I Tested the Compact and Affordable Sonos Ray Soundbar – It Delivers Clear Dialogue and Impressive Volume on A Budget

Sonos – the brand behind our current favorite soundbar – sells more than the expensive models you see in the adverts. Compact and catered more towards small spaces, the Sonos Ray is the most affordable soundbar in Sonos' range.

And because of how much I adore the Sonos Arc Ultra, I was intrigued to see if Sonos' tech sounds as good in their smaller, budget options, too. So, I tested the Sonos Ray soundbar in my own home to find out what it's capable of.

In short? It can't compete with the expensive competition, but if you're short on space and budget, this is one of the best soundbars you can buy.

Sonos Ray: The One-Minute Verdict

The Sonos Ray is a great fit for small spaces, measuring just 21 inches wide, which makes it one of the most compact models out there. And although it's small, its volume capacity is impressive, and at around 70% volume, the sound fills the room.

It makes dialogue clearer, makes movies sound louder and more impactful, and it works as a great budget music speaker, too. But compared to the expensive alternatives, or even just to the Fire TV Soundbar Plus that costs $30 more, it certainly lacks depth and crispness.

It doesn't have any subwoofers, it can't play Dolby Atmos titles, and you can't connect via Bluetooth for easy music streaming. However, it benefits from Sonos' comprehensive app with fantastic EQ and customization settings, and you get access to Sonos' vast library of playlists and radios, setting it apart from other budget soundbars.

Sonos Ray: Specifications

Sonos Ray: Setup

Initially, little is required to set up the Sonos Ray, but if you want to control the soundbar's settings (even the volume), you'll need to connect it via the app.

Plug in the power cord, then connect the included optical cable to the TV and soundbar. If you're highlighting your soundbar by mounting or framing it, then you might need to do a bit of cable work here.

Once plugged in, it'll play from your TV straightaway, although some TVs (like mine) may have to change the audio output to optical – but you'll easily find this in the settings.

As the Sonos Ray doesn't use an HDMI ARC connection, your TV remote won't automatically be able to control the volume, and the Sonos Ray doesn't come with its own remote, either. This means you have to use either the touch controls on the soundbar itself or connect it via the Sonos app.

Once I downloaded the app and signed in, the Ray had to play an audio pin for my smartphone to register, to connect the app and soundbar, followed by a software update. In total, this took less than five minutes.

I was then guided through the steps of connecting my TV remote to the soundbar, but after eventually telling me it was successful, my TV remote still couldn't control the volume. I've repeated this step twice, and it hasn't worked both times, and as my TV remote is said to be compatible, this may be an issue for others who also have IR remote controls.

As I have my soundbar on a shelf and can’t quickly access the buttons, this means I have to use the app every time I need to change the volume.

I'm sure many of you have scrambled for the remote after switching to a different movie, or an app that plays everything twice as loud (looking at you, YouTube), so having to open the app or reach for the soundbar to change the volume can get a little frustrating. Luckil,y there’s no lag when opening the app.

But surprisingly, in this budget soundbar, it has Trueplay, a feature that adjusts sound output to your room's acoustics, whether you have wooden floors or plenty of soft furnishings. Activating Trueplay involves walking around the room, moving your arm in circles with your phone in hand, while the soundbar plays triplets of loud beeps to determine the acoustics of your room. It takes a few minutes, and the sound quality is noticeably more refined afterwards.

Sonos Ray: Design and Features

The Sonos Ray has a straightforward matte aesthetic, in a classic black or white for blending into almost any living room interior. It's small at 21 inches wide (less than half the width of the Sonos Arc Ultra, our best-on-test), fitting neatly onto TV stands with limited space. If you have a big screen, the Ray will likely fit between the TV's legs.

Saying this is a small space soundbar, the sound is by no means limited. At 70% volume, you’re playing it louder than a small living room would ever need, and you can still add deeper bass and more pronounced trebles if you need to.

Being able to adjust the bass and treble (by plus or minus ten) is endlessly useful for a soundbar with limited hardware. With a 3.0 channel configuration, it only has left, right, and center speaker channels. As it doesn't have any subwoofers or up-firing speakers, you'll often need to play around with the settings to make sure it's right.

It has just four speakers: Two tweeters for trebles, and two midwoofers for the mid range. When you compare it to the budget-friendly Fire TV Soundbar Plus's eight speakers, let alone the Sonos Arc Ultra's 14 speakers, the Ray's doesn't have as much tech to rely on for detailed, booming sound.

But sound quality relies on software as well as hardware, and the Sonos app has comprehensive customization settings that make this a great fit for small rooms, especially if you have roommates or nearby neighbors and haven't soundproofed the room.

You can select 'Night mode' to muffle the harsh, impactful sounds while highlighting quieter ones – and during testing, it did well to not make the audio sound inauthentic. You can also set a volume limit, so if you know how loud the volume has to be to disturb those around you, you can avoid it from happening.

