The Sonos Arc Ultra is improved in just about every way over its predecessor. Its audio reproduction is fantastic, it has noticeably more bass, it handles spatial content well, and fits in well with a multi-room audio streaming setup. Is it worth an upgrade if you have the Arc? Probably not for most people. But if you're looking for a new premium soundbar, definitely consider the Sonos Arc Ultra.
-
Design
-
Sound
-
Features
-
Value
Sonos released the Arc, its first flagship standalone soundbar, in 2020. It was well-received at the time and praised for its audio fidelity and smart feature set.
Towards the end of 2024, the company unveiled the Sonos Arc Ultra, its next flagship soundbar which it says is the “most powerful soundbar [it] has ever created.”
Of course it would say that, but is it any good?
Sitting down to business
If you can’t hear the dialogue on the TV show, you’re not alone. As action scenes have taken priority in movies in general, the filmmakers tend to increase the volume of that sequence. Not only is it visually more stimulating – cars, guns, explosions, car chases through cities, more explosions, etc – but the audio is heightened too.
Because the sound levels fluctuate so much, what most TV shows and movies produce for the viewer is overly loud action scenes and too-soft dialogue scenes.
Combine this with the too-thin modern TV set that doesn’t have enough space – literally – for its speakers to produce decent sound (not the TV maker’s fault per se, because the laws of physics are, well, the laws of physics) and what you have is a great visual experience but a very poor audio experience.
Improvements are always welcome
I was delighted to discover that Sonos’s first Arc had two settings to help with my audio problem – which was exacerbated because I’m a night person and our TV room isn’t far from our son’s bedroom.
The settings, respectively, boosted dialogue and automatically reduced the sound splurges for action scenes. I was thrilled, even if the settings were masterfully hidden in a sub-menu of a sub-menu.
The Sonos Arc Ultra improves everything about its predecessor, especially how it handles the spoken word. Dialogue is crisper and easier to hear thanks to a discreet centre channel and three levels of voice enhancement in the Sonos app, while the booming gunfire or squealing tyres are muted if you want them to be. Thanks Sonos.
The Arc Ultra’s low-end has also been improved over the original Arc with Sonos’s new Sound Motion driver. This four-motor, dual-membrane woofer that Sonos calls “one of the most significant breakthroughs in audio engineering in nearly 100 years” does add extra punch to the audio mix but overall the bar still lacks the low-end rumble you’d get from a dedicated sub.
I am as interested in how many tweeters and base boomers are in a speaker as I am about how many spark plugs are under my car’s bonnet. But for those who know and care, the Sonos Arc Ultra features a 9.1.4-channel configuration with 15 Class-D digital amplifiers powering seven silk-dome tweeters, six mid-woofers, and a single Sound Motion woofer.
But what I am interested in is Sonos’ Trueplay calibration process which autotunes the speaker to the acoustics of the room it’s in and where it’s placed. No more walking around waving your smartphone as it makes sonar-pinging noises to help the speaker set itself up. Talk about humans serving the robots. Thankfully, the speaker does it itself now on Android devices as well as iPhones.
The Sonos experience
Most people feel compelled to buy a soundbar from the same maker as the TV itself – for the convenience of one remote control. Very often TVs are bundled with soundbars by the makers for a special deal. If those are your criteria, then go for it, I always say.
Choosing Sonos over a soundbar from the same manufacturer has advantages that I think outweigh that same-same decision. Most of the time I find we use the soundbar as a speaker more than a TV accessory. Sonos is the gold standard for streaming audio for many reasons, not least how well it works with multiple speakers.
I think of the soundbar as primarily a speaker, so it makes more sense for it to be part of the streaming audio setup, and therefore a Sonos product.
That the Arc, and now Arc Ultra, produces a superior sound makes that decision much simpler for me. What I am paying for is not just better sound but better sound quality. I’m very happy to pay extra for someone else to clean up the audio disparities between spoken dialogue and action/gun/chase scenes.
It also helps that the Sonos Ace headphones pair so nicely with the Arc Ultra thanks to Sonos’ TV Audio Swap feature. I have used it a few times and it’s wonderfully simple and just as wonderfully effective.
While audio is playing from the Sonos Arc Ultra, long-pressing a button on the headphones swaps them in as your playback device. No more load explosions waking sleepy children at night.
If you’re watching content that supports surround sound or Dolby Atmos, the Arc Ultra will create and send the full spatial mix to the Ace via Wi-Fi. While both methods of immersing yourself in your content work, I found the soundbar provided a wider-sounding mix, with its four dedicated height channels, than the Ace could manage.
The TV Audio Swap feature also supports dynamic head tracking, which adjusts your perceived direction of the audio to make it sound like it’s coming from where you want it to. I didn’t find much use for this feature but maybe you will if, for some reason, you’re sitting off to the side of your TV using the Ace headphones.
Sonos Arc Ultra verdict
This is the top-end of the Sonos range and a standout product. I loved the first Arc for solving this weird audio problem and the Arc Ultra does it even better. It’s not an insubstantial decision at R27,000 for this premium soundbar but if you’re spending that much on your TV, or more, then it might be a little easier to make.
Sonos has the added bonus of working so well with a home streaming system and the Arc Ultra will function as a speaker when your TV isn’t on. That’s worth it alone. Add in the generally improved audio, dialogue enhancements, ridiculously loud action scene reductions, and TV Audio Swap feature and it’s my new gold standard for a TV soundbar.
