Sonos Beam smarter with Alexa and AirPlay 2

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 07 June 2018

Depending on your perspective, Sonos Beam is either an Alexa enabled sound bar that can also replace your in home music system, or a smart speaker that doubles as sound bar. Either way, the two-in-one factor is important: sound bars are often mixed for movies rather than music, whereas Sonos says the Beam excels at both.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence describes the Beam as the "most versatile smart speaker in the world".

"In a smart speaker category, increasingly filled with tech clutter, poor audio quality and ulterior motives, Beam is the best example yet of what makes Sonos different," said Spence. "Our open approach, obsession with design, meticulate focus on quality and commitment to building a system that’s easy to use and gets better over time, are the heart of everything we do."

As part of the Sonos ecosystem, Beam can be paired with your existing Sonos speakers and used in a multiroom audio setup that can hook into over 80 music services. You can also group it up with two Sonos Ones (or Play:1s) and a Sonos Sub for 5.1 audio on your TV.

Notably, the Beam is the first Sonos product with HDMI ARC, which grants the sound bar more control over the TV you connect it to. There's an optical adapter in the box in case your TV doesn't have ARC.

In addition to shipping with Alexa, the Beam will support Apple's AirPlay 2 protocol. AirPlay 2 will allow you to control the Beam directly from an iOS device without the need to open the Sonos app, and in turn, it works with Siri to play tunes. More interestingly, these two technologies can worth together seamlessly. You can ask Siri on your iPhone to play something on the Sonos Beam, and then ask Alexa to tell you what's playing on the speaker.

The Sonos Beam will be available from July 17 for $599, in a choice of white or black. Pre-orders kick off today. The Beam will coexist with the pricier Playbar and Playbase, which both have a larger number of internal speakers; Sonos is essentially pitching the Beam as a speaker for a smaller space.

AirPlay 2 will also be coming to a couple of other Sonos products in July: the One, second generation Play:5, and Playbase will all be updated. If you have a mix of old and new Sonos speakers, owning any of the newer ones will make AirPlay 2 work with them all.

Interestingly, AirPlay 2 speakers from different manufacturers can be grouped together using your iPhone or iPad, so you could theoretically use a HomePod and a Sonos speaker together in a multiroom setup.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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