The app loads fast, which scores major points considering the soundbar doesn’t have a remote, and can't connect to many standard TV remotes.

On the main playback screen when watching TV, the features available are: Volume, night mode, and speech enhancement. If you press the three dots, it opens up another menu with a sleep timer feature.

But if you're listening to music, the playback screen looks similar to what you'd find on a music streaming app like Spotify or TIDAL:

I enjoy that playback automatically shows on the Sonos app, however when switching between playback on TIDAL and Sonos, it’s almost like both apps have to reconnect each time, resulting in a lag.

The Sonos Ray doesn't have Bluetooth, which means you're limited to Wi-Fi streaming via connections like Apple AirPlay or TIDAL Connect. But when I do this, playback doesn't show in my phone’s media center on the lock screen, meaning I have to go on either the Sonos or Tidal apps to pause or skip the music.

To avoid this lag, I'd recommend sticking to either Sonos or TIDAL when listening to music, and avoid switching between. This can be annoying however if you want to choose music from your streaming platform, then go to Sonos and tweak the sound settings.

This is only when listening to music. When watching movies or TV shows, I never experienced any lag.

Also on the Sonos app is a vast library of playlists and radios, some curated by big artists and music journalists, but there are ads unless you pay $7.99 a month for the paid Sonos Radio.

Sonos Ray: TV and Movies

The Sonos Ray makes TV shows and movies sound louder and more impactful, and voices become clearer and easier to understand without subtitles. It's a huge improvement from TV sound, and as the volume capacity is impressively high, it's a great choice if you want the sound to fill the room during your next movie night.

But the sound can distort at times, and the lack of any directional sound is certainly noticeable. The bass could be more prominent to enjoy sound effects with greater impact, and sometimes voices can sound a little hollow. For the price it's a fantastic choice, but its sound quality is nowhere near what you'd find in those that cost 2-3x as much.

I started with The Trial of the Chicago 7, a great tester for directional sound that's heavy on the dialogue. the courtroom scenes demonstrated the Sonos Ray’s ability to deliver dialogue that’s more present, coherent and commanding when compared to normal TV speakers. I could hear the resonance in Eddie Redmayne’s voice, and the courtroom sounds added impact and dramatic effect to the scene while never overshadowing characters’ overlapping conversations.

But listening closely, I noticed the total lack of sound direction, with every voice sounding like it was coming from center screen. This wasn’t too surprising, but paired with vocals that are occasionally a little hollow, don’t expect this affordable soundbar to deliver dialogue that’s as authentic as those that cost $500 more, like the Sony BRAVIA Theater Bar 8 with its hyper-realistic surround sound.

During Princess Mononoke, the score was as dramatic as ever. It filled the room immediately, with every instrument coming through harmonically rich. But moving into the next scene, I felt that the sounds fell a little flat compared to what I’m used to.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and among the list of scenes I test soundbars with, this tends to have some of the clearest, most organic sounds of them all. But while it still certainly sounded deep and pleasantly textured, individual sounds could have had more impact.

I also rewatch scenes multiple times to see how responsive the EQ settings are, and during the mid-movie action scene in John Wick: Chapter 2, I initially felt that the sound effects in the action scene could’ve been clearer, as they sounded a little muffled compared to the Arc Ultra.

But while the sound effects were never quite as tight as I was hoping, it was great to hear the score become more intense when I increased the bass, and the background sounds becoming more lifelike, making it feel as if the train doors and spraying fountains were closer to my ears than before.

The sound is certainly more forward, projecting into the room with more prominence and clarity, but after testing Sonos’ more advanced tech in the Sonos Arc Ultra, I can notice the difference. Sometimes, if a character is talking outside or with a low voice, it can distort slightly. There’s slight harshness at points, too.

But for the most part, I enjoyed watching this loud, busy scene. I like being able to hear the full-bodied timbres of characters’ voices, and the rattling of gates and fences as the scene quickly moves through different locations.

I tested the Sonos Ray's 'Speech Enhancement' setting during Our Planet II, and instantly heard background noise quieten, while David Attenborough’s voice boomed louder and more clearly than before, while staying true to the textures of his voice. But as the episode progressed, the music began to sound weak – not quieter – as if key textures were missing.

With speech enhancement off, the Sonos Ray did a fantastic job of portraying the grand, dramatic sound of this documentary – sand storms crescended as they neared the screen, and while it wasn’t necessarily crystal clear, it was lively and full-bodied.

And watching season five episode nine of Breaking Bad, I was impressed by the Ray's sound balance. Although there’s no surround sound/upfiring with the Sonos Ray, it was still clear when Walter was speaking off screen with a toy car whirring around, noticeably coming from a different direction to what Hank was doing in the garage (if you want the real surround sound experience, go for the Samsung HW-QS750F).

