Sonos Beam Gen 2 Long Term Review: Worth It In 2024? 

Just focusing on the sound quality and sound stage, sonos beam2 OR Bose soundbar 600?

Honest and useful review!

Debating getting this for the voice clarity. How does this compare to the other sound bar you mention.

Hi , May I ask that if I purchase for this Gen Beam2 use AirPlay to play music or video . Do you think worth it to buy ? Thanks for advise 😂

Great Work, loving the quality content. :)

Whats newer the arc or the beam gen 2?

I'm a total noob when it comes to audio, is the constant blinking green light at the top of the beam normal?

I bought a Beam Gen 2 and can't tell a difference between it and the old Vizio sound bar I had. I plugged it in expecting amazing sound, and to my ear it just sounds the same. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or not.

Hi, is there a way I can connect a vinyl player to the sonos beam 2? Thanks

Great video, great review. But most importantly, which anime is running on your tv? 😁

What clock are you using?

Nice review - I just ordered Beam gen 2 for the living room in my basement, and I’m looking forward to testing it out. I’ve been a Sonos customer for over a decade. I own 26 Sonos devices in total. Adding over time as finances have allowed. I will caution potential new customers about a few things below. Sonos is proving to be a company that’s living off past successes of former managers at this point. It’s beginning to lose it’s reputation as being the best wireless audio company on the planet. The truth is that very few of their latest products are improvements over their predecessors. In fact, it could be argued that the quality of recently released Sonos components has seen a reduction, while the company continues to mark up their prices in a big way. Software development has seemingly taken a backseat to rushing out new hardware - under the new CEO. Things just aren’t working as seamlessly as they did in the past. The latest Sonos controller is a disaster that I’ll explain further below. Hopefully the Beam Gen 2 is a better bang for the buck product than the Arc is. I own both a playbar, and an Arc. The playbar beats it in overall design for physical sound quality - hands down. At half the price, and a decade older tech - this should never be the case! Had they just put out a longer playbar 2, with e-arc capabilities, they would’ve had real a winner on their hands. Instead, they put out a poorly designed - tinny sounding unit; with zero mid range base, and major dialogue clarity issues! Plus they severely jacked up it’s price on top of all that. I call it the expensive TV ornament. It looks too good under a big living room TV to swap into the bedroom - where it belongs! If you own an Arc, adding a sub to it is a must - in any sized room. There’s simply no low end punch there, when in stand alone usage. For 1100 Canadian, there really is no excuse for the hardware/design issues that numerous software patches have failed to rectify. The Arc is literally the most overhyped, overpriced product that Sonos has ever put out. Any credible reviewer who says otherwise should be ashamed of themselves! If I could go back, I would have just bought a second playbar. If you’re looking to get into Sonos with a soundbar, I would recommend saving yourself a bunch of cash, and getting anything but the Arc. If money isn’t an issue, I’d recommend waiting to see what it’s replacement is going to be. Within the next year, they should be offering a release date for their next flagship soundbar. For the sake of the company….It better be a damn good product, at a reasonable price! While you can get away with stand alone usage in a small room; adding rear surrounds, and a sub is a must for all Sonos soundbars in large living room applications. Especially if you want to get the full potential out of them. It’s not just about adding “booming base”. Passing off the lower frequencies to the sub literally “wakes up” the mid/high frequencies being broadcasted by the rest of the setup. It’s very noticeable, and well worth the added cost. The room filling improvement that adding rear surrounds will give you is pretty self explanatory. If you can find yourself a pair of used original play ones, or 1SLs, they do a great job in that regard. The new “entry level” era 100s are not noticeably better sounding than the old play 1s are, and they cost more. This was another blunder by Sonos. 350 Canadian (after taxes) is not what I’d consider to be an “entry level” price. An up firing driver should have been included at that price. Especially from a company that’s been trying to dive into the Atmos/spacial audio segment. Stagnated software development. The new controller App that Sonos just forced onto its customers in May is totally broken. They know it, and have openly apologized - both publicly, and through emails to customers. However, they still haven’t provided a simple roll back option to return the S2 controller. They’ve nerfed millions of dollars of their customers equipment - with a broken controller app that they clearly rushed out, in order to release new products. Here we are months later, and it’s still not even close to being “fixed”. Thousands of customers are extremely dissatisfied at this point, and are even selling off their Sonos equipment over it. So look for great deals on used stuff, if you’re considering jumping in. There’s bound to be plenty coming available! One positive thing I will say is that I’ve never owned a Sonos product that lost physical sound quality over time. All of my components sound just as good today, as when I took them out of the boxes. If it doesn’t look physically beat up, chances are you’re getting a very solid used product for your money. Physical longevity is definitely the strong suit of the brand. You simply aren’t going to end up with crackling tweeters, and blown drivers over time. No matter how hard you push this stuff! The only thing you need to worry about is the company downgrading the sound quality of your equipment - via terrible software updates. For example, they severely downgraded the output of the gen 1 through 3 Sub a couple of times over the years in that very fashion, and it literally took them months to rectify, after numerous complaints. Fortunately I haven’t ran into as many of the major issues that so many other customers are fighting with concerning the new App. My setup is at least working with the new controller. There’s definitely a bunch of minor annoyances I’m going through since it’s forced release though. I’m in way too deep financially to just give up on it at this point, so hopefully they get their act together, and either fix this new controller soon, or give us the option of “rolling back” to what worked! As far as true play tuning goes….It’s fine, if you’re not grouping a number of different “rooms” together. If you plan on - for instance, playing back a feed with a pair of 5s room grouped to a room with a soundbar, sub, rear surrounds, then I would recommend manually dialing in all of your components individually with the base and treble adjustments. As true play will cause your grouped rooms to sound like a hot mess! True play is simply not for the “whole home audio” Sonos customer. Especially if you’re grouping multiple Sonos rooms together in the same general physical space. Lastly, anyone looking to get into the Sonos ecosystem had better have a strong wifi setup in their home. If your internet is slow, and your connectivity is spotty, then Sonos definitely won’t be enjoyable for you. Have a nice day 🍻.

Dude how tf can you not connect to it through bluetooth? My garbage old soundbar offers that. I have a non smart projector (old optoma 146x) that i connect to my xurrent setup with bluetpoth

great video thanks!

What is the clock above your soundbar? I like it!

I can pick this up for $240 new. For that price, should I go for it?

you need to get the surround.

Hmmm... Could it be that Sonos app on iOS uses iPhones Sonar sensor to scan the room? If that's so then it's not lazy programming and android phones just don't have such a capability

Great video

The review seemed good, but the fact that you feel the need to absolute murder every 5th word instead of talk like a normal person made it unwatchable.

no bluetooth? no thanks

Great video, great review. But most importantly, which anime is running on your tv? 😁