Product Comparison: Sonos PLAYBAR vs Sonos Beam

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Best Pick

Sonos PLAYBAR Wireless Soundbar

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Sonos Beam Compact Smart Soundbar with Amazon Alexa Voice Control in Black

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General Specifications

Brand

Sonos

Model

PLAYBAR

Beam

Origin

China

Malaysia

About the Product

PLAYBAR´s nine–speaker design floods your home with huge waves of epic, full–theater sound for TV, Web, Movies and Video Games. It is also a stand–alone all–in–one Sonos player that allows you to wirelessly stream all the music on earth—your iTunes library, your favorite music services, and thousands of Internet radio stations, shows and podcasts.

Put yourself at the centre of movies, shows, music and games with rich, detailed sound that fills the entire room.

Size & Weight

Color

Black

Height

3.3 in.

2.7 in.

Width

35.4 in.

25.63 in.

Depth

5.5 in.

3.94 in.

Weight

11.9 lbs.

6.2 lbs.

What customers say about "Size & Weight"

Sonos PLAYBAR Wireless Soundbar

Great sound in a compact size that packs the power of three speakers.
This is a fabulous product! Works really well in any size room.
Not only does it have a great sound, but I like the slim size.
Sounds good for the small size. You need the subwoofer. Packed well and is a quality piece.
The sonos system is very impressive for its size and ease of use.

Sonos Beam Compact Smart Soundbar with Amazon Alexa Voice Control in Black

It was very easy to set up and is a very neat and good looking sound bar.
The speaker is very nicely packaged and is quite sturdy and attractive.
I have always been very impressed with the sound quality, ease of use and the simplistic look of the product.
It’s smaller size than the full size playbar also fits into the kitchen far better
The product itself is nice and weighty, feels solidly built, looks great and didn’t take very long to set up on the floor.

Features

Type

Tabletop

Installation Type

Stand-alone

Stand-alone, Wall-mount

Number of Channels

3.0

Sound Enhancing System

Dolby Digital, DTS TruSurround

Dolby Digital

Extras

Alexa app., Voice Conrol with Alexa, Realistic and Impressive Sound

Voice Conrol with Alexa, Speech Enhancement, Apple AirPlay-compatible, Connects Sonos speakers in different rooms over WiFi, Five far-field microphones

What customers say about "Features"

Sonos PLAYBAR Wireless Soundbar

Soundbar was extremely easy to install on wall with their mounting bracket.
The Playbar was easy to install and integrate with my Play 3's to get the surround sound effects.
The installation is very smooth (specially if you already other Sonos devices). The sound quality is pretty good and automatically becomes integrated with other Sonos components.
The soundbar is a great unit. The bar actually contains the center channel and the two front channels.
Soundbar works great, but my tv like many others doesn't output Dolby digital 5.1. Had to buy an hdmi switch and now have Dolby digital 5.1 from all decices.
Disappointing soundbar. Thought it would be a great purchase and am already invested with a bunch of other Sonos gear. Bought the Playbar and two Play:1s since Sonos says they can work together to do 5.1 surround.

Sonos Beam Compact Smart Soundbar with Amazon Alexa Voice Control in Black

Speaking of soundstage... The soundstage is huge. I genuinely feel like there are two other speakers to my left and right. It sounds wider than it is, and this is their most compact offering.
The Beam has 7 far field microphones so you can use smart assistants. They call these far field mics, because it's supposed to help recognise your voice when music is playing very loudly.
It works on Sonos' modular idea being that you can start with one speaker and slowly add more to your home overtime.
Really simple setup using the Sonos app. Installed and using it within 15 minutes.
I already have two other Sonos speakers with the Alexa app on them and these can be used alongside the Beam very easily.

Setting

App-Controlled

Yes

Equalizer Settings

Bass/Tremble control, Night mode, Surround sound control, Movie mode

Speech Enhancement, Night Sound

App-Controlled

Connectivity

Wireless Connectivity

Blueetoth

Wi-Fi

Interfaces

LAN, Digital optical audio

HDMI, Optical audio input, Ethernet

What customers say about "Connectivity"

Sonos PLAYBAR Wireless Soundbar

Easy wireless connection with Bluetooth for Pandora or other iphone media.
This is an amazing product. I connected the playbar into a pre-wired LAN jack in my family room (routed through a ethernet switch to the LAN jack) to my cable modem (located in a separate room).
A really good concept with only one major hole in it. As others have mentioned, there's only an optical in and not an hdmi in.
It doesn't have bluetooth or the capability to connect to my devices over wireless for anything other than music.
Minor limitation may be the optical audio input for 5.1 as newer HDTVs are tending to HDMI and may not have an optical output.

Sonos Beam Compact Smart Soundbar with Amazon Alexa Voice Control in Black

It has HDMI ARC support. ARC stands for Audio Return Channel and is what will deliver digital TV audio to the speaker
Set-up was beautifully simple. The HDMI ARC is easy to use: you just plug the Beam into the HMDI marked "ARC" and the TV automatically recognises it and starts using it instead of the internal speakers.
The set up is very easy if you have an HDMI ARC socket on the TV and you have downloaded the Sonos app to smart phone or tablet.
I connected the Beam via HDMI ARC Port so the volume can be controlled using the TV remote which is great since it makes the entire setup simpler.
Plugged it in via the HDMI ARC port on my TV. Already had the app downloaded on my iphone ready to go.

Warranty / Certifications

Certifications

FCC

Manufacturer Warranty

2 year(s)

Other Information

Manufacturer

Link

Manual

Download

MSRP

399.00 $