And while this scene occasionally sounds tinny, muddied or shallow in other soundbars, it sounded natural and rumbling, there was weight and richness in the characters’ voices, and the volume was well-balanced without certain frequencies overpowering others.

Sonos Ray: Music

The Sonos Ray excels when playing songs with elements blended together, like dreamy pop or smooth soul. Its bass is present but not quite punchy enough, the trebles were lush but didn't always sound true-to-form, and there could be more spaciousness in gentler songs.

Starting with the bass-heavy tracks of my soundbar testing playlist, Massive Attack's Angel came through deep and punchy. The song opened with its usual slow, subterranean crescendo, and the bass was firm with clarity within the different instruments. But while the impact of the song was mostly true-to-form, what it lacked was spaciousness.

During its climactic moments, things became a little congested, and there was occasional tinniness when the song was crashing. And while the low frequencies laid a strong foundation, I wasn’t feeling genuine rumbles in the room – likely because the Ray doesn't have a subwoofer.

I felt this once again with Daft Punk’s Phoenix. The bass was strong and present, and even the nerdiest audiophiles would be impressed by this tiny speaker’s sound projection, but there’s an element of thunderous depth that these two songs are known for, which wasn’t always apparent.

The depth later arrived with the low-end synths, demonstrating the Ray’s soundstage being more committed to texture than substance. And as this is specifically marketed as a small-space soundbar, really, that’s all you need. You don’t want to be disturbing neighbors with thumping bass that will end up with a complaint note after using it for two weeks.

And when I turned up the bass in the EQ, the depth definitely improved, and I finally felt those beneath the feet rumbles I was looking for in these bass-heavy songs (even if limited). It also helped a few of the other tested tracks to sound fuller in comparison. I’d recommend keeping it around +5.

Now onto the mids, Big Thief's Simulation Swarm sounded joyful and colorful, and more coherent than the messy sound you can get from much weaker speakers. But while the instruments were legible, they weren't as rich as I’ve heard elsewhere, like with the Yamaha True X Bar 40A. The crashy guitars, while designed to sound scratchy, sounded inauthentically scratchy at times, as if there was slight distortion.

Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues, a more relaxed song with instruments blending together to form a continuous sound, sounded lovely. This ultimately proved to be where the Ray sounds best: In seamless, floaty music, rather than songs that rely on high impacts or great depth.

This was confirmed during Pitch the Baby by Cocteau Twins. The trebles sounded sweet, while the lower-frequency synths showed how dynamically the Ray can handle multiple textures at once. Like Inner City Blues, this is more of a silky song, with very few high-impact sounds, that showed me where the Ray’s inadequacy lies. It isn’t in trebles per se, but how tightly it can deliver sharp impacts, like the thud of a drum.

Led Zeppelin's Ramble On had a gorgeously crisp opening. Each instrument was delivered tightly and clearly, and throughout the rest of the song everything sounded propulsive. The only element that didn’t sound completely authentic was Robert’s voice, as it came through less firm than usual, but still – this sounded incredible. Great soundbar for rock music, it seems.

Sonos Ray: Price

The Sonos Ray costs $219 at Sonos at full price, making it the most affordable soundbar we've tested to date. I certainly noticed the difference in spec compared to more expensive models – it has no subwoofers, no Bluetooth, and no surround sound features whatsoever.

For $40 more you can grab the Fire TV Soundbar Plus, which costs $249.99 at Amazon at full price, but is often discounted to around $150-$200. This is our current best-on-test budget soundbar, and it's Dolby Atmos compatible, has eight speakers (compared to the Sonos Ray's four) including two subwoofers, and it has Bluetooth for easier music streaming. On test, it had a fuller, more directional sound than the Ray, but it's 10 inches wider.

But both the Ray and the Fire TV Soundbar Plus pale in comparison to more expensive soundbars, notably the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar and the Sonos Arc Ultra that absolutely blew me away during testing. The multi-directional soundstage they create is wildly realistic, and every detail sounds rich, vibrant, and lifelike. You're looking at paying a lot more though: $999 for the Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar, and $1,099 for the Sonos Arc Ultra, but both are often discounted with $100-300 off.

How I Tested the Sonos Ray

I tested the Sonos Ray in the largest room in my house, that has two large windows, wooden flooring, and soft furnishings dotted around the room to emulate the acoustics of a common living room.

I tested the Sonos Ray using a set list of scenes and songs, so that every soundbar we test is measured under the same criteria. The scenes span TV shows and movies of different genres, from hushed, tense dialogue to booming action scenes, and the songs span genres, eras and sounds, from bass to mids to trebles.

For more tried-and-tested smart home goodness, see our guides of the best robot vacuums and the best video doorbells.