After design leaks and delayed launch, the Sonos Sub Mini is finally here and we are super excited to talk about it. It is a more affordable and compact unit, but at the same time quieter and overall less powerful subwoofer as compared to the Sonos Sub Gen 3, yet it may be the sub that Sonos users actually need.
And before we get too many comments about price, I want to straight away say that Sonos is not a cheap brand and I don’t think they want to be cheap. If I really wanted to draw parallels - I would compare them to Apple which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Regardless - let’s get into the review, starting with what you get in the box. You have a sub-mini in a nice protective fabric and a removable cable. That is it. Not sure what else I expected.
Sub itself is pretty small with 30cm in height and about 23cm in diameter. It comes in black or white with a matte finish. The glossiness of the big sub has always made me question why? How does that make sense? So it’s nice to see that they have given the new device a more appealing look.
Sonos says it hides in plain sight while being elegant and compact. I’d say it only hides if you have specific aesthetics in the house. To me it looks more like an elegant trash can. But that being said, it does look better than a typical square sub, like the one we got from Samsung.
Setting it up was super easy. Plug it in, connect via the app and link it to the soundbar of your choice to sync with and we are ready to go. This is where those Apple parallels can be drawn. It just works.
For our set-up we tested it with Sonos Ray, as well as Beam Gen 2. In both cases we watched several movies and played some music, with and without sub enabled.
Something to also note - once you pair the SUB in the Sonos system, it reconfigures the soundbar to not output those low frequencies and leave all that work for the sub. This frees up the processing on the soundbar making it just that little bit more crisp. After testing The Beam Gen 2 and Ray on their own and then with the Sub Mini added to the mix, the first impression is - damn, the soundbars have plenty of base on their own right out of the box, why do we need anything else? But when we turned on the sub, we also got a subtle change that just filled the void we didn’t know was there. It was not life changing, but it isn't supposed to be.
The way my wife describes it - turning on sub-mini adds in an extra layer of tactile feedback, and I agree with this. You can hear the low frequencies just fine from the soundbars, but with the sub you also feel them.
Inside there are two 6inch woofers that face each other and create a pretty impressive force-cancelling effect that gets rid of any rattling or buzzing noises. From the time using it, we did not see or hear any shake from it even while it was going hard. So placing woofers facing each other is clearly working out for Sonos. Check out this glass of water while we rock some tunes.
According to Sonos, due to its design - you can actually palace it anywhere in the room and you should have very similar performance. Also using Sonos Trueplay you can calibrate the sound to match your room shape and acoustics. There are also controls in the app to adjust the amount of base you want. In regards to volume - it will automatically adjust through the paired soundbar, which is very convenient.
In terms of compatibility - it can be linked with most of current Sonos devices but recommended use cases are pairing with Ray, Beam, One SL or even with IKEA SYMFONISK which is a speaker made in collaboration between the two companies. To be honest, based on what we experienced here - for users who currently own Ray, I would recommend upgrading to Beam rather than getting a Sub-Mini, as you’d get considerable improvement in sound quality as well as quality of life features like ARC support via HDMI. On the other hand, if you already have Beam then this sub is a nice addition for the improved overall sound experience.
In conclusion - I feel Sonos has done well with this sub as there was clearly a gap for this in their lineup. This smaller sub would be a great addition to the more budget Sonos set-ups in the smaller rooms such as ones in Singapore and if you don’t want to upset your neighbours too much. There is still plenty of kick from it and with the included controls you can push it harder when needed.
As mentioned earlier - Sonos equipment is not cheap and once you get into the ecosystem, you are very much committed with the amount of money you have already spent - but you get quality equipment which is easy to use. Compared to competition you do lose out on some prosumer features and customisations but also don’t really need to have education in audio engineering. That's it from our review - let us know what you think about Sonos Sub-Mini.
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