Sonos Arc Soundbar Review

The Arc is Sonos' 2020 soundbar and is very high-end. Like the previous Sonos Beam and Sonos Playbar, the setup can be upgraded with a separate subwoofer and satellites, which are the same as the Beam. The main competitors of the Sonos Arc are the Sonos Beam, the 2019 Samsung HW-Q90R, and the Bose Soundbar 700.

This soundbar is a lot longer than the Sonos Beam. It has a similar plastic finish, though it still feels high-end and sturdy. There are two plastic grilles on its sides and a black plastic mesh between the grille in the front and top sides of the bar. You can also purchase this soundbar in white if you prefer.

This setup comes without a subwoofer, although you can purchase a Sonos subwoofer separately.

This setup comes without satellites, although you can purchase these speakers separately.

The Sonos Arc is noticeably longer than the Sonos Beam or the Sonos Playbar. It's too long to fit between the legs of 55 inch TVs, and although it's also a bit taller, it shouldn't cover the bottom part of your screen.

Like most soundbars, the back is fairly straightforward. There's a small opening for your power and inputs. Note that the mounting holes are proprietary to Sonos, and you need to purchase special wall-mounting brackets separately, as they aren't included in the box.

The build quality of the Sonos Arc is great. Although it's entirely made of plastic, it has the same sturdy feel as the Sonos Beam. The speakers are also well-protected by plastic grilles.

• Bar power cable
• HDMI cable
• HDMI to Optical adapter
• Manuals

The stereo frequency response of the Sonos Arc is good. When using its room correction feature, this soundbar has a fairly neutral, although somewhat bright sound profile. The bar struggles to reproduce low-bass, but after updating the bar to its latest software version, the bass is more present and sounds tighter. During our subjective tests, we also didn't notice the dip in the bass range. Unfortunately, it only has bass and treble adjustment features and lacks a more comprehensive EQ to customize its sound. The room correction feature is only available on iOS devices as well.

The stereo frequency response with preliminary calibration is good. We tried the following bass and treble slider combinations in addition to using the room correction feature: 'Bass: 0, Treble: -1', 'Bass: 0, Treble: -2', 'Bass: 1, Treble: -1', and 'Bass: 2, Treble -2'. However, none of these settings improved the default slope of this soundbar.

The stereo soundstage of the Sonos Arc soundbar is great. It feels larger than the bar itself thanks to the side-firing speakers that reflect sound from the walls to the listener. The focus is also very good, and you can easily pinpoint where the sound is coming from. That said, if you're listening to Atmos content, the soundstage sounds wider although more diffused.

The Sonos Arc has decent stereo dynamics. The bar can get loud enough to fill a large or crowded room. However, there are some compression artifacts at max volume.

The stereo THD performance of this soundbar is decent. There isn't much harmonic distortion at a typical volume level, but there's a noticeable jump in THD when raising the volume to its max. However, this may not be so noticeable with real-life content, so your experience may vary.

The Sonos Arc soundbar has an excellent dedicated center channel performance. It uses a discrete center channel, which can reproduce clear and accurate dialogue and vocals in your favorite TV shows. However, it can sound a bit bright on some content.

The surround 5.1 performance of the Sonos Arc is passable. It relies on its side-firing speakers to bounce sound off your walls to give you the impression of an immersive sound. However, it doesn't sound as immersive as setups that use dedicated satellites. If you watch a lot of surround content, check out the full Sonos Arc with Sub + One SL Speakers setup.

The height performance of the Sonos Arc is acceptable. It uses up-firing speakers located on the bar to bounce sound off your walls to give you the impression of height. However, if you're watching Atmos content, the volume level isn't as loud as other channels like center or surround. That said, it's still an improvement when compared to other soundbars like the Sonos Beam that don't support Atmos at all.

The Sonos Arc has mediocre sound enhancement features. It has a Room Correction setting which can help adjust the bar's performance based on your room setup. Unfortunately, it's only available on iOS. There are also volume adjustments for bass and treble, but unlike the Sony HT-G700, it lacks a proper EQ to fine-tune its sound profile to your preference. Also, note that there's no remote available, so everything has to be done inside the app.

The Sonos Arc has a limited number of inputs. It has an HDMI ARC port and an optical one, though you'll need to use the included HDMI adapter. You can also connect the bar to your home network by using the Ethernet port.

Update 01/12/2021: We updated the soundbar's firmware to 12.2.1. After connecting to the bar via eARC, we retested its support for 5.1 PCM and found that all channels are recognized, which wasn't the case with the previous firmware. We updated the result for 5.1 PCM from 'No' to 'Yes'.

This soundbar has very good audio format support via its HDMI ARC port. The bar supports pretty much every Dolby signal, and thanks to its eARC support, it can also play lossless Dolby TrueHD. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS like some other high-end soundbars like the LG SN11RG.

Via optical, the soundbar can play Dolby Digital, which can be found on most streaming services and some Blu-ray discs. Unfortunately, it doesn't support DTS content, which is even more common on Blu-ray.

The Sonos Arc has a fantastic latency performance. It has extremely low latency via its ARC and Optical In connections. This ensures that your audio is in sync with the video on your screen. However, some apps and TVs compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience may vary.

The Sonos Arc has poor wireless playback options. Sonos soundbars all don't support Bluetooth connectivity, and the Sonos Arc isn't an exception as it only supports a Wi-Fi connection. There are a few apps like Spotify that have built-in support to cast easily to the bar. For iOS users, the bar also supports Apple AirPlay 2. It also features both Google Assistant and Alexa built-in.

The interface of this soundbar is quite minimal. There's a main light that changes color and blinks depending on the command. There's also a second one that lights up whenever the soundbar's microphone is activated, but that's about it.

This soundbar has touch-sensitive controls that allow you to play/pause, raise or lower the volume, and mute the microphone.

This bar has both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant built-in. There's a mic mute button so that you can turn off the speaker if you don't always want it to be listening to you.

The Sonos S2 app offers tremendous control over all your Sonos products. It's pretty much an upgraded version of the Sonos Controller app, previously found on the Sonos Beam. You can link music services to the app, directly cast to the bar, and have access to different features like setting alarms. It also allows you to set up room configurations for all of your Sonos products. Note that the room correction feature Trueplay is only available on iOS.

The Sonos Arc doesn't have a power-saving feature. When connected via its HDMI ARC port, you can also use your TV remote to control basic settings like the volume of the soundbar.