Sonos has long offered a wireless subwoofer as part of its home theater, a large and powerful product that also costs a whopping $749. For anyone with a smaller room, or a smaller budget, it was a bit of a stretch. Sonos is giving bass-lovers a new option today: the rumored Sub Mini is real — and at $429, it costs a lot less than its bigger sibling.
The Sub Mini is a cylindrical speaker with a "center tunnel" cutout to move air around. It's a foot tall and about 9 inches in diameter; at 14 pounds, it's not exactly light, but that's more than 20 pounds lighter than the Sonos Sub. It's compatible with any amplified Sonos speaker aside from portable products like the Move and Roam, which means you can pair it with audio speakers like the Sonos One or Five as well as home theater soundbar like the Beam and Ray. (Sonos recommends pairing its high-end Arc soundbar with the full-sized Sub, but there's no technical reason you can't use it alongside the Sub Mini.)
Along with that center tunnel, the Sub Mini includes two 6-inch, force-cancelling woofers and two class-D digital amplifiers, along with a 5GHz wireless connection and a 10/100 ethernet port if you prefer to hardwire your speakers. As with all Sonos products, you set up the Sub Mini through the Sonos mobile app — from there, you'll tell it which room the sub is in and pair it to a soundbar or speaker set.
As with other Sonos speakers, you can tune the Sub Mini once it's set up to properly balance your system's sound using Trueplay. You'll need a compatible iOS device to use Trueplay, as it uses the device's microphone to listen to the room and optimize audio quality based on the acoustics of your room. My experience with Trueplay has always been positive, so this is a step worth taking if you have an iPhone or iPad.
The Sonos Sub comes in black or white and is up for preorder today and will be widely available on October 6th. As with any speaker, we'll need to hear this one before we can recommend it, but it's good that Sonos finally has a more affordable option for improving bass from its products. It should also be appreciated by anyone with a smaller room or setup — I've long wanted a little more bass from my pair of Sonos One speakers, for example, but the bigger Sub would be massive overkill. The Sub Mini, on the other hand, could be just right.