Ray

Overview

Ray is the compact Sonos soundbar released in June 2022. It is 559 mm wide, 71 mm high and 95 mm deep, comes in black or white, and can stand on furniture or be wall-mounted. Sonos designed all of its acoustic elements to face forward, so it can sit inside a TV stand.

Sonos lists four Class-D amplifiers, two tweeters and two midwoofers, plus a bass reflex port.

The TV connects to Ray's optical input with the included optical cable; Ray has no HDMI port. A 10/100 Ethernet port and Wi-Fi connect it to the home network for streaming with the Sonos app, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. An infrared receiver lets you use your TV remote, and the top has capacitive touch controls. Ray has no microphones, so voice control needs a separate voice-enabled device. In the Sonos app you can adjust bass, treble and loudness and turn on Speech Enhancement and Night Sound.

What the specs mean

• 3.0 speaker setup: three main channels, no built-in subwoofer and no height channels. A Sonos Sub, Sub Mini or Sub 4 adds the subwoofer, and a pair of Sonos speakers (One, One SL, Five, Era 100, Era 100 SL) or IKEA Symfonisk speakers adds rear surrounds, all connected wirelessly.
• Optical input, no HDMI: the optical cable carries the TV's sound to Ray. There is no HDMI ARC or eARC, so the TV remote works over infrared rather than HDMI-CEC, and Dolby Atmos is not supported.
• Audio formats: stereo PCM, Dolby Digital and DTS Digital Surround.
• No HDMI passthrough: a console or streaming box connects to the TV, and the TV sends the sound on to Ray over optical.
• Room correction (Trueplay): Trueplay measures how sound reflects off the room's surfaces and tunes the speaker. For Ray, Sonos states that a supported iOS device is required.