre is in my fairly small living room, so I don't need a bigger speaker that much. The only thing I feel like I'm missing is 3d sound, which is why I want to get some rear speakers. I'm thinking probably Era100s.

Depends on how much you want to spend and the real quality and feature. Personally I use Sonos sound bars as they perform well and support other features like music streaming. I have a 65 inch oled in my living room with a Sonos arc which plays atmos and music. I did also have to get the Sonos sub to pair with it but it sounds great. I have also used a beam 2 on my basement tv/gamer oled with sub and it does a good job. I did add rear speakers in my basement for around but you don’t have too. My upstairs tv only has arc and sub and sounds great. I did add rear have the new arc ultra coming which is rumored to have internal base now and in some rooms would allow you to forgo buying a sub.

The Sonos speakers work great with my lg and previous Samsung. For 500 it will be hard to get more than an arc or beam 2. With a sub probably more like 800 to 100 on used market. Maybe a mini sub and sound bar might dip into your range. For small area beam 2 will work but for best affect the arc is my choice. I like Sonos as they are good but the ability to stream music or Apple airplay is my main reason for them over a higher end wired setup.

Arc is bigger has more speakers and directional firing. Beam 2 does more of a virtual atmos. It is the speakers and atmos that set them apart. Also the arc is much bigger. I love my arc and have had it since launch but I have an arc ultra on the way so looking forward to trying it out. I do like my beam 2 though mostly used for gaming but it does a good job especially for its size. I got my beam 2 open box about a year ago for 350. Here is direct price to help guide you shopping as local markets should be cheaper. https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/entertainment-set-beam-sub-mini-black?utm_campaign=rta_sonos_pmax_us_feed-only&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_content=rta_sonos_pmax_us_feed-only&utm_term=&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADo4HCezxpvEy42lTwNZh7Kh6SXjx&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIocTsoaDYiwMVPzbUAR2OdgDcEAQYAyABEgLhR_D_BwE

I use a sonos beam 2, 2 er100 and sub for my lg c4 77. It works well and even though I would like an arc, I couldn’t rationalize tue cost vs beam 2.

Arc and a beam2 have been the least of my issues they seem to always work with the tv. It is paring with other speakers etc. that gives me issues.

I had both and I am very very underwhelmed by how arc plays music. Beam 2 sounded better (at least for my ears)

That's very sad of the Arc ultra because I have the beam gen2 with a mini and IMO music sounds pretty bad with it. TV good. Music bad.

So funny...about 2 seconds ago I made a post very similar to yours about how now owning the Arc Ultra makes me appreciate how good the Beam Gen 2 is. I'm defintely keeping the Arc Ultra for the soundstage and overall sound width but messing around with the Arc Ultra honestly shows how good the Beam Gen 2 is. I'd peg the Ultra as 30% better than the Beam Gen 2 but a lot of that boils down to soundstage which is table stakes since the soundbar is double the width anyways. Overall, if someone asked me what Sonos soundbar to get, I am absolutely still putting the Beam Gen 2 into that conversation. For the price of the Beam Gen 2, I think it outpeforms the price of the Arc Ultra. The Beam Gen 2 is one of those rare products where the price feels cheaper than the performance it delivers. Again, very happy with my new Arc Ultra but the Beam Gen 2 is shockingly close.

Just received my Arc Ultra yesterday which replaced my Beam Gen 2 as the anchor to my surround setup (Era 100's and Sub Gen 3). Coming from a Beam Gen 2, the Arc Ultra is absolutely amazing. The width, the soundstage, and the clarity of details is phenomenal. The room where my Arc Ultra is now located (basement) is perfect acoustically as I have low ceilings so the Atmos really gets a nice space to play with. Upstairs (family room) we also have a another Sonos setup with a Beam Gen 2, Sonos One SL's and Sub Gen 3. Long story short, all I have known is the Beam Gen 2 from having it in two rooms of my house. I've always had the itch to upgrade purely for a wider soundstage, but last year or the year before, I felt that I was a little too late in the Arc's lifecycle to upgrade since a new one was likely around the corner. Well, here we are and I now have the Arc Ultra and it was well worth the purchase, even just for the width and soundstage. I really put the Arc Ultra through it's paces yesterday of Atmos Content, Multi-Channel 5.1 PCM, Music (Atmos and Regular Tracks), and a variety of other content. The speech enhancement is brilliant on the new Arc Ultra with the "medium" setting either equal to or slightly above the Beam Gen 2's clarity. The "high" setting is razor sharp dialogue, so much so that I had to turn it off and go back to "medium". For anyone wondering if the dialogue clarity is good....it's so good you likely won't need the top speech enhancement setting. Atmos content is Atmos content is so I don't need to go into how amazing it sounds on the Arc. What impressed me more was the detail on Multi-Channel non Atmos movies. I watched Casino in 4k which I've seen easily over 50 times. The amount of ambient detail when DeNiro is walking around the Casino was audio I've never heard before watching that movie. Background chatter, slot machine noises in the distance....the Ultra makes all of that come alive through the various channels. The reason for my subject title is because now owning the Arc Ultra, it simply reaffirms how good the Beam Gen 2 is and how it absolutely punches above it's price. I'd say the Ultra is about a 30-35% jump from the Beam Gen 2 but certainly not more than that. If you don't have a soundbar in general and have purchased the Arc Ultra, your socks will be completely knocked off. If you already own a Sonos product, it's certainly an upgrade but again, to the tune of about 30ish%. Overall, now owning the flagship Sonos soundbar, I can confidently say the Beam Gen 2 is the best overall Sonos product when you look at performance coupled with price. It's an absolute steal of a product. Yea you lose width and soundstage and the Atmos is virtualized....but frankly I have found some virtualized Atmos scenes that sound better than real Atmos scenes. For example, one of the opening scenes of Blade Runner 2049 shows a top down landscape of the world below and within 5 seconds of that scene, an aircraft fly's overhead. To me, that scene sounded better virtualized on my Beam Gen 2 with the Era 100's kicking in than with the Arc Ultra + Era 100's. I did not expect that. Other than a few Atmos virtualized scenes that to me sounded better, the only other thing that sounds worse on the Ultra is Dolby Atmos music played through Apple Music specifically through an Apple TV 4k (yes, i know this is an ultra specific case). When I played Dolby Atmos through Apple Music on my Apple TV 4K with the Beam Gen 2, it was truly an "experience". On the Ultra, it doesn't just sound bad...it sounds horrible. However, if you airplay music off the app on your phone to the Ultra, it sounds amazing. You lose Atmos this way, but at least the music sounds fantastic. Overall - the Arc Ultra is the best performing Sonos soundbar to date and it does sound quite fantastic. On the other hand, for the price and performance, the Beam Gen 2 simply cannot be beat. With that said, if you have the money and the space, go with the Ultra for the best of the best. If you end up with a Beam Gen 2 for whatever reason, just know you are not missing as much as you'd think. That's my two cents...

I have 2 full Sonos surround setups (family room & basement) - Beam Gen 2, Sub 3, 2 Era 100s - Arc Ultra, Sub 3, 2 Era 100s It’s a lot closer than you’d think in terms of soundstage and sound quality. The Ultra setup wins but we are talking about a 20-30% difference. I made a post when I got the Ultra that by now owning the Arc Ultra, makes me appreciate how good the Beam Gen 2 is.

Soundstage and punch. A soundbar that long gives you more of a 2 separate speaker feel purely based on its length. It also has more drivers so objectively, you’ll hear more sound pumping through. I absolutely love mine but I also love our Beam 2 setup as well. The Beam 2 room doesn’t feel like a downgrade, it just feels different (sound coming from a smaller package but really really good sound at that)

I was disappointed with my beam 2 initially. I have a bunch of Ones and the sound was much better on ones. I ended up getting a sub mini to pair with beam 2…the sound improved drastically. Unfortunately, the beam 2 just isn’t great as a stand alone…it needs the sub.

app is fine now. go for beam 2

I have a Sony hta5000 and Sonos arc which both kick ass. Highly recommend both. Prefer the Sonos to the Sony but you can’t go wrong with either. A Sonos beam gen 2 is a good, cheaper option to the arc as well.

Have both, as good if not better, probably better to be honest but I've had very little time with my arc ultra so far, watched half an hour of movie before work. Very happy with it so far, I replaced my arc with it.

If you want a sound bar without a sub, the best option is Sonos beam 2 or Arc/ultra. But if you want better sound, a sub is always needed. Connecting a sound bar via Bluetooth is a waste of time and money. Bluetooth connections are never reliable, and if you want to maximize a sound bar, it has to be connected via eArc. Bluetooth will give you only Stereo PCM at best, but you won't get Dolby Digital or Atmos. I would skip the sound bar in your case and buy a better TV with the saved money. But if you're set on it, then you'll have to buy a HDMI switch to keep an HDMI eArc port open .

Last month I've came from a original Beam 1 to the original arc. Sub gen 3 and one's for surround sound. Now sound is so subjective, but after playing with equaliser and voice settings: 1.5.1 is much better than before, larger sound stage with effects filling the room. This is from Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus and TV programs in Dolby 2.0 2.Atmos is great and compared to the Beam 2 that I listened too in demo, sounds better and not stimulated. 3.Never had issues with dialogue with speech enhancement on. Maybe because I sit closer to the TV or something, but I don't regret getting the Arc. I'm planning to get the Era 300s setup soon. The Beam 2 is an excellent speaker that punches above it's weight. However, it does fall down on Atmos, which is one of the main reasons I went with the arc. I also didn't want to go with the Ultra as I didn't want to pay that money for a soundbar!

It's funny. For me it was different. I went from TV speaker to beam Gen 2 and was impressed. Then my Dad got a cheaper but not bad "Dolby Atmos" Soundbar. I realized that the true secret sauce is Trueplay. That is what's makes the Sonos Bar better Imho. Overall, if you want to have better surround while not spending to much money, get a pair of Ikea Bookshelves and use them as surrounds. Your Beam will then have more headroom as it doesn't need to simulate the rears anymore

It's funny. For me it was different. I went from TV speaker to beam Gen 2 and was impressed. Then my Dad got a cheaper but not bad "Dolby Atmos" Soundbar. I realized that the true secret sauce is Trueplay. That is what's makes the Sonos Bar better Imho. Overall, if you want to have better surround while not spending to much money, get a pair of Ikea Bookshelves and use them as surrounds. Your Beam will then have more headroom as it doesn't need to simulate the rears anymore

Arc + sub is pretty sick for music. Better than the Beam 2 I use in the dining room, but it beats the Arc without a sub hands down. Old Playbars still crank out tunes if it’s placed right. I have one almost on floor level on the bottom of an open tv stand (Samsung Atmos soundbar above it on shelf 2 for TV) and it BOOMS, but another Playbar on the wall above a TV does not. Arc Ultra with 300s and Sub 4 is best, but I have a couple 300s alone in the kitchen and music room which are really nice and of course the Move 2 is great but not as great as everything else listed.

