Sonos finally introduces the little subwoofer everyone’s been waiting for

Sonos has taken its time, but now the time has come: The Sub Mini is a small WiFi subwoofer for One, Beam and Ray. We introduce you to the speaker and its technical data.

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Sonos Sub Mini: A compact subwoofer for small rooms

Of the Submini delivers exactly what the name promises: the cylindrical bass speaker is extremely compact. With only 23 cm diameter and 30.5 cm height the Sonos Sub Mini is much smaller than the Sonos Sub (take a look at MediaMarkt) and at 6.35 kg it is also much lighter. The Sub Mini is designed to help the smaller Sonos speakers like the One (SL), Ikea Symfonisk bookshelf speakers or the Ray and Beam soundbars at low frequencies.

The Sub Mini, which consists of a closed housing (no bass reflex port), works with two inward-facing force-cancelling woofers. The Californian audio specialist promises “dynamic reproduction of low frequencies without rattling and rattling”. As is so often the case, digital signal processing is also involved here: The music signal is analyzed shortly before playback and the Performance of the speaker optimized accordingly. In addition, the proven room optimization (“Sonos Trueplay”) is also provided, for which the room is measured with a supported iOS device (e.g. iPhone) while test signals sound. In this way, even acoustically “difficult” rooms with unwanted reflections should be kept in check.

As usual with Sonos, the integration takes place via an app, it is a subwoofer that connects wirelessly to the existing setup. This can take place in the sense of music playback (e.g. two One and one Sub Mini) as well as in a home cinema scenario. One caveat is that only a single Sub Mini per room is provided. Two of the larger sub (without “mini”) can also be integrated for a particularly large home cinema.

Stefan Bubeck, GIGA editor, expert for consumer electronics, especially audio.

The Sub Mini fills a gap in the line-up

It has been a justified point of criticism for years: If you wanted to add a subwoofer to your Sonos multi-room setup, you had to use the only available model, the Sonos Sub. However, not a few customers find the WiFi bass speaker too big and too expensive: Why should you put an 800-euro speaker in a small bedroom that is actually intended for much larger rooms? Something more compact and cheaper was needed. So now, finally, salvation – although the asking price of almost 500 euros for the Sonos Sub Mini seems a bit high to me. Is the relatively small housing volume enough to provide rich bass? A detailed practical test must show this. I will try the Sub Mini in combination with Sonos One and Sonos Ray shortly.

Price, availability and technical data

The Sub Mini is from the October 6, 2022 available worldwide. The price in Germany is 499 euros (RRP). Pre-orders can now be made directly from the manufacturer.