SONOS is no stranger to cinematic sound. The company has already released two soundbars – the SONOS Beam and the SONOS Arc. It’s now adding a new, more affordable option to its lineup with the SONOS Ray.
The new SONOS Ray is the company’s most compact soundbar to date. It’s also the most feature rich 3.0.0 soundbar in the lineup. The sound bar is only 55.9cm long and 95mm wide which allows it to blend in seamlessly into any room. In fact, it’s only 7.1 cm tall so you can even slot it into the small shelves in your living room or room centre console. Aesthetically, the SONOS Ray comes with SONOS’s signature, minimalist design with a perforated grill in two colours: Black and White.
The SONOS Ray inherits a lot of design cues from previous SONOS soundbars. It has LEDs embedded in its minimalist design for power and connectivity indication. Also along for the ride is the capacitive touch buttons we have grown used to in SONOS soundbars.
Aesthetics aside, the crux of the Ray lies in the audio innovations that allow it to immerse users into the content they’re consuming. It comes with SONOS’s proprietary bass reflex system which complements the professionally tuned sound that SONOS is known for. The Ray comes with two tweeters and two mid-woofers which complement the bass reflex system. It also has four Class-D digital amplifiers that have been tuned for the soundbar’s unique acoustic design. The hardware itself has been expertly tuned by SONOS’s soundboard – a collective of some of the audio industry’s top experts.
SONOS isn’t just letting the hardware do all the work. It’s also complementing the hardware with software features in the SONOS S2 application. Using the app, users can customise the sound profile of the SONOS Ray to fit their unique tastes. In fact, for the best audio experience with the Ray, users can use TruePlay in the app to calibrate the sound stage. This feature is only available on iOS for now. That said, both Android and iOS users are able to take advantage of features like Night Sound which dampens the sound stage so you don’t wake your sleeping child and Speech enhancement which lifts vocal audio and dialogue in your movies and series so you don’t miss out on anything said.
You get a lot of the same connectivity when it comes to the SONOS Ray. IT is able to connect to WiFi networks on the 2.4GHz band with support for 802.11a/b/g/n standards. It also is able to connect via Ethernet. However, unlike the Arc and the Beam, the Ray only connects through optical connectivity. There is no HDMI, USB or Aux support. According to SONOS, this allows the sound bar to be compatible with televisions released over the past 15 years. That said, it is more than likely that we’ll be seeing accessories to allow you to connect to the soundbar via HDMI etc in the near future.
Pricing & Availability
The SONOS Ray will be retailing for MYR1,799 in Malaysia. Internationally it will be priced at USD$279 in the US, CAD$329 in Canada, GBP£279 in the UK and EUR€299 in Europe.
It goes on pre-order in Malaysia starting at 4.05 am on May 12, 2022, in Malaysia and will be gl;obally available starting 24th June 2022.