Return it and buy the Arc Ultra. Much better. Add era 300s for surrounds and it’s the best you’ll get with Sonos. EDIT: Y’all Beam 2 owners are funny downvoting this. I have both so I know the difference. So do lots or review sites like this one [https://www.the-ambient.com/versus/sonos-arc-ultra-vs-sonos-beam-2-soundbar-comparison/#:\~:text=During%20our%20review%2C%20we%20were,and%20it%20offers%20a%209.1](https://www.the-ambient.com/versus/sonos-arc-ultra-vs-sonos-beam-2-soundbar-comparison/#:~:text=During%20our%20review%2C%20we%20were,and%20it%20offers%20a%209.1). https://preview.redd.it/2zbhr7vd4are1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b9074aa5870bd1ecf6ef461a1276bf3675a42802

Very noticeable difference in clarity between the arc and ultra. For our aging ears spend the money on the ultra. I have 2 of each and there is a difference you can appreciate.

I went with the Beam 2. Costco has a free mount and $50 apple gift card as added bonuses.

The Beam gen 2 is awful on it’s own. When you say ”all in one”, does that mean no subwoofer? Because a soundbar that sounds great without a standalone sub just simply does not exist.

Alright, I can’t remember how the S50A sounds (or even if I’ve listened to it haha), but I’ve listened to the Sonos Beam (gen 2) and Bose 600 very recently. Was really not impressed by them, but that might be my nitpicking too. With a gun to my head, I’d say the Bose 600 or 900 might sound a bit better without sub. The soundstage feels bigger than the Sonos due to the up-firing speakers. Just a note: while Dolby Atmos-compatible, the Sonos as a standalone is a 5.0 soundbar, it does not have speakers for the height channels.

How is the dialogue compared to the Bose? I have the Bose Ultra that’s I can still return. I tried the Beam Gen 2 and Q990C and the dialogue on the Bose beats them hands down. If the Arc Ultra can come close to it, it may be worth trying it out.

I have the Bose Ultra and it is indeed excellent for dialogue. It’s a bit more than what OP is willing to spend though. The lower model (550/600/Smart) is also quite good. I think for Black Friday the 550 was selling for about $200. I tried the 600, Ultra, Q990C, Arc Ultra, Beam 2 and ultimately kept the Bose Ultra mainly for the dialogue clarity.

I have two beam gen2, 2 era100, 2 one sl and a sub mini and have had virtually zero problems with them. Once in a great while I've had to unplug and replug the era 100s but that's it.

I have a beam 2 with other speakers and have had no issues with it… people come to Reddit to complain. You may never have these issues before you over think.

Hey bro. Don’t listen to him. He just another delulu hater. Sonos absolutely will not crash and jbl 1300 center are fine.

I have a beam 2, sub 3 and 2 x era 300. Atmos has not impressed me in the least, especially with music. Arc ultra will be the next upgrade by the looks of it... When I can source one in Taiwan.  Thanks for the review.

Same setup here and love it. I have one lingering issue add it’s getting true play to work. It eventually will.

Depends on what you need and what breaking the bank actually means. Samsung q930c is not nearly as expensive as the q990c but you get almost all of the value. If you want to budget over time and don’t mind starting off without a sub or surrounds, the Sonos Beam Gen2 is not expensive and is a massive upgrade over any TV speakers. It’s also tiny. You can eventually upgrade it with a sub and surrounds, but mine is still without both and it’s still wonderful. Is it as good as my q990b or a full AVR? No. Is it much cheaper and smaller and still great for games, movies and music? Totally.

Great, answer. Soundbars will likely hit the low-end better in the next 2-5 years, but they don’t start hitting the outstanding value until you get up to the Beam/Vizio/Bose 600 range. I’d add that I’m not a big fan of LG or JBL bars but some are solid and are often discounted heavily. My personal preference is for “low” end are the Sonos Beam and new, low end Samsungs. Not the S60, that’s trash, but anything 7xx/8xx/9xx. 9xx is never cheap, even with edu/work discount.

To be clear, imaging/separation is only a stereo music problem. The front soundstage of any soundbar will not match two floor standing speakers in even the most perfectly symmetrical room. But, and this is a major but, imaging overall I find to be better in most respects. As you can guess by my username, I play a lot of games. A good Atmos game is using live positional data to place sounds above, behind and beside you.  This is where an 11.1.4 setup like the 990b/c/d shines. I have mine in an asymmetrical space and it’s still “trick your pets” good. Same goes for atmos/dts:x movies, especially ultra hd blu-rays. Even regular 5.1 movies will benefit from  the well balanced center channel on newer Sonos and Samsung models, in my experience. My mid-range Sonos Beam gen2 has better voice performance than the best TV speakers. My 990b (or Sonos arc ultra) is a further step up.

Unless you get into the ultra high end, like a sennheiser ambeo, you lose a ton without dedicated rears. As a slight tangent that illustrates my point: I used to have a 5.1.2 AVR denon system. Now I'm using a 990b. The 990b 11.1.4 speakers do a bit to create a sound bubble, but for me the biggest difference is having physical atmos speakers in front and back. Going from x.x.2 to x.x.4 does so much to create a more convincing bubble. Even on a good system with great virtualization, you want physical rears. I like the atmos/surround effect on my lone sonos beam (gen 2) in my living room, but it's not at all the same as physical speakers behind me.

Yes, the tech has evolved a lot recently. I have 3+ year old Samsung 990b and Sonos beam gen2 and they both handle dialogue vs explosions wonderfully. And sports? I watch a lot of sports on both, they’re great. If you want sub plus bar only go Sonos w a sub or the best Samsung you can find without satellites. Think that’s either the q800 or the q900. And even with the q990 series, you can put the satellites in front. If money is no object, the Sony ht-a9 an Bravia quad are also incredible for surround, placement flexibility and center (voice) channel performance. They’re just pricey.

Sonos Beam Gen 2. It's about 26 inches wide. It has excellent sound clarity. It's great with music and movies or for regular TV. You can also add a subwoofer and surrounds later if you want to.

100000% I came back from my sister's place that have a Sonos Beam gen 2 + 2 symphonisk frames from Ikea which makes it a 5.0 in reality and does virtual atmos and the immersion and soundstage is night and day with my Samsung Q930C The space is a little different of course but similar enough also (with 1 wall on one side and open to the rest of a room on the other) Sonos is really crisp and has more depth in some ways, especially with music, but for the immersion and surround sound, my Samsung beats it hands down.

People are thinking that everyone is experiencing what they’re experiencing with the Sonos app smh. I have never had any issues with the app. My soundbar (beam 2), era 100’s and sub mini have been perfectly fine this whole time. I highly recommend a Sonos soundbar

I came from the Sonos Beam 2 and sub gen 3 to the 990D. I'd say the dialogue on the 990 is about the same if not a little bit better. I've never heard the mini sub in my listening room, but the sub gen 3 seems like it plays a bit deeper than the sub that came with the 990, I'm guessing the mini sub will be on par with the sub in the 990D system. But that Sonos app will never make be buy another Sonos product again:(

I really appreciate this review as today I purchased the Beam Gen 2 and Sub Mini over the arc, given it's just me and my one-bedroom apartment, and I really appreciate a good bass. I had a sharp soundbar and sub, which recently died on me, so I'm really hoping the Sonos setup impresses me over my previous speakers.

If you want a less expensive Sonos setup, do the Beam Gen 2, the Sub Mini, and two Era 100s. I’m a fairly recent Sonos owner, but I swear by them. I have an AVR with wired non-Sonos speakers on my main TV, but I have the above setup on another TV and it sounds amazing

The sub mini really compliments the beam gen 2. I thought I didn't need one but got the BF deal thinking I'd just return it if it did t work out but so far it's blowing my mind. I'm hearing things I've never heard before with the beam gen 2 alone. I feel like it's even elevated my surrounds which are 2 Ikea Symfonisks I love that I can listen on lower volumes or night mode and still clearly hear every detail.

I’ve got a beam 2, two play 1’s for surround and a mini sub, and it’s absolutely perfect for music, tv, movies etc. There’s no way I would derive any more pleasure from upgrading that would be commensurate with the cost increase.

I have two Beams including a Gen 2, sub-mini, pair of One-SLs for rear channel, Symfonisk lamp, and Era 100 in our son’s room. I don’t really use the app much because I don’t need to, though honestly it’s been buggy for a long time (better since I moved to a mesh network). But I’m happy with the sound and being able to play stuff via AirPlay.

I guess it depends what your budget is but I really like my Sonos Beam 2 with my C845K.

Part of my experience with the Beam 2: Bought one, put it in my Master bedroom. Watched some TV, watched some Netflix.. movies sounded decent. I had stereo play 1s in the master prior, and those sounded better for music. The Beam 2 was set up with HDMI Arc, not E-Arc ( TV didn't support ot). We moved, shuffled around a bunch of Sonos gear for different rooms. Moved the Beam 2 into a living room style Loft on an LG CX woth e-arc. Sounds amazing. No surrounds, no sub. Maybe it's the different room, maybe its the TV feeding it, maybe I'm crazy? I moved an old Playbar into the master and it's great!

You sound just like me! I tried both the Sonos Beam gen 2 and Bose 600 and I enjoyed the clarity of the Bose more at low volumes. However, I ran into so many connectivity problems with the Bose that I had to return it. I was constantly unplugging and plugging it back in because it would not stay connected to my tv. I’ve had the Sonos beam for over a year now though and am content!

Get the Beam Gen 2 Refurbished. Its was going for $299 till recently. Check on Sonos & Ebay - Sonos Store.

The Beam 2 is the best alarm clock I've ever had. The sound is amazing, especially when paired with two surround speakers, and it connects seamlessly to Alexa. I've set up an Alexa routine for my alarm clock. Every morning, my Philips Hue LED strip gradually turns on, fading in from 0 to 15% brightness to wake me up gently. Five minutes later, the Sonos Beam starts playing music, progressively increasing the volume to levels 3, 5, 8, and finally 10. During this time, Alexa gives me the weather forecast for the day, the current Bitcoin value, and adjusts the room temperature (I prefer a cold bedroom for sleeping, but a warmer one when I wake up). If I’m still not out of bed, Alexa prompts me to wake up and tells me the time. Once I get out of bed, I say, “Alexa, I’m awake,” and the music stops, the lights switch to 100% brightness for one minute, and then turn off automatically. Sure, I could do the same with a basic Echo speaker, but this setup sounds phenomenal with three speakers and doubles as my home theater when I watch movies. As for the soundbar itself, the audio quality is vastly superior to anything built into a TV. I have a high-end Sony WOLED screen with built-in speakers advertised as delivering great bass, but believe me, the Sonos Beam is on another level.

No, the idea is you pass one device through the arc into the tv to make up for losing a slot for the soundbar. I have a beam gen 2, 3 game consoles and a 4K player but only 4 HDMI ports on tv. With a pass through slot I could connect all 5 devices.

Without a hesitation the Sonos beam gen 2. Or if you can find a good deal online one of the Samsung Q990 deals. I own 3 different soundbar setups and I'd say Samsung or Sonos have been the most impressive. Sonos for sound and Samsung for value.

I have both the Sonos Beam Gen 2 (in the bedroom) and Samsung Q990D (in the living room). Even though the Samsun Q990D is about 4 times the cost of the Sonos Beam, I would argue the Beam has better voice quality. You won't have an issue with hearing dialogue with this soundbar.

Yes, I am leaning towards the fact that there are newer hardware revisions that are far better than what we bought at very high discounts. There is no other explanation. I decided to return mine. I'll stick with my Sonos Beam Gen2.

I have a Sonos 5.1 setup with the Beam gen 2, sub 4, and Era 100’s. Is it the best? Probably not. Does it sound absolutely amazing? Yes.

gen2 and sub mini are an amazing combo, add Era300s surround and it's truly amazing.

