Sonos S2 Mobile App (Android, iOS, FireOS)

The excellent Sonos S2 mobile app (Android, iOS, FireOS) lets you play music from all supported music services (Deezer, Spotify, YouTube Music, TuneIn Radio, Sonos Radio, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and many more) or local Plex server, or a shared music folder. The screenshot above shows a scenario with four available Sonos speakers, where two are grouped (Bedroom and Office), with each speaker/group playing music from a different source—Deezer on the Beam Gen 2, Spotify on my bedroom and office speakers, and a local radio station through TuneIn Radio on my living room speaker. Selecting what plays where boils down to tapping the "cast" button next to any of the speakers/groups and putting checkmarks next to appropriate speakers/groups. There are also buttons to quickly play the selected tune on all speakers or create speaker group presets if you happen to often group the same speakers. Whatever you want to do in the Sonos S2 app, it will always be no more than two or three taps away, and that's one of the main reasons for Sonos' global popularity.


You can always check what's playing on each speaker by clicking on the desired speaker and expanding the "now playing" window. This window looks like any music service app, along with the play/pause/next song/previous song controls, a queue, and some useful additional options hidden behind a three-dot menu (start radio, add a song to playlist, save to your music). Of course, the speaker selection menu is accessible through this screen as well, so you may quickly send the current song or album to other Sonos speakers you own.


Your recently played music and favorite radio stations are always available in the My Sonos tab. Here, you can quickly access them and play them on the Beam Gen 2 or any other Sonos speaker in your home. The currently selected speaker or speaker group is always displayed at the bottom of the window, so you never have to wonder which speaker will start playing whatever you select in the My Sonos menu.


After adding your music streaming service accounts to Sonos, you can access them through the Browse menu. While most other multiroom systems require you to use Spotify through Spotify's official app, Sonos offers full Spotify integration, meaning you can browse and listen to its entire catalog, play radio stations, and create playlists without leaving the Sonos S2 app. Should you prefer to use the official Spotify app, that's possible, too; simply play whatever you want, and select the Sonos Beam Gen 2, or any other Sonos speaker in your home, as the playback device.


The integrated search feature works globally, meaning it will show you the results from all music streaming services you've connected to your Sonos system. This is a great feature if you use more than one because you won't have to hop between them to get to the music you're looking for.


The System menu is where you'll configure your Sonos system, including the Beam Gen 2 soundbar. There are many general options to go through, including speaker group setup, media servers, alarms, network settings, system updates, and so on.


Diving into the settings specific to the Sonos Beam Gen 2, you can change the name of the speaker, or room it's in, but that's only a good idea if it's the only speaker in that room, adjust its volume limit and equalizer, configure its behavior when the signal from your TV is detected, add an audio delay if the sound is not perfectly synchronized with the picture on your TV, adjust the volume controls if running it in TOSLINK mode, add a voice server (Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa), enable or disable its status light and touch controls, and so on. The EQ menu lets you adjust the bass and treble on a ±10 dB scale, and you can also turn on the Loudness option here, which boosts the bass and makes the sound livelier at low listening volumes. Finally, if you own the Sonos One or Sonos One SL speakers, or the IKEA SYMFONISK picture frames with wireless speakers, you can wirelessly pair them up with the Beam Gen 2 and turn them into rear surround sound channels. The Beam Gen 2 can also be wirelessly paired up with the Sonos Sub subwoofer.

If you're using the Sonos S2 app on an iOS device, you'll see a Trueplay option in Beam's settings. Trueplay technology aims to calibrate the speaker according to the space it is located in. The process consists of holding the supported iPhone/iPad in a sitting position where you most often watch TV, after which you should walk around the room and wave your iPhone/iPad around accordingly while the speaker fires test signals. While you're busy doing that, the Trueplay technology analyzes sound reflections from the walls, furniture, and other surfaces in your room, and creates a modified frequency curve, adapted to the Beam Gen 2 and your particular environment. Trueplay is unavailable on Android devices, which can be explained by the fact that it needs to know the characteristics of the microphone used for calibration, which is infinitely easier in Apple's mobile ecosystem. However, not even all iOS/iPad OS devices are supported, which is a total bummer. For example, I own an unsupported 4th generation iPad Air, which has been on the Sonos' "coming soon" list for many months without any signs of that changing. Why can't Trueplay use the microphones integrated into the Beam Gen 2 itself to tune itself regardless of the mobile platform it's being accessed from? No idea, but that would be the best way to make this feature platform-agnostic. Sure, you can always invite someone with a supported device to your home and tune the Beam Gen 2 that way since it only has to be done once, but that's hardly an ideal solution to this problem.

Sonos S2 Desktop App (Windows, macOS)

The Sonos desktop application (Windows, macOS) doesn't look nearly as sleek as its mobile counterpart. Design-wise, it feels almost like an afterthought, something that had to be made, but hardly had any real focus put into it. On the other hand, it doesn't fall behind in terms of functionality. The interface is split into three vertical columns, where you can see a list of your Sonos speakers/speaker groups, what's playing on each, and what sources of music are available for use. You can use the built-in search function for every music streaming service you've connected to Sonos, and even apply equalization to either of your Sonos speakers, activate alarms and sleep timers, and add or remove music sources.

Although I use the mobile app to access my Sonos system 95% of the time, for the remaining 5%, the Sonos desktop app serves its purpose.