Sonos has owned a lot of living rooms for years, but Denon just moved the conversation. The company’s new second-generation lineup—Denon Home 200, Home 400, and Home 600—takes aim right at that “easy smart speaker” reputation.
The Home 400 is the one that really matters here. It’s the mid-tier model designed to go head-to-head with the Sonos Era 300, with a larger form factor, up-firing Dolby Atmos speakers, and smart streaming features. It also runs on Denon’s HEOS multi-room audio platform, meaning it can blend into a broader HEOS-compatible setup instead of locking you into just one ecosystem.
What surprised me wasn’t the specs, it was how familiar the day-to-day felt. HEOS is doing the behind-the-scenes work—streaming, the app experience, the whole “press play and it just works” vibe. In my testing, it supported the music services I already use, including Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, and more. Apple Music, meanwhile, comes via AirPlay 2. And if you’re coming from Sonos, you’ll probably like that HEOS still feels functional even when you’re only using one speaker.
The Home 400 also covers the multi-speaker upgrade path without making you run speaker wire everywhere. You can pair two units for stereo playback, or use them as wireless surround speakers with the Denon Home Sound Bar 550. That matters if you’ve ever tried to plan a “clean” living room where cables are basically public enemy number one. And yes, there’s support for HEOS-compatible subwoofers too, so you can add some low-end muscle if you want it.
Inside, Denon goes all-in on audio hardware. The Home 400 has six drivers total: two tweeters, two 114mm (4.5-inch) woofers, and two up-firing drivers dedicated to height information. Each driver gets its own dedicated Class D amplifier, which—at least on paper—should translate to more precise control of different parts of the sound. Denon also positions this as a meaningful step up from the Home 250, which had fewer drivers and couldn’t do true Atmos playback.
And this part is the headline: the Home 400 is the first HEOS-enabled speaker to support real Dolby Atmos music playback, using physical upfiring drivers rather than virtualized height effects. Atmos itself is one of those “cool until it isn’t” features for a lot of people, but I did notice the 3D immersion when the speaker is used as surrounds. The height effect can actually feel like it’s working with the front channels instead of just doing a trick.
Then there’s the part where I had to stop and grin, because I’m petty like that: I spent a bit digging through settings before realizing I had to be playing audio through the speaker to control the adjustments. The EQ controls exist—bass, treble, and height—but they’re not super precise, and the controls are a little hard to find. Notably, Sonos doesn’t give you razor-fine EQ control either, so if you’re comparing the two, this isn’t exactly a Home 400-only problem. Still, it’s not the slickest experience in the world.
If you care about hi-res audio, Denon also brings a stronger feature set than you might expect for the money. The Home 400 can play full 24-bit/192kHz audio natively, and if you play audio through the USB port, you can play your FLAC files. That’s ahead of the Sonos Era 300, which accepts 24-bit/192kHz as an input but downscales it during playback.
After living with it, I can say this: the Denon Home 400 is a serious home speaker that blurs the line between consumer-grade and something closer to audiophile territory—at least for casual listeners who want more detail without dropping “deep pockets” money. But whether it beats alternatives depends on where you live. In Europe, it costs the same as the Sonos Era 300; in the US, it costs $150 more. Most people shopping in this class will probably want to save cash and choose the Era 300, especially if they don’t care as much about higher-res playback. For me, though… I didn’t rush back to Sonos. Not yet. The first morning I set it up, there was that little, specific click of the app confirming the room—followed by music that sounded way bigger than the speaker looked.
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