Thx for the review! Re: music, I know the front facing speaker of the 300 is off when used as surrounds. With Beam Gen 2 and 300’s I find the music very much comes from the Beam rather than filling the room. How does this compare with the Ultra?

I just bought my mom the Sonos Beam 2. I find it’s excellent and she (70 y/o) said it’s the clearest dialogue she’s ever heard from TV.  If you’re looking for more, I own the Vizio M-Series m512a-h6. It’s been an incredible system for my needs and budget. 

In terms of single channel clarity and sound, the beam. But in terms of full surround sound, immersion, 5.1.2 clarity etc., the Vizio. 

After doing true play, i suggest you set the following eq: bass -3, treble +2. This is per rtings.com recommendations. I don’t suggest this for a standalone beam gen 2, but since you have a sub with it, it should sound very balanced.

Bass eq NOT sub level. There’s a difference. Without adjusting the bass eq, audio sounds a bit muffled and some fine details are lost, to my ear at least.

I can't speak for the ray but I can say I have an arc and a beam gen 2 and the beam gen 2 would be a good choice for you for an affordable soundbar that is crystal clear. Plus it has earc which really in 2025 is a must. You can pick one up on Sonos website refurb for cheap too.

I’ve got the Beam Gen 2 and love it. This sub has a ton of bot accounts and is an echo chamber of misery. Take what you see here with a grain of salt.

I had loads of soundbars with subs before I got my Beam 2 and Sub Mini. The Sonos setup is so much better. But by better I mean I can clearly hear what is being said and general clarity is great. It isn’t louder of have better fake surround, it is just clear and sounds great. I guess better is different for people - what do you find lacking?

My fathers had several Vizios over the years. Always the same deal, initially alright but moves on to another budget bar within a year. 3 years ago I bought him a Sonos beam 2 for Christmas and he’s stuck with it ever since. Loves the thing. The incremental jumps from a $200 to a $500 to a $800 to a $1000 soundbar are quite big in terms of performance imo but it may not be noticeable just based off spec sheets.

I’d start with the Beam Gen 2. I have two Beams, the Sub, two Ones, and two Era 100s. I’ve had no app issues that have been mentioned. For my use cases, Sonos works great for watching TV and streaming music throughout the house via Airplay or even the Sonos app. I did experience the Atmos “pop” on the Beam 2, but it was finally resolved with a firmware update several months ago. Since then, I’ve been very happy with Sonos.

I’d start with the Beam Gen 2. I have two Beams, the Sub, two Ones, and two Era 100s. I’ve had no app issues that have been mentioned. For my use cases, Sonos works great for watching TV and streaming music throughout the house via Airplay or even the Sonos app. I did experience the Atmos “pop” on the Beam 2, but it was finally resolved with a firmware update several months ago. Since then, I’ve been very happy with Sonos.

Only a small number of users actually faced breaking issues with the new app, and they have been (rightfully so) very vocal about it.  But I believe for the majority of users it was some where in between "meh I liked the old interface better" and "I guess this looks a bit better". I would get that Beam 2, for surrounds look also take a look at the IKEA Symfonisk line, any pair of those 3 can be surrounds. Cheaper, but similar sound quality and much higher wife approval factor.

Ignore the scaremongering. The app is fine and an arc is way better than a beam (also I don’t think beam does atmos?)

You aren’t missing something. The Beam 2 Sub Mini are my first Sonos products hooked up to LG C1 via eARC in my roughly 12x12 foot “mancave.” If like me, you’d been doing just fine with a $200-250 Costco soundbar to replace your TV speakers, this Sonos setup for $750 (on sale) will leave you wanting more. Maybe it’s the whole house synchronized music that really makes this brand unique.

I've got the beam gen 2 also..and I would temper expectations. It's not a bad sound bar..... It's a solid mid tier.. but there's way better stuff out there.. What turned me against Sonos, is the app is trash.. even if your sound bar works (it probably will), they messed up some of the best things about it. You used to be able to stream content really easily.... Now it's a pain in the ass, clunky and your system might keep "not showing up".. it's been like this for months...

I bought a Ray and thought it sounded great, made voices much easier to hear, and was plenty loud for my small room and made movies sound great. But, I ended up returning it and getting the Beam because of lack of being able to control it with my remote, it would work 50% of the times, and then would become unsynched and the volume level shown on my TV wouldn't match the actual volume - to the point where the Ray would be loud, but the TV volume interface would show that the volume was at zero and woudln't let me lower it anymore. So I kept having to get up and fiddle with the volume buttons on top of the Ray. Now that I have the Beam, I do hear the sound difference and Beam is far superior. But also was double the cost! I think the Ray would be perfect for someone who doesn't care about the small inconvenience of the remote not synching with the TV.

I have a Beam and the voice clarity is excellent. Maybe the sub and the other speakers are too loud and are drowning out the vocals coming from the center channel on the Beam? Have you tried just the Beam on its own to see how the voice clarity is and if it’s better? My living room is small though so the Beam is perfect. If your room is really large maybe upgrade to the Arc.

Gen 2. Picked it up last November on sale.

I went from Beam 2 and returned it during the return-period for the Ultra because I know I’d always have FOMO, and the Beam looked “inadequate” in front of my living room TV. But the Beam 2 was phenomenal for its size, and the music/bass may have sounded better to my ears. Of course, my wallet does miss the extra money too that I could’ve saved by not upgrading. I’ll revisit the Beam 2 possibility when I finally get a wall-mounted TV for my bedroom.

Spot the Sonos Beam gen 2 https://preview.redd.it/9zc83bzwkeee1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4bc31bc8c8c89cb83016c262d20a487a80fffc1c

It’s a gas fireplace, and it doesn’t get that hot where the beam is (measured it). It is also sitting on the Beam wall mount, which is steel, with an air gap between the soundbar, and the bracket. But, yes, we don’t use the fireplace much.

I have a beam gen 2 and a mini sub. I would buy the same setup again. It’s fantastic.

I have the beam and mini sub. Very happy with them both.

Sonos Beam gen2 is probably up there for what I would consider to be an ACTUAL MID range bar

I agree. I have had all three and would rate them 1) Playbar 2) Beam Gen 2 3) Arc The playbar isn’t the best for voices but it is the best sounding overall.

I have the beam2, two 100s and a sub mini. Highly recommended.

I had a playbar then a beam gen2. Both great. Arc ultra got sent straight back. It was horrible. You need a cinema room with acoustics to make it sound good. Living rooms are better with play bar and beams

Sub and Rears make all the difference. I have Beam/sub mini in bedroom. Beam/Sub and Rears in 2 other rooms. Arc Ultra and sub in another room. Couldn’t be happier.

It’s been mentioned but I personally found that adding surrounds was the single biggest improvement to the Beam Gen 2. Far more than adding a sub. Going from TV speakers to the Beam was a decent step in sound quality, especially voice (where I struggled) but it’s the surround effect that is the real game changer.

If this helps. Last month I bought Beam gen 2 with 2 Era 300s and sub mini. I watched Movies from Apple TV and listen to music also from Sonos app connected to Apple Music. The clarity somewhat was not there and I struggle to hear spoken words ie lyrics and speech regardless what of switching speech enhancement and night mode on and loudness turned off (I feel what’s the point having this system if you can’t use these features). I removed the surrounds and used era 300s as studio for Apple Music from Sonos app and suddenly the sound become very much satisfying. This was a living room set up so I thought I needed clarity when watching TV. So I then returned 300s and bought a pair of era 100s. Immediately I noticed improved quality in spoken words whether it’s movies or music due to its front firing drivers. I feel beam 2, despite being really good on it’s own when connected to era 300s, is not powerful enough to compliment era 300s as 300 does not use centre firing drivers when in surround mode with beam, so when paid it lacks an ability to generate clear sound. I am still really keen to experience Spatial Audio so now I am thinking to return beam 2 and get an Arc (original or ultra - undecided) and get 2 x 300s. I can move 100s to my bedroom as stereo connected to Alexa dot already in bedroom. I wonder if sub mini will be sufficient for a living room 9 ft long and 18 ft wide. We sit sideways so TV to sofa is facing at the narrow center part of my living room. In short, I personally don’t suggest connecting beam 2 with Era 300s.  

same. i had initial connectivity issues, but it wasn't a big problem at all. only a few mins to figure out and its been amazing since.

I had both the Bose 600 and Beam 2. I ended up keeping the Beam 2.

That’s a steal. The beam 2 is listed at $499 at Costco. Arc is way better than a beam 2.

I’ve got the beam 2 and im really happy with it. Gonna combine it with some other speakers for surround sound! Anyone got some tips?

How big is the room you are in? Were you able to tune it using Trueplay? If not and you know someone with an iPhone it may help out quite a bit. I have the Beam 2, Symfonisk rears and a Sub Mini am older too And I find the voice clarity of the system to be great (I usually don’t use Speech Enhancement) So you should be able to get it set up properly. You can also toggle off the surround speakers and Sub Mini and only listen to the Beam (with and without Speech Enhancement, with and without Loudness which is in the EQ settings) once you get the dialogue satisfactory then you can add them back in one by one adjusting the volume sliders to suit you tastes until you get it right.

Try to see if you can find the Klipsch Flexus Core 200 on sale. I'm seeing it on sale from Walmart for 349. Little more than what you want to spend but it absolutely blows all those you mentioned away. I have the S2000 as well and it's alright, bass is eh, clarity is eh. I will say it gets loud ASF, but that's the only good thing I can say. But it's an odd bar cause without surround on it plays as a 2.1 while with surround on it plays as a 3.1, at least I believe that's what I'm experiencing. The Beam 2 is wayyy overpriced for its performance in my opinion. Had it for awhile too. But can't speak on the Samsung but I guarantee it won't touch the Flexus system.

Sennheiser Ambeo Mini or the Bose Smart Soundbar both will be a million times better than the Beam. I had the Beam & the Bose Smart Soundbar (was the Smart 600 at the time) & the Sonos sounded like literal junk compared to the Bose. Brighter, more detail, more balanced, better surround performance, just better in literally every aspect than the Beam. I can't speak on the Sennheiser Ambeo Mini but I did have a demo of the Ambeo Plus & it's truly in a league of its own, Bose is close behind tho. I'd pick the Bose over the Ambeo mini due to lack of center channel with the Ambeo. Imo the Bose Smart Soundbar is one of the absolute best budget bars out there.

Flexus Core 200 by LITERAL MILES!!! I have no experience with the apple home pod. Had the Q600C briefly, bar sounds alright but the subwoofer sounds like shit. Had the JBL Bar 500 & it was just a sloppy system all around, crappy subwoofer & distorted bar. & The Beam 2 is eh. Quite weak & very dull sounding. If I can comfortably listen to a movie at 60%+ volume, that sucks in my book. Hell I even had it at 100% in my bedroom before & I was just like "that's all this things got???" I also thought the Arc was too soft for me as well. The Core 200 bar by itself is just fantastic! 2 4" subwoofers that really hit hard. It's such a full sounding bar it's amazing! Dialogue enhancement works pretty well too if needed, + a 3 band bass mid & treble equalizer. Choice of either the Sub 100 or Sub 200 (10" or 12") & you can run 2 subs regardless of which sub you buy, unlike Sonos where you can't run 2 sub minis, only 2 full size subwoofers. I sold my Arc, Era 100's & sub mini for my Core 200 + Sub 100 & I don't regret it at all. The soundstage is impressively wide sounding considering the lack of side firing drivers. I've had scenes in movies where it sounds like there's something at the side of my room, beyond the soundbar!

