Sonos Arc Ultra review: the best all-in-one soundbar for movies, shows, and games
A fantastic starting point for any home theater experience
🏆 Review score: 5 out of 5
🏅 Editor’s Choice Award
Pros
✅ 🔊 9.1.4-channel sound delivers clear dialogue, strong bass, and directional audio
✅ 🥁 Pronounced bass is strong enough not to require a separate subwoofer
✅ 🎶 Fantastic clarity and nuanced detail elevate music listening quality
✅ 📺 Great as a standalone Dolby Atmos soundbar, fully enveloping with additional speakers
✅ 📐 Shorter, wider design avoids blocking TVs while delivering a wider soundstage
✅ 🎧 Unique TV Audio Swap with Sonos Ace headphones for a private surround sound listening
✅ 💵 Offers more versatility and value than other $999 or higher soundbars
Cons
❌ 🫤 Bluetooth is limited to SBC and AAC codecs
❌ 🎮 No HDMI passthrough for gaming devices on eARC connection
The Shortcut Review
The Sonos Arc Ultra is a soundbar that delivers on the promise of being a truly all-in-one home theater speaker. Featuring a 9.1.4-channel sound, this soundbar delivers pronounced dialogue and vocals, strong bass, and directional side and height audio, all without the need for additional speakers or subwoofers. It’s fantastic at immersing you in movies, shows, and games with Dolby Atmos audio. For music, you get more nuanced detail and clarity, allowing you to experience your favorite songs in a new way.
Sonos has finally adopted Bluetooth on one of its soundbars in the Arc Ultra; however, it only features basic support with AAC and SBC codecs. You’ll enjoy higher-quality music streaming over Wi-Fi, AirPlay 2, and Spotify Connect. You can also connect a pair of Sonos Ace headphones to enjoy surround sound privately – a unique feature you won’t find with most other sound systems.
Priced at $999, the Sonos Arc Ultra sits at the same price (or under) as other premium soundbars like the $999 Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar and $1,199 Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus. However, the Sonos Arc Ultra delivers a more comprehensive all-in-one surround sound experience that can be enhanced with affordable $199 Era 100 surround speakers and a $429 Sub Mini subwoofer, creating a more immersive and visceral experience.
Full Review
🔊 True all-in-one soundbar. The Sonos Arc Ultra’s 9.1.4-speaker configuration is a resounding upgrade over the Sonos Arc's 5.0-channel sound. That’s many more channels than you get with most soundbars, making the Sonos Arc Ultra the only soundbar I would recommend as your all-in-one sound system. Soundbars, since their inception, have claimed to provide a self-contained surround sound experience, but many have lacked bass, little to no height audio, or an underwhelming soundstage. That isn’t the case with the Sonos Arc Ultra. It delivers fantastically present dialogue with a strong bass response and all the height audio to make it sound like the jets in Top Gun: Maverick are flying right over you.
🥁 Pump up the bass. Easily the most noticeable upgrade going from the Sonos Arc to the Sonos Arc Ultra was the more pronounced bass. Sonos claims its new Sound Motion technology can deliver 50% more bass at 50Hz, and I can definitely feel it while playing R&B music. Rewatching Tron: Legacy at even 25% volume turns my apartment into a club DJed by Daft Punk. Inside the Arc Ultra, Sonos has redesigned the traditional transducer to be more compact, flatter, and deliver more bass than any other soundbar I’ve heard. I’ve felt that the Sonos Arc and other soundbars require a dedicated subwoofer for a truly immersive home theater experience. The Sonos Arc Ultra can deliver room-shaking sound all by itself.
🎶 Bigger, clearer sound. The Sonos Arc Ultra is one of the clearest and most detailed soundbars I’ve ever heard. Replaying my favorite tunes with this soundbar has been a joy, as it has let me hear all new nuances in songs I’ve listened to hundreds of times. It’s a bop with that heftier bass, too, especially for party songs like Avicii’s Wake Me Up and The Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling.
🎥 Dolby Atmos sound in one package. The Arc Ultra creates an immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound experience all on its own. The car fight scene in Carry-On is insanely visceral and puts me right in the rear row as I hear punches being traded in front of me while traffic whips from my sides to behind me. Similarly, the start of Blade Runner 2049 sounds amazing as deep, bellowing dialogue suddenly springs into a bass-heavy brawl you can feel.
