The Link Bar includes both a full-fledged Android TV interface as well as always-on Google Assistant voice control. You can tell it to play TV shows in addition to the usual Assistant commands, and spoken commands work whether or not the TV is on. It's not quite a direct competitor to the Sonos Beam (Sonos doesn't have a smart TV interface), but there's a similar philosophy. This isn't so much an audio upgrade as it is a smart speaker that just happens to sit at the heart of your home theater.