I agree. I had a Beam 2 for the longest time and I was honestly always disappointed. Movie dialogue was always barely audible and music was… fine, but felt way worse than my Move 2. I can’t have a sub in my apartment so I upgraded to refurb Era 100s surrounds and they were so much better than the beam it made my system sound unbalanced both with music and TV. Upgraded to the Arc Ultra for its built in subwoofer and I love it. Music sounds real good with the Eras and there’s way more balance. I can FINALLY watch TV without subtitles. I suspect A LOT of the difference has to do with A) if you watch TV/movies and thus benefit from the wider sound stage or B) if you already have a sub I bet the Beam 2 is just as good for music. But without a bass… the Arc Ultra is amazing imo. Truly crazy technology. And I still don’t understand the Beam 2 hype and probably never will

I have a Sonos beam. Has night mode and speech enhancement and I watch everything with subtitles on so I don’t wake the baby. Had 3 babies since I got the sound bar. I can say the soundbar never woke them. Plenty of other sounds have but not the tv.

Customer support has always been mediocre. From my dealings it’s out sourced and it seems they are reading from a flow chart for technical issues. Don’t let that stop you. The problems people are having are multi room set ups and local libraries. For surrounds and 5.1 Sonos rules. I have both TVs with soundbars and a few devices around the house. I haven’t seen many issues. The old app sucked too. TLDR - you’ll be thrilled with a beam.

Beam 2 is gonna look small in front of your 75 incher. Arc gonna look better and has a wider sound stage. I would look into adding a sub or sub mini too. You can find an arc or beam on sale 20 percent off right now. Both are excellent speakers. Beam is punchier out of the box. Arc really shines when paired with a sub or sub mini. I love when I can find a movie or show in atmos. Both airplay.

Agreed, have had both the arc and beam gen2 linked to our living room tv,both do a great job with dialogue. Currently use the beam and two play 1 surrounds as pc speakers, sounds brilliant as well.

I have the same one. You are able to change the volume with your regular TV remote, my Apple TV remote works as well. As of iOS 18 while your Soundbar is playing you will get an active notification on your screen with which you can change the volume etc. I haven’t seen that before and I’m running the iOS 18 beta so I think that’s why. I also only use it for TV or use it with AirPlay and then 100% of the time it works every time. I’m really happy with it, there is no comparison between the stock TV speakers, it’s a 1000% upgrade over those.

https://preview.redd.it/3vv4976aeodd1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51fae7dc4d66b421da33a127cacff4ca55fe69dd Like this in your lockscreen

https://preview.redd.it/s5xfyo2ceodd1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1db0cda6b67ec8f1b83899bdf466c1215626bf8d And this when you expand it

I agree. I would actually go as far to say that I am somewhat a little disappointed with the Ultra Arc. It's great, but I wouldn't say it's absolute leaps and bounds above the beam gen 2. Dolby atmos soundstage is incredible on the arc ultra but the majority of content we watch day to day is YouTube, iPlayer, sky etc which is usually pcm 2.0 where you can barely hear the difference which is a little disappointing for £1k! Still it's a lovely bit of kit but beam 2 still kicks ass

I respect that everyone has different experiences, but for me saying the Arc doesn't hold up vs the beam 2 is a bit much. The Beam 2 is a very solid speaker, especially its bass. But either your room wasn't a good space for the arc, or you just trusted trueplay too much and didn't try to manually adjust for your preference, which is often a massive mistake with Sonos. So many people just use trueplay and think it's perfect, but it's such an overrated tool that often results in some very wonky sounding systems in my opinion. I can always manually adjust my system better than trueplay does, and I've done it for family members as well who can't believe how much better their system sounds, as they too thought trueplay was the only way to set up their Sonos system. At first I wasn't impressed with the Arc ultra, but once I got it dialed in, it's incredible, it absolutely balances out my era 300s, when I hear a train coming at me now I hear a massive front stage whoosh, and then my era 300s pick up the big whoosh, whereas the Arc always felt overwhelmed by the 300s, which was why I went with the Ultra. But I will say I don't listen to music, I only watch films, so obviously it's possible we just have different needs. Atmos literally makes me excited every day, anytime I hear some incredible new sounds from my 300s or now my ultra, it generates pure happiness, so I think it's important for people to know that these things to do work in the right room and when setup properly. But please don't take it personally, I think I'm speaking more generally, I know that people have different needs and obviously we all hear things differently and have very unique spaces for our equipment, which can have a massive effect on how we experience the exact same system. But I'm glad you've found the system that fits you best, that is what's most important in the end.

What I found is improvement beyond a certain amount is source dependent. A compressed YouTube video or even mediocre audio editing with high quality source is going to sound more accurately bad on a nice soundbar. The beam gen 2 is just better at faking some things with fake Atmos. So, I noticed somethings were much nicer and some things were a wash.

In a small office room the Beam is amazing. Our office space in our home is almost perfectly square so the room layout helps to bring out the best of the Beam with 2 Symfonisks surround and a Sub Mini. I can argue our office room sounds better with the Beam than our living room upstairs with the Arc, 2 Era 100s and Sub Mini. All because of room layout.

I have upgraded from beam2 and it is significantly more powerful. Atmos is more immersive and more balanced sound when you have era 300 as rears, which I do.

I have Ultra+Sub mini+era 100. Upgraded Beam2 moved to the living room. I agree, Beam2 is really great and it is hard to justify the price difference (x2-x2.5).

Thanks for this mate. I've owned the Beam Gen 2 for a couple of years now, and it's all I've known. Since the arrival of the Arc Ultra I've been trying to justify purchasing it. My TV room is small (3m x 3m), and after reading your write-up I'll happily keep my Gen 2. The Arc Ultra is AUD$1800 and I got my Beam 2 for AUD$550, a comparitive bargain like you said :)

Perfect review , thanks for that ! Currently, I own the Sonos Beam Gen 2, Sub Mini, and two Era 100s. For movies, I’m quite satisfied with my home theater setup. For music, however, it’s a different story. I spent a year and a half experimenting with various settings, and ultimately, I found the best solution was to raise the volume on the Eras to overpower the Beam 2 and turn off the Sub Mini. The reason? Sometimes the bass from the Sub Mini was too strong, other times too weak, and at lower volumes, it was almost inaudible. Beam 2 itself is terrible for the music. I tried everything in the settings, and even set up different configurations for music and TV. I found that listening to music on just the Eras100 (without the Sub and with the Beam 2 supressed) greatly balanced no matter the type of music I listened to. I considered upgrading my beloved Era 100s to the Era 300s, but I’ve heard from some others that the Era 300’s sound can feel muffled compared to the Era 100. Now, I’m considering the Arc Ultra to improve music playback with a combo of the Arc Ultra and Era 100s, with the Sub Mini turned off. What do you think? For music, would this setup be better than the Beam 2 with Era 300s? Or with standalone era300 ?

Thank you very much for your opinion. I currently have a Beam 2/Sub Mini/Era 100 setup, but I’m not satisfied with the music performance, mainly due to the Beam 2. For better music quality, would you rather recommend upgrading the Era 100 to the Era 300 ?

Adding to this I’ve been very pleased with my Sonos Beam 2 if you’re looking for something more compact

I have a Beam Gen 2 and the Sub Mini - it is actually a surprisingly good setup. I got both on sale for a decent chunk off, so this combo is significantly cheaper than some of the other higher up options on this list. Later on I should be able to get a couple of rear speakers to "complete" the setup. Already very happy though!

Got a beam 2 and sub mini in that “deal”. Good small bedroom setup

This sub is the reason I night Sonos Beam Gen 2 No regrets! Not breaking the bank and getting excellent surround sound!

Depend on budget. They get better as with higher prices. On my lg oled the sonos arc ultra has 3 level of dialogue enhancement. The second level is kore them enough too kewp the dialogue in high action scenes. The sonos beam 2 has this as well. And it works well too.

I’ve always preferred the beam 2 sound signature to the arc, as much as I trueplayed, eq adjusted it never sounded right, far too trebly, some scenes actually hurt my ears!!! I do think size of room must play a part, the arc and arc ultra are probably better suited to larger size living rooms, smaller rooms like mine it all gets a bit much!!

Beam 2 here with two Ikea speakers as surrounds. It has been a nightmare for last months as you never know which speakers are visibile in the app or streaming in Airplay. I wish they would make the system more stabile. The product is good from audio point of view, but this is currently blocking me to buy more/upgrade any or my 7 Sonos speakers I have.

Want to chime in as well. Current setup: Arc + Sub Mini + 2x Era 300 as well as Arc and Sub 3 (in another room) Tested the Ultra for a few hours today and standalone, it sounds a lot fuller and better then the normal Arc. Dialog is better but to me the Beam Gen 2 still takes #1 for center channel clarity. Combined with the Sub Mini and Era 300s I honestly barely noticed a difference. Dialog still a bit better, Athmos conted sounded more convincing - but that might have been placebo. All in all it's definately an upgrade, but not as night and day as I wanted it to be.

I’d put the beam 2 above both the era 100 and the arc ultra, and probably about 2x era 100’s. They don’t hit the low end very well.

I purchased my 1st Sonos product, the beam 2 because of Andrew’s glowing review. Since then, I added the sub mini, ones and eventually the Arc and Era 300s. I was going to skip the Arc ultra because I believe the improvement is marginal from prior reviews and feedbacks from the forum. After watching this video, I ordered the ultra and the sub 4.

I bought a new Sonos Beam (Gen 2) towards the end of last week for around 430€, and was super excited to get it. All the reviews from a couple of years back rave about it being the best soundbar in the sub 500€ category and this is my first soundbar. And then I was having a look at this subreddit for any potential gotchas and good to knows while it is still in transit. And now I feel like I should be returning it are testing it for a week or so. - People are very unhappy here with the S2 app, and I tried to convince myself saying, “ah well, I’m not going to have multiple speakers, just the soundbar so the ecosystem stuff shouldn’t really affect me” or that “I will use AirPlay 2”. - And then I start to see people with the network issues a lot, so now you can’t even control the music/volume without the app unless you physically touch the soundbar. Music/Movie getting interrupted isn’t ideal. - Then I start to hear about the metallic tinny sound coming from voices/sports crowd etc for the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), no one speaks about it on any reviews, but I see a considerable amount of people having that issue. And at this point I’m thinking I should be testing it thoroughly and start to feel like I’m coping, even before the product is with me and I shouldn’t. People who have just bought Sonos also have issues. I’m fully aware of benefits/downfalls of being in an ecosystem, cause I use a lot of Apple products and people often make than analogy on this subreddit. But people complaining about poor customer care, poor after sales support etc isn’t a good place to lock into an ecosystem. I know there are a lot of happy customers who aren’t as loud or vocal as people with the issues. But the problems many are having are very hard to ignore. I’m still excited to receive the soundbar and have it for a week or so. But I don’t know if I’ll keep it. People here might not be happy when I say this, but now I’m considering the Bose 600 Soundbar. While I have heard some of the CEC issues, I feel that’s not a deal breaker and also haven’t seen any complains on the quality of the sound (feel free to let me know if you are aware of more), regardless of people’s personal preference of one over the other. I wanted to put this here, cause if someone from Sonos do see this subreddit, they should know they’re losing potential new customers until they address these issues, who could have ended up being in their ecosystem.

