On first listen, the Sonos Beam Ultra sounds great

Sonos unveiled a bunch of new stuff today at its open house event. There’s the $699 Beam Ultra soundbar and the $449 Ace Ultra headphones, plus several under-the-hood app updates (some coming sooner than others). While the show floor was a less than ideal venue to judge audio quality of either new product, a private demo in a smaller room provided a better hint as to what the Beam Ultra soundbar might be capable of.

With the 7.1.2 soundbar about six feet in front of the press, the team ran through a couple demos to show off its range, particularly with Dolby Atmos content. The opening minutes of Widow’s Bay subtly illustrates the Beam Ultra’s enhanced bass, improved vocal clarity and Atmos chops. There are a lot of small details that didn’t get lost in the mix, like walkie talkie chatter, extraneous sound effects that build the world, plus the eerie swelling of the score to amp suspense.

There’s only so much sound that can come out of such a relatively small soundbar, but I was impressed — both at how it sounded and how Sonos found the ideal room to bounce around the sound coming from its side- and top-firing drivers.

Sonos then wirelessly paired two Play portable speakers to the Beam Ultra, then set them behind us as rear channels for a demo with Sinners (the electrifying “I Lied To You” scene). If you have a small-ish living room and don’t want to permanently mount rear satellites, this setup might suffice for you. It’s certainly loud enough. Pairing more speakers seemed to let the Beam Ultra focus more on delivering a balanced, full sound with better directional audio than its predecessor, the Beam Gen 2, which virtualizes its spatial audio effect (as in, it fakes it) due to lacking side- and upward-firing speakers.

My colleague John Higgins will spend a lot more time with the Beam Ultra in an upcoming review. My first impression was good, but that’s how press events usually go. You’re using these products with a pro at the wheel, and sometimes in more ideal circumstances than our homes allow. As someone who bought a Vizio Elevate SE system last year, I was surprised by how punchy the Beam Ultra sounded during the demos. Sometimes, it sounded a little too good, and the presence of Sonos subwoofers and extra speakers in the demo room was tough to ignore, despite the team assuring us they weren’t used. Nevertheless, I’m curious how it holds up in a home environment, and specifically how it sounds across a range of content when it’s the only Sonos speaker you have.

Sitting between the $499 (currently $399) Sonos Beam Gen 2 and the $1,099 (currently $899) Sonos Arc Ultra, the Beam Ultra splits the difference between the two in terms of hardware features. You’ll get a proper taste of Atmos content without spending close to $1,000, and without straying outside of the Sonos ecosystem. The Beam Ultra launches September 29th, and preorders are available now at Best Buy, B&H Photo, Sonos, and Amazon.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge