Sonos guards its pricing religiously throughout the year and refuses to discount even when competitors slash their prices for random sales events. Black Friday on Amazon is the only time Sonos loosens its grip on retail prices, and the Beam (second gen) soundbar just dropped to a new record low of $349, down from its usual $499. Only 16 units remain in stock for the black color at the time of writing, which tells you how quickly people are grabbing this deal.
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Dolby Atmos in a Compact Package
The Beam soundbar packs Dolby Atmos processing into a soundbar that measures just 25.6 inches wide, which means it fits under most TVs without dominating your entertainment center. Atmos creates a three-dimensional sound effect that places audio above, around, and beside you instead of just firing sound from the front. The soundbar uses psychoacoustic processing to bounce sound off your ceiling and walls and creates the impression of height channels without installing speakers overhead. Explosions in action movies feel like they’re happening above you, rain sounds fall from the ceiling, and helicopters pass convincingly overhead.
Sonos engineered the Beam soundbar with dedicated drivers for different frequency ranges including a center tweeter that’s specifically responsible for crystal-clear dialogue reproduction. The clarity of the dialogue is enormously important in modern content, where mumbling actors and aggressive sound mixing often bury conversations under music and effects. The bass response is full of lively low-end that doesn’t require a separate subwoofer, although Sonos does let you add their Sub if you want room-shaking bass when watching movies or listening to music.
Setup, from unboxing to content with better audio, takes about five minutes. You connect one HDMI cable from the soundbar to your TV’s eARC or ARC port, plug in the power cable, and the Sonos app will walk you through the rest. Trueplay tuning uses your iPhone’s microphone to analyze your room’s acoustics and then auto-adjusts the soundbar’s output to compensate for room size, furniture placement, and wall materials.
The Beam soundbar streams music, podcasts, radio, and audiobooks from just about every major service when your TV is off. You can use it as a dedicated music speaker throughout the day, then seamlessly switch to TV audio in the evening. AirPlay 2 support allows for direct streaming from an Apple device, while the Sonos app provides access to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and dozens of other services. For voice control, you can use Alexa or Google Assistant built directly into the soundbar, adjusting volume, changing inputs, or controlling playback with ease and without the touch of a remote.
Because of HDMI-CEC, your TV remote controls the Beam soundbars’s volume automatically and saves you from having to juggle multiple remotes or programming universal controllers. The soundbar responds immediately to the volume buttons on your existing remote after you set it up, which makes the whole system feel integrated rather than cobbled together.
At $349, the latest Beam soundbar is $150 off its usual price and undercuts a number of competing soundbars that offer similar features but notably worse sound quality. Sonos rarely discounts its products because they’re worth their full value based on performance alone, but this Black Friday deal is a real doozy.
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