TL;DR: Still have it, use it everyday without any regrets. I did buy as I mentioned in post, did my updates day one to see if it needed to be returned. But had no issues at all. Works perfectly app and soundbar. I *think*, mostly for new setups the new app isn’t that much of a problem. I had your bog standard router with a 20 bucks WiFi extender and connected this to 2.4GHz and had no issues whatsoever. Recently had to do a reset when I put up new Deco Mesh system in my apartment. Been fine with a combined (2.4GHz and 5GHz) SSID as well. Had your usual buyer’s remorse for a few weeks and felt as if I didn’t notice any change from my 20w TV speakers compared to this. But after extensive use, one day I was curious and tested it, it’s miles better than my TV. If this is your first soundbar/sound system upgrade to your TV, definitely worth the buy, at least for me. Already thinking about a Sub Mini or Surround speakers to add on, but have other higher priorities for my money at the moment lol.

Beam gen 2 would do fine.

LG G4 with Beam 2. Zero issues.

Bought a refurbished beam 2 through official Sonos eBay. Been a great choice!

I want to upgraded from a beam and sound will be the big determining factor

I’ve got Beam Gen 2 + One SLs + Sub Gen 3. Some of my gripes with this setup is that dialogue can get muddled especially at low volumes. I find myself constantly increasing volume to hear voices during quiet scenes and decreasing volume during action. And of course due to the limited physical width of the bar the soundstage does not feel very large. If the Arc Ultra resolves these issues I’ll very likely upgrade.

I did for a short while but traditional soundbars do not do very well that close to the listener. They are designed to bounce the sound off of walls and ceilings and project it which can't happen in the 2 to 3 ft typically. I have since switched to high quality speakers with a subwoofer which I find much better (SVS wireless speakers and sb1000 pro sub). The soundbar I used was a Sonos beam Gen 2, perhaps the Samsungs or other brands are different. Prior to that I had a Logitech 5.1 system but I find the new 2.1 far better but that's likely due to the higher quality speakers and sub. I have a Bose ultra soundbar on the bedroom TV but I never tried it on the PC. The soundbars designed for computers may be different because they have the close listening range assumed. If all you are used to is built-in monitor speakers or cheap PC speakers, anything will be an upgrade. I've always felt most people can't tell the difference between $100 vs $1000 speakers. Just buy from somewhere with a good return policy if you can't try it locally.

I don’t have multi room audio but I do use a Sonos Beam Gen2 soundbar and it’s excellent in my living room for my TV … as well as for my Amazon Music, other music stations (either via Airplay or the Sonos app)👌 I’ve then added 2 x One SLs and it’s fantastic 👍

I’ve still got a Beam Gen2 and 2 x One SLs and I love them. Always tempted to get a mini sub. I think this is what I will do next, based on your post.

I don’t yet have a sub mini but playing Atmos thru my Beam Gen 2 and 2 x One SLs sounds amazing. They were bought for me, for a retirement gift. I suppose I get 5:1 via my Beam Gen2 and the 2 x One SLs? I dunno, I’m a novice to all this.

I just bought a Gen2 Beam to replace the Master Bed Beam 1, and it’s freaking awesome to hear some good dialogue without having to increase the whole system sound. I did so after spending time at my brothers house and his Gen2 Beam. It’s’ such a good product. I honestly like it better than my Arc. Granted, my bed room has better acoustics than my family room, but my opinion still stands as the Gen2 Beam being extremely great value.

Add another for Sonos! I have this one(https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/beam) and it’s been phenomenal for the price point.

I have a whole home system. Beam 2nd gen was a recent purchase. Using it grouped with two SL's on pedestals on either side of the couch. Overall a huge improvement over the Polk soundbar it replaced. I control the volume with the TV remote not the app. My Sony Bravia immediately recognized the bar by brand through the eARC connection. Dialogue is still softer than music and sound effects but I feel there is just no way around that without either headphones or a true 5 or 7 channel system. Long story long, you will probably like the Beam.

Sonos Beam gen2 with the Sonos Sub Mini. Should be able to get both for around $700 total. Throw in a pair of Ones for surround and you'll be a little over a grand. This is the set up i have in a 10' x 12' room and it sounds amazing. Music sounds pretty good on the Beam as well - especially with the sub.

I am coming from Beam and I also feel like some content sounds very artificial on Ultra, even sibilant at times. Which makes me feel it’s a firmware issue or a bug. However the bass on this thing is in a league of its own. I don’t understand how that thin stick can provide such good low frequencies. Ultra is not bad, but I do remember Beam fondly. To me Ultra sounds like Beam but bigger, wider. Can’t wait to try it with full setup with 300s and a Sub.

If you don't want to bother go with Sonos. Arc or Arc Ultra + Era 100 (or 300) + Sub of your choice. It is pricey but you can add components later when budget allows. Start with a soundbar, i would recommend Arc Ultra or Beam 2 depending on the space. You can go with decent AVR + KEF Q150s for example as a stereo pair but soundbars now can be very good with basic plug and play. No wires is a huge plus too. Most of the streaming content is in Dolby Atmos now and you can get a very good results with a soundbar without needing to drill the holes in the ceiling. Again, very space dependable but still. Audio is difficult, i've been in both camps. For a dedicated HT space i would definitely go with AVR. For a living room i would not bother and get a soundbar.

Sonos Bean gen 2 + Sub Mini + 100 surrounds, sounds absolutely fantastic for how small all the components are.

What I like most about the Sonos system is that although it's proprietary, it's very customizable and modular. Want to start with just a soundbar, go ahead; want to add surrounds first, sure; want to upgrade your soundbar and use the same surrounds, no problem; want to add a sub, okay; want to upgrade the surrounds, go ahead, and you can then use your old ones as standalone speakers elsewhere. Meanwhile, the popular Sony, Samsung, LG, etc., systems require you to use every component it comes with, or it won't work correctly, and there’s no path to upgrade any of that down the line unless you replace the whole system.

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 is an amazing soundbar and relatively low profile.

This is my anecdote. If you have an Arc or Arc Ultra and love it, please enjoy your system! But for those who feel like they can relate to anything I'm saying or are on the fence about what Sonos soundbar to purchase, this might help you make a decision. My home theater setup has been an absolute rollercoaster. Three years ago, my first Sonos product was a Beam Gen 2. I shared it with a roommate in a sparsely furnished apartment with tall ceilings and tons of echo, it sounded alright, but never great. We rarely used the living room, so there was zero incentive to add subs or surrounds. When the roommate moved out, they took the Beam with them, and it worked much better in their new space. They still love it to this day. Two years ago, I moved in with my SO and had full reign over our living room/home theater. I went all in and built what I considered my *dream setup* at the time: A high quality pair of standing speakers (went with Polk R500s) powered by a Sonos Amp. I absolutely loved the simplicity of the Sonos ecosystem. I added a Sub Mini and found a killer deal on 2x Ones with Sonos stands to use as surrounds. This system *kicked ass*. Music sounded sublime, movies with dynamic sound mixing felt lifelike, and even basic TV dialogue was incredible, it genuinely sounded like people were in the room with you. This past summer, my SO and I moved into a new space, and unfortunately, there was zero room for my beloved standing speakers I purchased just a year prior. By then, the Arc Ultra was supposed to be released based on leaks from December 2023, but thanks to Sonos nuking the app, it still wasn’t out by the time we moved. I found a local audio shop that took my standing speakers as trade, and I used the credit to get a Sonos Arc. I also sold my Amp, breaking even. Around the same time, I found another deal on Era 100s and broke even sellings Ones + OEM stands. By August, I had my full new setup: Arc, Sub Mini, and Era 100 surrounds. And all I could say was that it sounded fine. Well-mastered Atmos movies and music were *good*, but for regular stereo content (most music, podcasts, and general TV) it barely felt like a step above TV speakers, which I despise with a passion. Trueplay really carried the system, without it, I would’ve ditched the Arc immediately. It was a night-and-day difference after tuning, but I still knew the Arc wasn’t for me. When the Arc Ultra was finally announced in October, I pre-ordered within an hour because I just couldn’t stand the Arc anymore. One of my favorite things to do with my old standing speaker setup was to demo my favorite music on a quiet weekend day, and that just wasn’t possible with how poor the Arc sounded. Lows and mids were muffled, and highs felt overly tinny on most of my favorite tracks. When the Ultra arrived in early November, I eagerly set it up, and after performing Trueplay, it definitely sounded much better than the Arc. It was more “full” sounding, like a wall between the speaker and listener had been lifted ([I actually praised it in a first impressions post I made](https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1gi89ch/upgraded_from_arc_to_arc_ultra_first_impressions/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)). The biggest improvement was the center channel, dialogue in movies and shows was elevated 2-3x over the other channels, which made it crystal clear, though at times it felt unrealistically over-exaggerated. I was generally enjoying the Ultra with no plans to replace it anytime soon... until Thanksgiving week. While staying at my parents’ house on a quiet day when no one else was around, I blasted some music through their setup: a Sonos Amp powering my old Polk T50 speakers (a pair I bought for just $150 on sale back when I was in college), a perfect system for them as they stream a lot of music, watch soley stereo TV content, and play their turntable through it from time to time. I couldn’t believe it. That $150 pair of speakers sounded *heavenly* compared to the Ultra. When I got home, I couldn’t unhear it. The Ultra sounded so processed and lifeless by comparison. I re-performed Trueplay, adjusted the EQ, everything! but nothing could make it sound right to me. I honestly felt disgusted listening to it again. I couldn’t justify the $750 I paid (with a 30% off coupon). I scrambled to request a return during the final days of the return window. I wanted that thing out of my sight ASAP. At this point, I still wanted to stick with Sonos because I had no qualms with my Sub Mini or Era 100s, and space constraints still ruled out a return to a proper standing speaker setup, even a small bookshelf setup was out of the question unfortunately. The Beam was the only option I could trust, It was $300 refurbished with recent sales and an absolute no brainer at that price (Ray was out of the question because IMO HDMI-ARC/CEC are essentials in 2024). If I was going to have a system that didn't sound *great*, I'd rather it sound *ok* for $300, rather than *ok* for $750 like the Ultra did for me, and I’d be able to pocket the savings for a future dream system. My Beam arrived last Thursday, and I set it up Friday night. After performing Trueplay, I was genuinely surprised at how good it sounded as part of the full surround setup with Sub Mini and Era 100s. Stereo content sounded much cleaner and far less processed than either the Arc or Ultra. I had been without the Ultra for just over a week, so I couldn’t compare directly, but to my ears, the Beam sounded slightly better. Sure, stereo separation is weaker, physics is physics, and the Beam is shorter, and honestly, the Atmos overhead effects on the Arc and Ultra were never apparent to me in my Arc setups anyway. The real magic moment came on Saturday when my SO was out. I sat down to demo some music, fully prepared to be underwhelmed. It was *unbelievable*. For the first time since my standing speaker setup, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to music again, cranking the volume and just in awe at how good it sounded (sorry neighbors). I sat there for hours playing through some of my favorite albums. No overly processed highs, no muddy mids, everything just sounded clean, direct, and enjoyable. The Beam synergizes beautifully with the Sub Mini, which picks up the lows at just the right point to where each component plays to its strengths. I also keep my surrounds set to ambient for music, as full surround just doesn’t sound right to me, music should come from in front, not all around, but that’s just a personal preference. I can’t get over the fact that spending *less* money gave me such a better experience. The only thing I miss about the Ultra is its strong center channel, but Apple TV’s recently added dialogue enhance feature solves that perfectly. It’s *magic*, it makes speech perfectly clear without altering the rest of the mix, even on god-awful built-in TV speakers it works surprisingly well. After five long months of battling what is admittedly the *biggest first-world problem* of all time, I can finally sit and enjoy my sound system without listening fatigue or disappointment. Here’s where I stand now: I can’t recommend the Arc at all anymore, (assuming it doesn't get discontinued soon) it just doesn't stack up unless you have a full setup and still sounds disappointingly thin most of the time. The Ultra has its place for two extremes: 1) if you want a standalone, all-in-one sound system without sub + surrounds (its sound motion driver is insanely good at producing bass, I would toggle sub on/off when demoing it the difference was near imperceptible at times) it's the best option from Sonos. or 2) you’re building the ultimate Atmos setup with a Sub and Era 300s, it will no doubt provide the best rendering of surround effects for well mastered content. For everyone else, the Beam Gen 2 is *king*: For half the price of the Ultra (and much less on sale/refurb) stereo content sounds fantastic, surround content is still plenty immersive, and music is in a league of its own (when paired with a Sub to fill in the lows) due to a significant, and very welcome, lack of over-processing.

