Did you just pick up a new Sonos Beam soundbar to outfit your TV with? Congratulations! These are some of the more pricey soundbars on the market right now, but they’re of the utmost quality, too. The Sonos Beam is even able to rival some of the higher-end surround systems as well. We’ll certainly take a high quality versatile and easily upgradeable $300 soundbar over a $1000 surround sound system that quickly becomes stagnant any day of the week!
So, you now have this Sonos Beam soundbar, but you’re not quite sure how to use it or how to get it setup/connected with your smartphone and TV. We show you how to get it up and running in a snap of your fingers.
What is Sonos Beam?
The Sonos Beam is an all-new soundbar by Sonos. It’s designed to provide you with ample sound, by delivering your room wall-to-wall sound. It’s one of the more compact soundbar, and works best placed in front of your TV or on a wall mount somewhere. It’s designed for small to medium sized rooms, but since it is a Sonos product, you can pair it with other Sonos speakers to upgrade your range.
It’s got a bunch of neat things that other soundbars don’t have. Just one of those is speech enhancement — turn it on, and the Sonos Beam works to enhance the clarity (and loudness, if needed) of dialog in movies and TV shows. The soundbar is smart, too. With a Night Vision mode, the Sonos Beam is able to automatically adjust volume to proper levels so that you don’t wake others up from sleeping. It’s got a lot of smart AI built into it, allowing you to even talk to it with commands, using just your voice.
Sonos Beam TV Setup
That all sounds nice, but how do you set it up? Sonos made the Beam really easy to setup so you can start using it minutes after it arrives at your doorstep.
The first step is to find a place where you want the Sonos Beam. Like we already said, the ideal spot would be on your TV stand or on a wall mount somewhere. Once done, you can place the soundbar there. Next, we’ll need to pull the power brick out of the box. Plug it into the Sonos Beam, and then a wall outlet (ideally, a power strip to keep your investment protected against power surges and shocks).
Now, plug the HDMI cable into your Sonos Beam, and then the other end into the TV. If your TV doesn’t have HDMI, Sonos includes an optical audio cable in the box. So, if you don’t have HDMI, put that HDMI cable away for later use (in the event that you do upgrade your TV), pull the optical audio cable out, plug it into the Sonos Beam, and then the other end into the TV. Now you’re ready to start listening to movies and TV shows on your new sound setup (make sure to turn the Sonos Beam on first)!
Note: You may or may not need to use the Sonos app to complete setup (instructions below).
Sonos Beam Smartphone Setup
You might also want to consider setting up the Sonos Beam with your smartphone. This way, you can register your Sonos Beam with Sonos, control volume levels and other elements straight from your smartphone. And, if you have an iPhone, you can stream music directly to the Sonos Beam with AirPlay 2.
First, we need to download the Sonos app. You can grab it on Android from the Google Play Store, or, if you have an iPhone, you can grab it from the iTunes App Store.
Once you have the Sonos app downloaded, make sure your Sonos Beam is powered on. If this is your first time setting up a Sonos sound system, the application will instruct you on how to complete the setup. The general idea is that the Sonos Beam should be automatically found over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and once paired, the Sonos Beam should be able to just stream everything over your WiFi connection, not Bluetooth — Bluetooth is only used for pairing.
If you already have an existing sound system with Sonos, you can go into the Sonos app and go under Settings. Under there, click on Add a Player or Sub, and the Sonos app will take you through the instructions on how to do that.
If you want, you can add other devices for your Sonos Beam to control or be controlled by; take the Amazon Alexa, for example. Log into your Sonos app, click on Browse, and click on “Add Amazon Alexa.” Sonos will take you through the process of setting this up, and then you’ll be able to listen to music by simply asking Alexa (or your Sonos Beam).
Verdict
As you can see, setting up your Sonos Beam is super easy. Sonos has made it really straightforward, and now that it’s setup, both with your TV and phone, you should never have to touch your Sonos Beam again. Even if you add another speaker to your sound system in the Sonos app, the Sonos Beam should be able to automatically recognize it. It really is low hassle!