📺 Full surround. The only thing that makes the Sonos Arc Ultra’s surround sound experience even better is attaching a Sub 4 subwoofer and two Era 300s as rear surrounds. Together, all these Sonos speakers deliver an unmatched surround sound experience. I felt a palpable dread while watching the end of Roma, and I could hear all the waves crashing around me – it made me feel as if I were drowning. The only other sound system to deliver an immersive experience was the $2,499 Sony Bravia Theater Quad. Of course, this top-tier, complete Sonos system does cost quite a bit more at $ 2,898. But you can build a more affordable $1,826 with two $199 Era 100 surrounds and a $429 Sub Mini.
Features
🗣️ AI Speech Enhancement. Thanks to a recent update, the Sonos Arc Ultra can amplify dialogue using AI. More than just channel and frequency-based voice enhancement, the Sonos Arc Ultra sifts through the sound in all channels, isolates dialogue frequencies, and only boosts spoken words. Sonos’ Speech Enhancement also pulls non-dialogue sounds – such as low-end bass and sound effects – out of the center and pushes them to other appropriate channels.
🎚️ Natural dialogue boost. You can pick from five levels of Speech Enhancement: Off, Low, Medium, High, and Max. At almost any level, this feature makes a noticeable difference. I rarely have to rewind 10 seconds or turn on subtitles, and the Speech Enhancement sounds surprisingly natural, as if the show/movie was originally mixed for better sounding dialogue. It doesn’t boost dialogue as loudly as competitor features like Voice Zoom 3 on the Sony Bravia Bar 9 or Active Voice Amplifier on the Samsung S95F QD-OLED, but Sonos’ solution sounds less destructive to the overall sound mix.
🎧 TV Audio Swap. That full surround sound also extends to the Sonos Ace headphones. You can pair and wirelessly stream any soundbar audio to up to two of these awesomely flexible noise-cancelling headphones. It’s a great complement for watching movies or playing games at night without disturbing your neighbors – or alerting your partner that you’re up late. The Sonos Ace also allows you to experience an open-air listening mode with TrueCinema, thanks to a recent update. The only other home entertainment system that offers a similar headphone experience is the Apple AirPods Max, paired with an Apple TV; however, it lacks the same level of surround sound immersion.
Hardware
📏 Measure of a machine. The Sonos Arc Ultra is three inches slimmer, so it sits a little lower so as not to block the bottom of our TV. However, it's also a bit deeper at 4.35 inches, so you might have to push back your TV if its stand runs into the soundbar. The Sonos Arc Ultra is also slightly wider at 46 inches to help spread its soundstage across a wider arc.
🎛️ New onboard controls. The Sonos Arc Ultra features a few onboard controls that are convenient when you’re closer to it than your TV remote or smartphone. There’s a cluster of forward, backward, and play/pause virtual buttons for playback control. The touch-sensitive panel, meanwhile, mimics the swipe to change volume control I’ve seen on the Sonos Era 100 and Sonos Era 300.
📲 Basic Bluetooth. Huzzah, the Bluetooth connectivity comes standard on the Sonos Arc Ultra. This makes connecting any device (Apple, Android, record player, etc) to the soundbar much simpler. However, this simplicity also comes with very basic SBC and AAC codecs. The Sonos Arc Ultra lacks any low-latency or high-quality codecs like aptX, aptX HD, LC3, or LDAC, which are available on other soundbars like the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus and Sony Bravia Bar 9. It’s a big miss for Sonos to finally include Bluetooth on a soundbar, but then only provide the bare minimum support for it.
🛜 Better connectivity with everything else. While Bluetooth is present on this soundbar, you’ll get much better sound quality with Wi-Fi 6, Apple AirPlay 2, and Spotify Connect. AirPlay 2 will notably allow you to set up multi-room streaming right from the pulldown Control Center on your phone. Spotify Connect is always handy and will hopefully support Hi-Fi streaming whenever it becomes available.
Should you buy the Sonos Arc Ultra?
Yes, if…
✅ 📺 You want a truly standalone surround sound bar for your home theater
✅ 🎶 You want to hear new details and nuances in your music
✅ 🎥 You want immersive Dolby Atmos audio for movies, shows, and games
✅ 🎧 You want private surround sound through the Sonos Ace headphones’ TV Audio Swap
No, if…
❌ $999 is too expensive for you (get the Sonos Arc instead)
❌ The Sonos Arc Ultra is wider than your TV (get the Sennheiser Ambeo Mini)
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.