My Beam G2 + Sub Mini + 100 surrounds sound fantastic to me. [I even prefer it over the Arc and Arc Ultra](https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1hfezu4/returned_my_arc_ultra_for_a_beam_gen_2_and_i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). You'd be better off adding surrounds than getting a different soundbar if that's what you're asking. That’s the whole point of a *surround* sound system after all. Also, you might want to take another crack at Trueplay. [There is a 'correct' way to do it](https://youtu.be/_AeSKXbchDA?si=36vm1Nyjbxn2lmR2) and you will probably gain a little better audio quality by doing so. Trueplay is night and day for me in that without it, my system sounds very muffled and 'compressed'. After Trueplay, it feels like a curtain has been lifted between myself the speakers where the sound profile becomes much more wide and clear.

FWIW, I'm a long-time audiophile with two Beam Gen 2 soundbars. They are very compelling for music and tv. At least once in every foreground listening session do I remark at how good they sound. That said, when the Refurbished or Black Friday deals come on the Arc Ultra, I'm in. The reviews on places like WhatHiFi have me very excited. I'm certain I will love one.

Sonos beam 2. Size will suit a 55inch. Sounds great, it’s supports Dolby atmos via eARC and you can scale it with a sub and surrounds if you want.

Mine sounded mediocre until I added two Sonos One SL as surrounds. That made the overall system a lot better. But I have never been “blown away” by the system. With a Beam 2, 2 one SL, and a Sub 3 I am satisfied by how it sounds watching an Atmos mixed movie like Dune. It is immersive. Without the surrounds it is very lackluster. I’m currently watching for a deal on another era 300 to improve my system a little more. I already have one era 300 that is just for music. Will swap in as surrounds and use One SL for music after upgrading. But yeah I don’t expect to be blown away after that upgrade either. I used to have 7.1 hard wired, with a receiver. That system sounded great… I moved several times since then, and have gone to Sonos more for ease of setup and minimal use of space with comparable but not better sound.

Because there will be a small, but noticeable delay if you plug your TV in through the Era's aux input (via USB-C to Aux adapter). You can get around this by Airplaying from Apple TV to Sonos, but that's an extra device, and an extra step every time you want to watch TV. The Ray and especially the Beam (Gen 2) will be superior to the Era 100s for dialogue clarity. The Era 100s will be superior for music and, well, just about everything else.

I appreciate you sharing your post and to each their own, but it’s insanity to say that the Beam Gen 2 is better than the Arc, and especially the Arc Ultra. The sound processing across all of them is very similar — the difference is the drivers and arrangement. I will agree that the Beam Gen 2 punches above its weight class, but to say it bests the Arc Ultra especially in anyway is pretty ridiculous. And I say this as someone who recently made a similar jump from Beam Gen 2 to the Arc Ultra. Is the Ultra twice as good (being twice as expensive)? No… and yes. It makes such a difference for movies and dialogue, and music sounds great too. It just is the same great sound as before, but better and more full and most importantly, effortless.

The Beam definitely doesn’t have more bass than the Arc Ultra.

No. Do not follow this. The Beam Gen 2 and Ultra (I’ve owned both) have similar levels of dialogue clarity. Make sure your TV audio settings are changed to fully utilize the Beam (like it’s set to pass through, etc).

Must have not read that one on the OG but speech was why I picked beam gen 2 over the arc since it was mentioned a number of times.  Interesting now that it's fixed...

I have both in my house already (Arc & Beam (Gen 2)) and I would argue that it’s not that bad at all these days, it’s improved a lot since the original release (and reviews) via firmware updates, and I will continue to say that personally, the Arc is overall a way better sound bar than the Beam will ever be. But I do agree about the reviews, can’t wait!

It’s a great little soundbar… for the right user/use case. But no hdmi, and no Dolby Atmos support, is a deal breaker for me personally, a Beam (Gen 2) is a much better soundbar for the price.

I also upgraded from Beam Gen 2 to Arc Ultra, and same conclusions. I am thinking to give back the Ultra. There is some improvement, but honestly not as much as I thought. My setup: Beam 2 (upgraded to Arc Ultra), Sub Gen 3, 2 x Symfonisk Frame as rear. With this kind of setup, the upgrade is not drastically improving the experience. Perhaps the soundbar alone is much better, but after pairing the Beam 2 to the Sub and Rears, you already get an excellent setup benefits only marginally by the Soundbar upgrade. Now more in detail: - Dialogue are crisp on the Ultra, but they are also on Beam 2 (perhaps the old Arc was the worst one). So this is a MATCH - Soundstage is improved with Ultra, and there is more separation. In my opinion this is just due to the larger size of the bar, and higher number of speakers inside. But to be honest, Beam 2 did already an incredible job for its size and price. Conclusion: Arc Ultra 30% Better - Clarity: Arc ultra is perhaps a tiny bit better. Arc Ultra wins by 10% percent - Features; I do not care much about Buetooth, so ho early for me it is a MATCH Get your conclusion.. Mine is: if you have a Beam 2 already, do not upgrade the bar. Just pair a Sub (mini perhaps) and some Rears (any, sorry Sonos addicts, but I will never spend 1.000 Euros for 2 x Era 300 to be used just as rears.. my Symfonisk Frames are beautiful and sound awesome for this kind of use, even with Stereo music)

Yes Beam 2 is a fucking beast. Now that I still have both Arc Ultra and Beam 2, I can definitely say how much more value the Beam 2 is for the money. You basically get 80-90 % the same experience, for half the price

That’s subjective, I sold my original arc and stuck with beam gen 2 because it has a warmer sound. I’m hopeful the arc ultra is better though.

I like you returned my arc and much much prefer the sound of the beam.

I got Gen 2 pairing with sub mini to match and balance with my 2 rear Era300. The dialogue is clear with enhance option on. Era 300 definitely gives good rear sky surrounding. With preference settings and Trueplay on it gives really impressive Atmos movie and music experience. My place is small living room with 55 inch LG C1. If it is not huge difference, I may stay with Gen 2 longer before replacing a large Tv to fit Ultra size aesthetically.

The beam 2 is great, but it definitely does not have more bass or a fuller sound than the arc ultra. The arc ultra is better in every possible way.

New to Sonos, having got a house full of big HomePods. Bought the Beam last year and added the sub mini this year. Adding the sub mini has transformed everything. I’m still blown away to this day when watching DA content. Sticking with this setup for now, perfect for my end terrace living room.

I bought the Beam 2 this year after a few years with a Bose Soundtouch 300 (the older long one). The Bose beats this ‘dOLbY AtMOs’ Beam 2 by 10x, easily. Yes I know the Bose is longer so has wider soundstage but it’s overall far superior in every way. Sonos is just hyped up average products.

im at this setup now, but I still preordered the ultra

Beam Gen 2 was a great addition and a good entry price for Sonos. I do wish it did voice amplification as well as my Yamaha ATS-1520 from 2010.

I don’t think the sound bars are great music players tbh. I prefer my HomePod stereo pair to my Beam 2 when it comes to music.

I have upgraded from Beam Gen 2 to the Arc Ultra. The rears are Era 100. The worst thing is the 5.1 soundtrack issue (sonos confirmed it!). In this case the rear sound is coming from the front instead of the rears. You need more channels to use the rears properly. My Beam Gen 2 were better during normal TV streaming sessions, because they use mostly 5.1 soundtracks. And exactly this soundtracks sounds like stereo (with the Arc Ultra and Era 100 rears). Sonos will fix this serious issue in the next weeks or months, but at the moment I‘m very disapointed. My old Beam Gen 2 was much better with 5.1 soundtracks. The Arc Ultra is much better with Atmos soundtracks, but I barely watch movies with this soundtracks. https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-229129/arc-ultra-era-100-surrounds-6921198

Sonos Ark/Beam or LG S80Q/S90Q. Make sure if you buy a Sonos you add a sub, it really brings them to life.

Do you realize small means it'll sound worse? Physics are hard to beat... Get a Sonos Beam

I have never gotten surround to work with my the frame 2023 + Apple TV + Sonos beam (gen1) to work :(

right now im having a sub mini connected. but it doesnt matter. you should get surround sound even when just using the beam as it has 3 internal speakers and supports virtual surround.

Yes it does. You have to do your research. It does not support atmos, but it supports Dolby digital 5.1

The beam itself is a 3.0 setup. I have a sub aswell which makes it 3.1

correct. but the speakes should be able to decode 5.1 surround even when no rears are connected

I'm getting dolby digital formatted sound when using streaming services directly on my samsung tv, but not from my apple tv. think it has something todo with the apple tv sending some uncompressed format that the beam does not support

Beam and two Ikea Symfonisk as rear satellites. Great combo tbh

I was using a Sonos Beam. It worked great but I decided to switch to HomePods to simplify my setup.

I have a Sonos Beam in the office and then living room I’m still rocking the OG Sonos Playbar. I’d like to get the Sub to go with them or upgrade at some point but they sound good still so I figured why waste money at this point

I’ve had a similar journey to you- moving from a combo Sonos / standing speaker system to an entirely Sonos based system for space reasons. The only difference is that I’ve always had the Beam / Surround / Sub Mini combo which I built over time and never upgraded further (the arc is too big for my TV lol). Anyway, for music - everything from steaming to vinyl to CDs- the sub mini / beam / surround ones- is, dollar for dollar (and even when you don’t take cost into account) the best non standing system you are going to find. It’s great. But this is a problem for Sonos, because if this system works well for the vast majority of music customers, how will Sonos satisfy its investors and demonstrate continued and rapid growth? Thus the fiasco of the last few years, with things that either don’t work (the app, the headphones) or things that work but somehow always seem disappointing when you take the hype and the price into account. I’m mentally preparing for Sonos to someday make my wonderful little system technically obsolete for exactly this reason … but for now I am just enjoying it.

