Sonos Roam & Beam(Gen2

SONOS

Sonos Roam

The hot multi-room

music streaming brand at the moment is Sonos — and with good reason. Their interface is excellent, the product is reliable, and the brand is well-priced (plus they have a larger marketing budget than anyone else).

The most recent product to be added to their stable is their budget portable speaker — aptly called Roam. It is compact, waterproof, voice-controlled, has a long battery life and, given its size and price, delivers a surprisingly high level of performance.

Its in-built battery gives up to 10-hours of play time and can be charged with the supplied cable, or wirelessly, via any Qi-certifi ed charger. Roam automatically connects to your home Wi-Fi network for playback, plus you can also use Bluetooth or Apple AirPlay2 to stream to it directly from your smartphone or tablet.

The Roam’s waterproof (IP67rated) exterior is drop-resistant and it can be operated vertically or horizontally so that its Class-H powered racetrack bass/midrange driver and soft dome tweeter will deliver the clarity, depth, and fullness of sound that you’d usually only expect from a much larger speaker.

What’s more, it is able to adjust its sound quality to compensate for where it’s located. By using automatic Sonos ‘Trueplay’ tuning, Roam can increase bass response when you’re using it outdoors, and reduce it when you’re in a very small room, to ensure the sound is always perfectly balanced. $279

SONOS

Next Generation Sonos Beam

Sonos has upgraded its popular

Beam smart Soundbar, which has been so popular that we’ve been sold out for a while now. The new Sonos Beam (Gen 2) delivers an upgraded, more immersive sound experience with greater depth and clarity than the original Beam, and now also includes support for Dolby Atmos, enabled through the use of increased processing power and newly-developed phased speaker arrays that enable the Beam (Gen2) to steer and localise sound around the room for a more life-like listening experience.

The new Beam (Gen2) soundbar is also now compatible with HDMI eARC on your TV, so you can experience your favourite movies and games in even higherdefi nition sound with added support for new audio formats. Customers should note that although the Beam (Gen2) supports Amazon Music HD, Amazon has indicated to us that it has no plans to offer this high-res music format here in Australia.

However the Beam (Gen2) is fully compatible with more than 100 streaming services available via the Sonos app.

“Beam (Gen 2) sets the standard for compact soundbars with a richer, more immersive listening experience,” said Patrick Spence, Sonos CEO. “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. Taking what we’ve learned over the years about great listening and home theatre, we’ve found a way to bring new features and signifi cantly better sound to Beam, all in the same compact size that has proven extremely popular with customers.”

Although it’s the same size as the original Beam, the Beam (Gen2) has a sleeker exterior, a new perforated polycarbonate grille and easier, more secure set-up, with just two cables and new NFC capabilities. We expect stock to arrive on October 6, just in time for the footy fi nals and the New Year movie releases. $699