Sonos targets TV viewers with its new Beam smart speaker
Today, at a special media event in San Francisco, Sonos announced a new partnership with Apple and a brand new TV speaker, the Sonos Beam.
The Sonos Beam is essentially a smaller, smarter, and cheaper version of the company's Playbase speaker. It includes Amazon Alexa support at launch, in addition to Apple Airplay 2 connectivity, which is scheduled to arrive in July.
The new soundbar is intended for people to use in the living room, a place the company says has been ignored by other smart speaker companies, who typically focus on other areas of the home such as the bedroom or kitchen. This speaker, by comparison, is tailor made for the living room.
Last fall, the speaker company introduced the Sonos One smart speaker with built-in Amazon Alexa digital assistant capabilities. The Sonos Beam appears to be an effort to expand its voice control capabilities in the home, and will add yet another speaker to the company's ever-expanding product lineup.
The newest addition is much more compact than Sonos' previous TV speakers at 25-inches long. While likely to slip under or next to a TV stand, it can also be mounted to a wall. Sound quality is focused on movies and TV shows as much as music.
Giles Martin, from the Sonos sound team, said the new speaker is "in response to consumer demand" where streaming is everything. The Beam is tuned for dialogue with speech enhancement and features "night mode" with quiet sound enhancements for late-night viewing.
Using Apple's AirPlay 2 system, Sonos will connect devices with music apps, its own Sonos app, and other apps to its speakers, including the new Beam.
"You don't always want to pick up your phone," Mieko Kusano, senior director of experience strategy, said after the unveiling. The voice control capabilities are what distinguish the speaker from other soundbars, along with the compact size that still carries an acoustic punch.
In an on-stage demo Allen Mask, VP of marketing, used AirPlay 2 along with voice control to move from his phone to an iPad Mini to a speaker to play music. Another demonstration switched between using Alexa and Siri to interact with the speaker, essentially making two major voice assistants work together.
The Sonos Beam launch marks an important turning point for the company, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the company was seeking to file for an IPO as soon as this month. While there haven't been any updates on its initial public offering, the company's integration with popular voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa will certainly help it fend off competition from the likes of Apple, Google, and Amazon, all of whom have their own popular smart speaker offerings.
In a listening room, the Beam pumped out an impressive bass sound from Beck's "Wow" track and moved sound around the room from a scene of bouncing robots in Wall-E.
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And when asked, Alexa turned off the lights -- all from the speaker sitting innocuously at the base of the TV.
The Sonos Beam will be available for $399 on July 17. It comes in black or white, and pre-orders start today.
Topics Music
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
