Sonos Beam shrinks the Playbar and adds Alexa

Sonos’ Playbar has been a five-star masterpiece since its release in 2013, but at the grand old age of five, it now finds itself the grandad of its speaker lineup. Enter the Beam, the Californian company’s latest soundbar, which at just £399 is £300 cheaper than the Playbar. Available in black and white, it’s a curvier, smaller rectangle of speaker than before, at 65cm rather than 90cm. And as this is 2018, it’s packed with a host of smarts including Amazon Alexa support at launch, AirPlay 2 support from July, and Google Assistant at some unspecified point in the future. It’s also the first Sonos product with an HDMI output so that it can control your TV via ARC, meaning you could feasibly ditch the remote and control everything with your voice. It goes on sale today via Sonos.com.

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