Soundbars and home entertainment speakers are essential to any good home entertainment system. TVs are just too thin these days to have reliably good built-in speakers. The new Sonos Arc Ultra is a beautiful premium soundbar with Dolby Atmos support. It’s wider than its predecessor and uses a brand-new technology called Sound Motion, which allows for more sound in a smaller space, packing an extra punch.
In my three weeks with the Arc Ultra (and the new Sonos Sub 4), I have been incredibly impressed. It’s an upgrade from the original Sonos Arc in every way.
Sonos Arc Ultra review
First impressions
Setting up the Sonos Arc Ultra was a really easy process. I plugged it in, added it to the app, added in two Sonos Era 300 speakers for surround sound and a Sub 4 for bass, and ran TruePlay.
The Sonos Era 300 is a Dolby Atmos speaker that is pure indulgence to use as a rear speaker. You don’t technically need rear speakers with the Sonos Arc Ultra, but you also don’t technically need dessert, or an ice cream on a hot day. The Sub 4 is similarly optional, but adds significantly to the experience.
TruePlay is Sonos’ technology for tuning the speakers to the room. It tests how the sound reflects off your windows and soft furnishings. It comes in two flavours: Quick Tune and TruePlay.
Quick Tune, previously known as Auto TruePlay, uses the microphones on the speaker to tune itself. It’s not perfect, but better than nothing. Meanwhile, TruePlay gets you to walk around waving your iPhone in the air to test how it sounds in different parts of the room.
I had a really good and easy time using TruePlay to tune the speakers for my weirdly shaped room. However, some users have reported experiencing issues (which should have been patched with a software update by the time you read this).
In terms of appearance, the Sonos Arc Ultra looks like the Arc got stretched and then grew a mullet. It’s wider, and has a new touch bar at the back to adjust volume and play/pause music, etc.
Sonos Arc Ultra specs and price
| Dimensions | Height: 75 mm Width: 1,178 mm Depth: 110.6 mm Weight: 5.9 kg |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6 compatible HDMI eARC Optical Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Box contents | Power cable 2m HDMI Cable 1.5m Sonos Arc Ultra |
| Amplifiers | Fifteen Class-D digital amplifiers |
| Woofers | Sound Motion, a four-motor, dual-membrane woofer, |
| Tweeters | Seven silk-dome tweeters. Two of these fire upward, creating dedicated height channels for spatial audio. |
| Mid-woofers | Six mid-woofers |
| Microphones | Far-field microphone array |
| Price (RRP) | $1,799 |
| Warranty | One year |
| Official website | Sonos Australia |
The biggest differences here compared to the regular Arc are that the Ultra has three more amplifiers, one fewer woofers, and four extra tweeters. Even though the Ultra technically loses a woofer, it produces more bass due to the Sound Motion technology. The soundbar can also be TruePlayed even if you have an Android phone (albeit, not the full TruePlay experience), whereas the regular Arc can only be TruePlayed on iOS.
Plus it has AI speech enhancement and is smaller in most dimensions. It also comes with fewer cables.
Watching movies and TV
My previous setup was a Sonos Arc with two Subs and two Era 300s as rears, so I was not expecting to experience that much of a difference. Reader, I experienced much of a difference. Everything sounds fuller. Dialogue is also noticeably clearer.
The sound mixing on Netflix shows has gotten absolutely dismal, to the point that everyone I know needs subtitles. For the first time in a long time, I could watch most shows and movies without them, and still not miss a word. The dialogue wasn’t so much louder, as it was clearer. It still nestled into the music, and didn’t sound artificially boosted (as speech enhancement often can sound on cheaper soundbars). It just sounded better.
The Dolby Atmos effect worked really well, too. Sounds came from where I would expect them to – planes flying overhead in Masters of the Air sounded real – their path was so immersive I assumed they’d changed the flight path and it was a real plane flying over at the right time. It sounded like being at a high-end cinema.
Listening to music
Listening to music was similarly spectacular. Full, layered music like the Hamilton soundtrack, “Full Heart Fancy” by Lucky Chops, or Mozart’s “Le nozzle di Figaro Overture” sounds amazing. You can pick out all the details, it sounds like you’re sitting in the middle of the orchestra and watching everyone move and create around you. The bass is low and deep, but not overwhelming, and the high notes are given space to breathe.
With songs that rely on the spaces as much as they rely on the music, like “Simmer” by Hayley Williams and “A Concert Six Months From Now” by Finneas, they’re given plenty of room to breathe. The power comes through and you get punched in the guts every time.
Songs in-between like “In The Living Room” by Maggie Rogers take on a magical quality. The raw emotion in that song cuts me down every time on the Sonos Arc Ultra. On the Apple AirPods Max headphones, the song sounds really good, but it lacks the gut punch I get on the Arc Ultra. I have always been a sucker for a song where the music falls away for a couple of bars while the singer has an emotional breakdown, and the Arc Ultra conveys every beat of that emotion in a way that elevates it.
Sonos App
The Sonos app has had some issues this year, to put it mildly. If you go anywhere near the Sonos Reddit you’ll be exposed to the outrage over the changes. Sonos is slowly rebuilding the app; though it’s unlikely to ever regain the full trust of longtime users.
I still have a lot of problems with the app, including having speakers occasionally disappear, and lags on adjusting volume. It’s been an interesting lesson for most users about the perils of purchasing expensive devices where the control and functions could be taken away at any time in an app update.
The app situation has taken the shine off Sonos’ otherwise strong brand. That said, the messaging around improving the app has gotten better, and most things now work the majority of the time. If you’re getting the Arc Ultra to primarily watch TV and use AirPlay, you’ll never have to touch the app again after you’ve completed the setup.
Who is the Sonos Arc Ultra for?
On its own, the Arc Ultra is the perfect soundbar for anyone wanting to give their TV audio more oomph, particularly if they already have other Sonos speakers and have some extra budget to play with. There are cheaper soundbars out there (many of which include external subwoofers in the box), but there aren’t any with the same functionality as Sonos (aside from Sonos’ cheaper options, best suited to smaller TVs).
When paired with a Sub 4, the Sonos Arc Ultra is an absolute powerhouse for any living room audio setup.
Put it with a Sub 4 (or two) and a pair of Era 300s and it is the ultimate home theatre setup before you start going to bespoke in-wall premium options. I review a lot of home cinema setups, and this is the one I (an absolute picky bastard) choose to use every day because I love the sound so much. I chose that setup with the regular Arc over a Bose Lifestyle 650, and the Arc Ultra pushes it even further. It’s expensive as hell, but you can hear the difference.
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