GoKawiilWe got to hear the Sonos Beam Ultra in a few configurations: on its own, with a pair of Play speakers as surrounds and with the Ace Ultra headphones.
It's hard to tell in such an open space how much difference the new speaker array in the Beam Ultra contributes to a sense of immersion — but it sounds loud, powerful and clear. We watched a scene from F1 that had a lot going on, including announcer voiceovers, dialogue in the car and lots of ambient sounds like engine noise, helicopters flying over, fireworks and more.
It was all nicely balanced, with a pretty impressive bass presence given that there wasn't a subwoofer connected. I couldn't really get a sense for how much the side- and upwards-firing drivers contributed to this, because there weren't really walls or a ceiling for audio to bounce off.
We also got to see Sonos Fabric, the technology that lets its products have more context about where they're placed and what is around them, in action. The demo team brought in a pair of Play speakers which were placed on a table behind the couch we were seated on. As promised, they automatically connected to the system and added rear surround audio. That made a huge difference in the overall immersion; panning audio was much more noticeable, and there was nice reverb on the announcer voices as well.
Finally, we were also able to try the Ace Ultra's ability to grab audio from the soundbar and play it through the headphones instead. The original Ace was able to do this as well (at least after some long-awaited software updates), so this isn't a major new feature. But as someone who has never watched a movie at home with a pair of headphones, they did a great job reproducing all of the audio madness from the F1 scene as well.
As if anticipating my complaints, Sonos offered a more in-depth session where I got to hear the Beam Ultra in a smaller room rather than the boomy conference space where the event took place. As before, I got to hear the Beam Ultra playing on its own as well as with surrounds. The first demo was music only and showed off the speakers' Atmos chops — I really got a sense of place with the various instruments; it felt like they were physically in specific areas across the room, with impressive separation from a fairly compact soundbar.
I also got to watch a scene from Sinners with the surround speakers hooked up, and this was by far the most impressive demo of the day. The scene in question used lots of rotating camera shots and the audio followed it to match, again showing off impressive "placement" of the many competing audio elements. While the Beam Ultra was the star of the demo, I came away quite impressed with what the smaller Play speakers are able to offer from a surround point of view. The fact that they can easily be grouped with a soundbar and then removed to use as portable speakers elsewhere makes them even more versatile than they were when they launched.