As I said in my comment below, the key differences between your two experiences are (1) music and (2) atmos. Like myself, the OP has an emphasis on music and doesn’t use Atmos much (I don’t use it at all, I’m incapable). Fundamentally, I’ve come to the conclusion that soundbars are best for TV and films, full stop. If you want Sonos for music, even the best soundbars won’t cut it - that’s why you need to supplement them with other speakers, and once you do that, the Beam is as good as anything, and for music, maybe even better.

I test a lot of audio products but honestly I don't know if this is a category with good contenders. The closest I can think of is the ZVOX brand. Especially for older and non technical folks who are looking for dialog clarity, their products just work and have like 6 levels of selectable dialog clarity enhancement. No fancy smart apps, no CEC drama, minimal audio processing hence minimum lip sync delay..... Maybe this isn't the answer you're looking for but both the Bose 600 and the Sonos Beam are really outstanding bang for the buck in terms of having impressive performance at a value price. Lately, more so the Bose 600.

Yeah soundbars below that Beam/Bose 600 price point, some of them are better than TV speakers for sure but none of them impress in a way that I would even give them mention when inviting a guest to watch something. Despite their recent app debacle, 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. This isn’t a finance Reddit but often times I see folks trying to be frugal by ONLY looking at the price tag today, without thinking about whether their item turns into e-waste or gets traded in for pennies if they outgrow it in the future.

Although I hate the new app update, I love my Beam, with a couple ancient Play:1's for the TV. Thankfully, Sonos on the TV (LG vie eARC HDMI, plus paired surrounds) always "just work" and sound great.

I have the Ray, Beam, and Arc. While there is a noticeable difference between the Ray and the others, the Ray is in a smaller room and it works just fine (and is much better than the built in tv speakers).

You could entertain any bar under 500 with the same results. All generally mediocre. Spend 500 and be happy with a Sonos Beam add surrounds later and overall be happy every time you watch a movie or listen to music. If you want to spoil yourself go Sonos arc it's $900. I install professionally and anything other than the Sonos bars are a waste of money in my opinion.

I'm a beam, a sub gen 3 and 2x play 1 for surround sound. Living room is 17ft. My sub is overkill on bass. Just don't fully use it and turn it down to -7 to not wake kids or shake the house. Surrounds always feel like they're not really on, but then some intros to movies sound overly 'on'. Never thought that the beam managed a crisp central voice like the movies. Would love an arc ultra but I'm hearing lots of 'more bass' which I totally don't need with a tuned down sub3. The only thing keeping me hanging is the possibility that arc ultra on its own would be better at surround than a beam with play 1s.? I feel like an arc ultra with play 1 surrounds would confuse itself

I’ve owned probably two dozen Sonos products over the years and currently have a beam + sub on our living room TV in addition to a half dozen Ones and Fives in the rest of the house. I’ve had occasional bugs with the new app but overall I’m still very happy with Sonos and they seem to be making improvements to the app.

I have a beam, a playbar, and an arc. The beam is plenty for a bedroom and would be my choice if I didn’t already have some older playbars for the bedrooms.

The beams are ‘just that good’ I have beam, arc and ultra. I was never impressed with arc. Getting the ultra, for me, just puts it back in the territory it should have held in the first place. But, if someone were really struggling for a decision between beam and ultra? I’d say just get a beam. The beams are just that good.

It’s a very good sound bar. But honestly, the Beam is also, and much cheaper. The Beam has more bass, and a ‘fuller’ sound . I have both.

Ha, what? How is that the conclusion you came to from my post? I was merely agreeing with the person above that those products still sound fantastic. I also own multiple Arcs, 6 Amps connected to Sonos x Sonace speakers, a Beam, gen 3 Sub, Sub mini, and a Play 3 that all sound great and all work just fine on the S2 platform. Any tech company is invariably going to release newer and better products over time. But for a basement TV that is mostly used by the kids to play the Switch or stream some garbage, the above setup is more than OK.

Go to best buy you can compare the ultra and beam. It’s day and night.

Not stock tv speakers depending on the sound bar. But I do get that I'm in the home theater subreddit. My sonos beam was great for just upgrading from stock sound. (Not angry just a pov)

In our bedroom, we have an LG OLED B7 TV which only supports ARC, so with an Apple TV 4K as our only source in that room we need to have the Apple TV convert all audio to either Dolby Digital 5.1 or Stereo PCM since the TV won't pass through LPCM or Atmos. We could upgrade the TV, but it still looks fantastic so no reason to spend $2000+ on a replacement yet. We currently use a Sonos Beam with the TV, so we convert all audio to Stereo PCM since there's no good reason to send anything else to the Beam on it's own. If the Arc Ultra had HDMI pass through, then we could send the Apple TV to the soundbar and then to the TV so that the Arc Ultra could take a full Atmos/LPCM audio signal and the TV would still get the full video. I can appreciate that most modern TVs wouldn't have this problem, but I would imagine that a good number of TVs are still in use that don't have eARC.

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.

I completely understand the space constraint, and it's why I use a Beam setup in my family room. It's just that I don't expect to be able to use the full suite of audio codecs in that setup.

With an A95L, don’t cheap out on the audio “that will bring down” your A95L. You want ATMOS. I would say get a Sony soundbar. Or you can build in pieces with a Sonos ARC or Beam at first. Then add the sub and rears later on when your budget allows.

All Sonos speakers require internet to setup. The sales person is ignorant or trying to make a sale. That said, if don't intend to use the Sonos Beam for streaming audio and you have a smart phone that can be used as a hotspot and a tablet. Turn your smart phone hotspot on, use your tablet to setup the speaker, connecting it to the phone hotspot. Let it do all the updates. Make sure it's connected to your TV, do Truplay and once its done, turn the hotspot off. How old and what brand/model is your TV? The audio delay is likely caused by an audio processing delay. Your TV is probably decoding the audio before it gets to the soundbar, causing the delay because TVs usually suck at audio decoding. Look in the TV audio settings to see if there is a setting for audio passthrough. Turn this setting on. It will pass the audio through to your soundbar in whatever format the source is sending it, allowing the soundbar to decode it. You may also need to do the same thing for your source devices. This should eliminate the audio delay.

I was a little disappointed in my ARC compared to my BEAM in the other room. Paired a Sub Mini with the Arc and any bit of disappointment went away instantly.

Honestly, I wouldn't. The beam is great, I mean so is the arc, but id add a mini sub and call it a day and maybe a couple surrounds. I got my play 1s used for cheap.

Returning my beam. Not happy you cannot shut it off without unplugging or disconnecting from WiFi so the soundbar is always on. Sounds great but I don’t want it on all the damn time.

You technically don’t have to connect the Sonos Beam to wifi, the sync light will just stay flashing, you can’t adjust tone, and can’t do the trueplay room correction.. but eh, it technically works 🤷‍♂️

Get a Sonos beam. Game changer.

I only got this to work after iOS 18.1 came out and Sonos updated their apps to finally work. Previously, it would get stuck in the “tuning” phase where it wouldn’t connect to the Beam to start the calibration. I have a small rectangular room and didn’t really notice a difference, though.

Sonos beam. Doesn’t need sub

Is it normal to have this many problems with the company? Saturday I decided to go buy a soundbar for my TV so I went to Best Buy and I bought the Sonos Beam. While I was talking to the guy who was selling it to me I asked him if I needed to connect to the internet for it to work because where I live the internet has a firewall preventing those kinds of things from connecting to it. He said all I needed was an HDMI cord and no internet was required. He was wrong. The next day I returned it and traded it in for the JBL bar 500, the only issue was that the closest store that had it to me was an hour away. I went ahead and drove down there and got it because I had nothing else to do. Once I got home I set is up and it sounded great but there was an audio delay and I could not fix it. So I packed it up and took it to a store near me and troubleshot it with me and said the best thing to do was get a new HDMI cord for it, so I did. I get home and there is still an audio delay. I called JBL and they seemed to think it was a defect with the audio sync function feature and told me to make an appointment with Best Buy and they should be able to fix it. So I made the appointment for today to get it looked at in-store. Well, when I showed up Geek Squad told me that this was an in-home problem and told me to make an appointment for that. I asked them why it didn't tell me that when I made the appointment and she just said "I don't know sorry". I did not want to spend $100 for someone to come over and mess with my TV settings so I just opted to exchange it for the same one saying the audio sync is defective. They then told me that since I got the soundbar on sale and it was $200 off I would have to pay them $200 to replace it, which does not sound right at all. They then suggested that I had a site survey done and an someone could see what was wrong with it and go from there so I reluctantly agreed now I am waiting for someone to come look at it. I know I can just use the warranty with JBL to replace it but the employees were saying that I could not do this in-store, is that right? I feel I am being scammed out of my money with how I bought a sound bar, it came out defective, and now they say if I wanna replace it that I would have to pay them $200 since it was on sale. Not only that but the entire time I am trying to get this fixed they just kept trying to get me to buy more crap, the guy who sold it to me in the first place spent 10 minutes trying to sell me an SSD for a PS5 after I said I did not want a Best Buy card. When I was trying to figure out the audio sync the first time they were trying to sell me a TV. What should I do going forward? I love this soundbar, the only issue is the audio sync. Can I really not use the manufacturer warranty in-store? Who can I complain to about this to actually get things rolling?

I have a Vizio D50-F1, when I had the beam it would work on the TV but only for 30 minutes at a time before disconnecting because it wanted to be set up. While it worked it had no syncing issues whatsoever unlike the JBL. 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.

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. When it worked it synced well with the TV, the only issue I had with it was it forced HDR on but I just manually turned it off. The guys who did the site survey confirmed it was defective and told me to just go to Best Buy and talk to a manager. The Geek Squad guys were really nice and so was the manager. I ended up exchanging it for a Hisense AX5125H and I can't find many people having issues with it online so I'm optimistic this one will work out. Is there any reason you wouldn't recommend Hisense?

Just my 2 cents. I have a Sonos Beam, so I'm not as familiar with the Arc. Perhaps my gripes are not applicable there, but with my Beam, I love the sound and surround effect, but boy do I hate no pass through, bluetooth, or ability to plug in headphones. It is very limited in terms of configuration. They're basically the Apple of the home theater audio world. Good product, user friendly, but not very rigid in what they want or will allow you to do with their product.

got 4 of these tv's and have the Sonos Arc on 3 of them. the 65 I have a Beam. works flawlessly.

We bought the Sonos Beam, Left & Right One SL speakers and the Sub Mini because we heard that Sonos is know for having good voice clarity. My husband and I are not young anymore and find that it is often hard to understand what is being said on TV. (Our hearing is OK, according to the audiologist!) The clarity is better than a regular other branded soundbar. However, we are wondering if we bought an additional set of Sonos speakers and placed them across the room, near our chairs, would it improve the clarity? Or is there another brand that would be better?

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. However, that Arc Ultra is simmering in the back of my mind.......lol......

So the way you get “5.1” without what’s called discrete speakers, the ones in the back and 3 upfront, is something called “psycho acoustics”. Which is a process of directing sound to bounce of walls to simulate sound coming from that direction. It’s been around for a while however there is a lot and I mean a lot of snake oil peddling in the $100-$300 price range especially without discrete speakers. I’m probably a month into my research of soundbars. It’s a lot to sift through. Samsung makes the best overall soundbar in the Q990 but unless you’re getting the EPP discount they are north of $1000. The budget version in their line would be the QS730D at $300-$450 on Amazon. Does a pretty good job with 3 speakers simulating surround with 2 height speakers to provide Atmos effects. Sonos Beam and Bose 600 are the midrange no subwoofer options around $500. Great clarity and do a good job of simulating surround. Height effects aren’t that great on either model. Budgeting lower than these is Vizio M512-H6 and JBL Bar 5.1/500. Both I think are good units that won’t leave you feeling you’ve been duped.

