Sonos announces Sub Mini, a smaller but not very cheap subwoofer for small and medium room audio systems

Sonos has officially announced the Sub Mini, the long-awaited more compact and cheaper subwoofer in its range, made specifically for systems that are housed in small to medium-sized rooms. As such, it will be recommended for use alongside the more affordable soundbars in the company’s range, such as the Ray and Beam, leaving the old Sonos Sub for more advanced systems that are put into systems with soundbars such as the Arc.

The Sub Mini is dedicated to Sonos entry and mid-range soundbar systems.

The company says they tried to create a new type of subwoofer with the Mini, but after several attempts they went back to the original Sub design, with two speakers positioned facing each other in a format called “force cancelling”. So the cylindrical shape of the new Sub Mini is broken in half by a rectangular cutout where the two speakers are placed. This design will eliminate speaker vibration, providing the powerful bass characteristic of a subwoofer, without creating vibrations in the enclosure or to surrounding objects.

The Sub Mini measures 22 cm in diameter and 30 cm in height and can easily be placed in any home multimedia system. As a wireless subwoofer, it can easily be moved anywhere there’s an outlet, and with TrueSound, technology that scans the room with an iPhone, sound will be properly tuned regardless of the Sub Mini’s positioning.

Setting up the speaker is quick and easy. For those who already have a Sonos system installed, simply bring the phone they have the Sonos app installed on close to the top and the NFC will start the setup. Volume control is done via the same remote as the rest of the system in that room, and bass boost is done from the Sonos mobile app.

The Sub Mini communicates with the rest of your Sonos devices over an invisible 5 GHz Wi-Fi connection, making it virtually its own wireless network. All are then connected to the internet via the 2.4 GHz connection.

As a Sonos product, we didn’t expect it to be cheap, but we also didn’t expect the Sum Mini to be significantly more expensive than a Ray soundbar. It seems, however, that to achieve the level of performance Sonos demands requires expensive components and a complex development process. Thus, the Sub Mini goes on offer at 2,499 lei in Romania, in two colours: white or black. The subwoofer is already available for pre-order and will be delivered from 6 October.