Sonos Announces New Beam Soundbar with Dolby Atmos
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 14, 2021
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Today, Sonos announced a second-generation version of its Beam soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos and Ultra HD audio.
“We often talk about ‘Hollywood at Home’ being a real catalyst for our business, and Beam has played a huge part in this as one of the top-selling soundbars in its category,” Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said. “Taking what we’ve learned over the years about great listening and home theater, we’ve found a way to bring new features and significantly better sound to Beam, all in the same compact size that has proven extremely popular with customers.”
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For those unfamiliar, Beam is the smaller and more affordable of Sonos’ soundbar products; Sonos also sells a larger and more expensive Arc soundbar as well. I own a first-generation Sonos Beam and like it quite a bit, but it appears that Beam (Gen 2) delivers the features I’m missing: Dolby Atmos sound, which is critical for movies and, increasingly, some high-definition music formats, and HDMI eARC, which enables the use of other high-definition audio formats.
And on that note, Sonos has revealed that the Beam (and presumably the Arc) will both Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos Music later this year via Amazon Music. I assume other music subscription services will soon add support for immersive and high-definition audio as well.
The Beam (Gen 2) costs $449 and will be available on October 5 in white or black.