I don't think satellites or subwoofer make sense in you usecase. Maybe a JBL Bar 300 would be great in your case. No sub, no satellites but a very good sound projection. And a calibration system which is quite fast. I just got this bar and am very happy with it. Replaced a Sonos Beam with it. Got it on sale at 300€.

Ah if you love deep deeep basses yeah, that's a good idea. In my home we don't like it so we chose a soundbar without sub. Be aware that with most brands you cannot add a sub later. You buy a pack and stay with what isnincluded. Sonos lets you add a sub ... But you really should not buy anything Sonos, they may be bankrupt in some monthes with the app debacle.

It'll look small but it will probably be plenty loud for your movies or music. Sub and rears will make it even better and totally solid. My MIL has a beam on a 65. It looks a lil funny but there is zero problem with it providing enough juice.

I have a TV setup (beam, one SL, sub mini) and a single other speaker, still problems (new app only, old app works fine).

There is very little between them if you are looking to turn bass right down anyway. Although I will say, if your living room is large, you may find you don't need to turn the bass down, I would likely go for the cheapest option based on your description. That said, why the arc ultra rather just the arc? Or even just a beam if you are looking for voice clarity

You probably want a beam if you need TV out in a relatively small space.

Listen, they really messed up but only recently - and are trying to fix it. As for quality, it’s a soundbar my dude. A soundbar. A top tier sound bar. So ya, the quality is not like a traditional setup. If I could start over, I’d have bought an AVR for my living room instead of Sonos. But I’d still have a beam in the bedroom and ones/move around the house!

Sonos does have that engagement In learning network and I was thinking about trying to use that, the thing is the ray just kinda sucks and the beam without a sub on top is also just ok. (And Sonos subs aren’t the best anyways).

Sonos Beam

I have a beam, surrounds and sub. No issue at all with them. The beam is connected to my TVs arc port. Once it’s set up I literally never run the Sonos app and I still don’t know why people need to. Once it’s connected to arc port, volume is controlled by your tv device - Roku, tv remote, Apple TV etc. If I stream music I airplay from my phone, I control music through Deezer or Apple Music.

The bigger sub does not thump if you don’t want it to, but has a deeper bass sound then the mini sub when it comes to a Sonos system, I would be going for the Beam if I had a smaller place with a set of 100s but if you want a more immersive sound I would go with the Ark Ultra with a set of 300s. It all up to what you prefer as everyone is different when it comes to sound in a system. Hope this helps

Sonos beam is garbage. No bluetooth and the app sucks. Had so many issues I ended up taking it back to Costco. Sound isn’t bad but it’s not worth the hassle of Sonos.

I got the JBL 9.1 and it’s awesome. I had the Sonos beam with two Sonos ones as rears. The JBL I have am has wireless surrounds too that with the sub is perfect for movies and music

I would recommend the sony bravia 8 soundbar. Currently, $699 at Best Buy in US. I have that with a sub and it's over kill in my townhouse. Paired with a Sony A80K OLED. If you're looking for cheaper surround sound system, Vizio M series is great. I think they are $500. Does the job at an affordable price point. I'd also say the sonos beam, but I'd personally pair with a sub.

I have a 55” G3 and a Sonos Beam. Got both for a total of $1000, pretty great setup

With all the bugs going on with Sonos at the moment I would avoid Sonos, but if you do want a Sonos I would go a beam over the ark. Recent software upgrades has changed the arcs sound signature and I sold mine because it was just way too thin and harsh.

Honestly Sonos only really needs WiFi for setup and if you’re using the app; otherwise, once it is set up WiFi is no longer required. Can’t say why the store wouldn’t swap the unit out if it is defective, charging you more money is just a lie and isn’t necessary. They just either don’t know how to do it properly or don’t want to. Anyone telling you that you should’ve paid for set up is being salty. Soundbars are plug and play these days. They either work or they don’t, there isn’t some magical program or knowledge that would fix it if it’s defective.

I've Beam and 2 One's as my system. Yeah, I know it is entry level but such is what I've. I wonder if it is worth to upgrade to Arc Ultra. I live in a small condo and can't disturb my neighbor. I just want better mid-range and most importantly, cleaner sound.

I bought a beam and sub mini a few months ago when they had the 30% discount codes. I wasn't sure it would be enough for the room its in as its quite big but I was really happy with the sound of the beam + sub. Unfortunately, last week it stopped working and now just has a flashing white light. I talked to support last night and I have to return it for a replacement. Thankfully it's still under warranty but I'm seriously considering just selling the replacement unit along with my other sonos stuff before this happens again.

I have the same setup it’s excellent. I don’t think you can add more speakers (shouldn’t your current One SLs already be behind/next to you). Even if you did the dialogue typically comes from the center channel (sound bar) so it won’t make a difference. Edit: there should be a setting to boost the dialogue clarity. You can also turn the surrounds and the sub down if you find they’re too loud when turning up the volume to hear dialogue better.

In our living room we have a Sonos beam and have a theater room with a dedicated system. I have no need to watch the news in 7.2 surround sound. I also don’t want to look at speakers the time. The Sonos is actually not bad, I want to get the sub but I don’t really need it. A lot of people are not fortunate enough to have a dedicated space for a home theater, a sound bar works perfectly fine.

I would get it from Best Buy or Costco. You can return it in 30 days if it doesn't work. I bought a used playbase which is very old in the Sonos system a month after the app rollout in May. It looked brand new and I auditioned it at the seller's house. I got it home and reset it and I love it. I have added surrounds a Move 2 and 2 Era 100 s since May. I have experienced volume issues a few weeks ago but never lost my speakers. I had a budget set like you have and I have purchased open box from Amazon and best buy. I have used CC points and bought used also. I have built my system from one speaker to 6 speakers in the past 4 months. Start off with a new returnable beam and keep an eye on the date for return. I have probably weathered the worse time ever in the Sonos system because of forced app rollouts. Maybe I am lucky but I am very happy with my system. I stream music and listen to my TV so my troubles may be less than others the way I use mine. I think you have an easy chance with a return policy to find out for yourself.

I use the Sonos Beam and love it. I also paired it with a subwoofer and two rear Era 100 speakers.

The app works fine and the beam and sub mini are excellent. These people are complainers.

Just get a Beam. The Arc is massive overkill for a bedroom / alarm clock.

You could look at sennheiser ambeo mini but the sonos beam is probably better. The sony ht-a5000/ht-a7000 are going to be way better than ht-s2000 and depending on your usage; you may prefer them over the sonos beam.

Imagine downgrading from the arc to beam and saying it sounds better. What you’re describing isn’t an arc problem. The arc alone isn’t meant to handle lows just like any soundbar/speaker. It should be used with a sub at the minimum. You just need the top of the line Sonos setup which is the arc, sub gen 3 and era 300s. That setup is night and day better than a beam2 sub mini and 100s. How you dial in the settings also makes a huge difference. Listening to music set on ambient 🤦‍♂️. Talk about not setting up your system properly then complaining about the speakers. Head scratching stuff. If you’re trying to say your arc, sub mini and era 100s barely sounded better than your TV speakers then your settings weren’t right or your ears are clogged. But seeing as how you set your music on ambient I can already imagine what the rest of the settings were like. The definition of ambient straight from Sonos is subtle low volume with a limited frequency range. Why would you want that for music if you’re really trying to experience the speakers? If you want your sound to come more from the center of your soundbar you can still keep the music playback to full but adjust your surround volume. You can put it in the negative while still enjoying a full frequency range. But if you have the era 300s that’s the opposite of what you should be doing. They are the better more powerful speakers compared to the arc so for music playback you want them at like plus 3 and you 100% want music playback to full. Now I see why there’s so many complaints here about Sonos.

I have my Sonos Beam in my family room and a Sonos One SL in my living room kitchen. My favorite feature of the Sonos TV bars is that I can cast the sound to my other speakers. So when I’m cooking I can still listen to the movie/tv from the other room. Seriously amazing tech

That's more helpful. But I have a ray and a beam. In the correct environment I think they are both awesome...

Vizio M AIO is decent for no subwoofer and only like 200 bucks. But I’d get something like the Sonos Beam or another brand that allows you to expand in the future should you chose to do so

I have an Arc, sub and two ones for the TV and it's very good. In my main living area I have a Beam for the TV and it's very good. I have a one outside and it's very very hit and miss with music, skipping and all the other faults reported with the app at one time or another. Swapped it out with the other ones I have which have been flawless and the fault swaps to the new speaker and the one that was faulty is perfect on the TV. I also have a couple of roams for music which skip etc. I did try the Arc setup with music and it was OK. My Arc is wired with Ethernet. I reckon you'll be all right with the Arc Ultra.

Samsung Q600 or Q800 Or sonos beam

For listening to low volume I would recommend you to go for an all in one sound bar. Because the systems with dedicated sub will require you to crank up the volume to get the sub going. So my recommendation is go for all in one sound bar where you can add rear speakers later on to experience surround sound. And in future if you move to bigger place then you can add the sub as well. For all in one either go for sonos Arc/beam or sony’s new bravia theatre bars or if you can get good discount on previous models like A5000/7000

Sonos Beam or Arc

You should avoid LG soundbars in general as they tend to have cec and handshake issues. With this specific model the surround speakers aren’t great, my guess would be that they are below 20w honestly. This soundbar also doesn’t have arc so unless you’re tv has a universal remote function you are going to have to use two remotes just to change volume. If you’re going cheap the only one I recommend is a Samsung 650 soundbar. Best option for a 3.1 on a budget especially because it goes on sale all the time. Samsung soundbars are pretty reliable and pretty easy to troubleshoot. Obviously sound quality differs from model to model but the 650 is “not bad” Like everyone else is saying, Sonos is always a recommendation. Go for the beam but I would actually recommend saving up and going for the Arc. The Sonos Arc is one of the few soundbars I would say you don’t NEED a subwoofer with, although it greatly improves a cinematic and high fidelity audio experience. The good thing about Sonos truly comes from whole home audio. So if this is the only room you’re concerned about you could definitely consider another brand. But Sonos is also buildable. So maybe this year you grab the soundbar. Next year you grab the sub. After that you grab two era 100s for surrounds. If you’re willing to spend money on GOOD sound honestly the Samsung 930d kind of blew me away with its sound quality. It’s not as good as Sonos, but has some of the best surrounds that come in box with the soundbar. Almost all other soundbars that come with “wireless surrounds” actually come with a wireless receiver (small box that receives audio from the soundbar) and then the rears have to be hard wired to the box with speaker cable. Whereas the surrounds in the 930d soundbar only need power and get pretty loud so you can actually hear them. In the end you need to make the decision of what matters more to you. Quality or Money. But I cannot recommend anything below a 650 soundbar. And don’t go with Bose, JBL, or Polk either. They all sound great but have so many issues with compatibility. Source: I’m an in home DA. I’ve installed mostly everything.

Yep, that spot is just screaming for a Sonos bar.