Sonos Ray Soundbar Review

The Sonos Ray has a simple design. It's a small bar that's mostly plastic, and there's a plastic grille on the front. The bar's edges are rounded, which gives it a sleek look.

You can add a separate subwoofer from the manufacturer if you want to upgrade your setup.

The manufacturer sells a wide array of additional speakers to add on as rear satellites.

The Sonos Ray is smaller than the Sonos Beam (Gen 2), and its compact design easily fits between the legs of a 55" TV. Since it isn't very tall, it doesn't block your screen, either.

The Sonos Ray has a good build quality. Its plastic build is solid overall, and the mount in the front helps to protect the drivers inside. That said, the material feels a bit cheaper compared to more premium offerings from Sonos, like the Sonos Beam (Gen 2).

• Manuals
• Power cable (6.2 ft / 1.9m)
• Optical cable (4.9 ft / 1.5m)

The Sonos Ray has a fair stereo frequency response. As with Sonos' more premium offerings, it has a room correction feature called Trueplay on compatible iOS devices, which automatically optimizes the bar's audio reproduction based on the unique acoustics of your space. Its sound profile is neutral, especially in the mids, where most voices and lead instruments reproduce, ensuring they're clear and present in the mix. The lack of bass is noticeable, especially with bass-heavy genres like hip-hop and EDM. Still, if you mostly listen to dialogue-centric TV shows without a lot of bass mixed in, you'll find that the vocals are pleasant and detailed. There isn't a noticeable difference in the sound after updating it to firmware version 14.18, either.

The Sonos Ray offers bass and treble adjustments to help you customize its sound more to your liking. However, if you prefer a more neutral sound, its default settings fall within the desired range, so you don't have to worry about playing around with its sound settings.

The Sonos Ray's stereo soundstage is just okay, which is a bit disappointing given the impressive performance of the manufacturer's top-of-the-line products. The soundstage is perceived to be a touch wider than the bar itself—but the bar isn't very wide to begin with, so it doesn't feel like sound stretches out towards the walls of your living room. That said, the focus is good, so sound effects like instruments in an orchestra seem to come from accurate, pinpoint locations in the soundstage.

The Sonos Ray has an adequate stereo dynamics performance. It gets loud enough to fill an average-sized living room with sound. However, like most small bars, it doesn't get much louder than that, so it's not suitable for listening in large, open spaces. There's also a bit of compression when you push it to max volume, especially in the bass range, so you notice pumping artifacts that distort the sound a bit.

The Sonos Ray has a good stereo total harmonic distortion performance. At normal listening volumes, distortion falls within good limits, so audio reproduction is clean and pure. While there's a slight increase in distortion at max volume, it's hard to hear with real-life content, especially if you're a more casual listener.

The Sonos Ray is a 2.0 setup, so it doesn't come with a discrete center channel. Instead, it uses its left and right stereo drivers to simulate a phantom center. Unfortunately, this sounds more diffused than a discrete center, and voices aren't as accurately placed in the soundstage as a result. Still, the frequency response is quite balanced in the mids, where most voices reproduce, so dialogue is clear and accurate.

The Sonos Ray can playback 5.1 surround sound content like Dolby Digital and DTS, which are commonly found on streaming services and Blu-ray discs. However, it has to downmix this content into stereo in order to play it. The resulting sound isn't very immersive, and audio seems like it's just coming from speakers in front of you. Sound effects don't seem like they're coming from all around you, either. However, you can always add rear speakers if you want a more clear and real representation of surround content.

If you want a small standalone bar with Atmos support, you can always check out the Samsung HW-S60B/S61B.

The Sonos Ray offers the same selection of sound enhancement features as the Sonos Beam (Gen 2). If you have a compatible iOS device, you can use the Sonos S2 app to access Trueplay. It's a room correction feature, meaning it optimizes audio reproduction based on your space's unique acoustics. You can also customize the bar's sound with its bass and treble adjustments. There's a dialogue enhancement mode called Speech Enhancement, as well as a Night Sound feature that balances out the volume level between the loudest and quietest sounds when you watch at night. As with other Sonos soundbars, however, you won't find an EQ for greater ability to customize its sound across the range.

The Sonos Ray has a limited selection of physical inputs. You can connect it to your TV using the included Optical cable, but there's no HDMI support. You'll also find an Ethernet cable and a button to link any subwoofers and satellites you choose to add in the future.

The Sonos Ray supports Dolby Digital content, which is the most common surround sound format used on both streaming platforms and Blu-rays. Thanks to a recent update to the Sonos S2 app, there's also DTS support. However, the bar has to downmix this content into stereo to play it.

The Sonos Ray has a great latency performance. Its low latency means that you don't notice a delay between the audio you hear and the video you see, and there aren't any lip-synching issues. Some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience can vary.

The Sonos Ray has the same wireless playback offerings as other Sonos bars. You can wirelessly stream content to the bar over Wi-Fi and Apple AirPlay 2, and there's also support for Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect.

There's no display on the Sonos Ray, but you'll find a small light above the Sonos logo that lights up when connected to Wi-Fi. You can also turn it off in the app if you don't want to have the light in your field of view.

The Sonos Ray has some touch-sensitive controls. They let you play/pause your music and adjust the volume. However, you need to use the Sonos S2 app to access the bar's additional features.

This soundbar doesn't come with a remote, as it's meant to be controlled through the Sonos S2 app on your phone. If you already own Sonos products, you're likely already familiar with the app's capabilities, as it lets you control a whole network of Sonos speakers at once.

The Sonos Ray doesn't have built-in voice assistant capabilities. However, you can pair the bar to a third-party Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant device to control it with your voice. You just need to set it up in the Sonos S2 app.