Sonos Beam Gen 2 Soundbar comes with AirPlay 2 and questionable Dolby Atmos

The extremely popular Sonos Beam soundbar has been upgraded, the new TV soundbar model offers not only minor design adjustments but also a faster processor and support for Dolby Atmos. The integration of the spatial sound is a bit questionable, so customers shouldn’t expect too much.

Shortly after Sonos announced a price increase for most of its products, there is a new best TV soundbar from Sonos, which has also become a bit more expensive. For the higher price, you get a compact Dolby Atmos sound bar with a processor that works 40 percent faster than the CPU of the previous model. At first glance, the design has hardly changed, but with a precisely perforated front, there are some improvements in detail.

Probably the biggest upgrade is a bit disappointing: Sonos promises support for Dolby Atmos, but Sonos does not install any upward drivers the driver configuration corresponds to the previous model. Instead, two virtual Atmos channels are only simulated, but the result is unlikely to compete with Atmos speakers pointing upwards.

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 has an HDMI 2.1 eARC input for connection to the television and an Ethernet port to hang the soundbar wired into the home network, apart from that, the sound bar for TV is completely wireless. As usual with Sonos, practically all streaming services that exist are supported, music can also be transmitted locally via Apple AirPlay 2. The volume can be controlled via the TV remote control, while other functions can be controlled via the Sonos app, Google Assistant, or Alexa.

Sonos Beam Gen 2 price and availability

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 Dolby home theater TV soundbar will be available to pre-order via the Bhphotovideo.com, Adorama.com, and Bestbuy.com websites for $449.99.

Last week, Bose has also announced its new Smart Soundbar 900. The flagship Bose TV soundbar comes with plenty of equipment such as Dolby Atmos and the two voice assistants Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.