Sonos Arc Ultra Soundbar Review

The Sonos Arc Ultra has a sleek cylindrical shape, with perforated plastic grilles covering its front and sides. There's a rectangular section that juts out from the back of the bar, which houses the inputs (at the rear) and controls (on top). The controls themselves are tactile and don't protrude from the surface, giving the control section a unified aesthetic. There are status indicator lights that shine through the grille at the front of the bar, though they can be tricky to spot in bright conditions.

You can purchase a separate Sonos subwoofer for integrate with this bar, but this setup features just the bar. 

This setup comes without satellite speakers, but you can always purchase the Sonos Era 100 or Sonos Era 300 separately.

The Sonos Arc Ultra is a little wider than the original Sonos Arc, so it will struggle to fit between the legs of most TVs. However, it has a low profile, so you don't need to worry about it obstructing your view.

While you can mount this bar to your wall, it doesn't come with a mounting kit, which you'll have to purchase separately.

Much like the previous generation Sonos Arc, the Sonos Arc Ultra is entirely made of plastic. The body is made of dense, high-quality plastic that's perforated across the entire bar, except where the controls are located. The whole design feels sturdy and well-made overall. Interestingly, this bar comes with a set of cables that are molded to fit flush with the inputs. You can always swap them out for generic cables, but bear in mind that they'll stick out a bit more.

• Bar power cable (6.2 ft / 1.9m)
• HDMI cable (4.9 ft / 1.57m)
• Warranty info
• Setup guide

The Sonos Arc Ultra has a good stereo frequency response out-of-the-box. It's worth noting that, although Sonos advertises it as a 9.1.4 surround system, these channels aren't discrete, so it functions more as a 5.1.2 system when used in a standalone configuration (without the sub and rear speakers). While there are 13 drivers contained within the bar, they're not all full-range drivers, and the bar has to rely on some degree of virtualization to output 9.1.4 content. This is ultimately a different experience compared to having dedicated rear speakers.

That said, its default sound is a lot more balanced than the original Sonos Arc. Using the standard EQ preset with TruePlay room correction enabled, this bar is capable of outputting a surprising amount of bass for a standalone bar. Sonos advertises that their Sound Motion technology allows for greater bass output from a small transducer, and this is evident in the way kicks and basslines sound punchy and well-defined. There is still no substitute for a dedicated subwoofer, but if adding one isn't an option, the Arc Ultra will ensure that low-end content is tangible in the mix. The mid and treble ranges are very well-balanced, ensuring vocals and dialogue sound clear and well-defined. There's scope for adjusting the sound via bass and treble level modifications, as well as through the DSP sound presets. The differences between presets are mostly subtle, though the Speech Enhancement preset introduces a palpable drop in overall volume.

There's scope for tuning that bar's frequency response via the bass and treble sliders, but we found that the default sound settings yielded the most balanced result.

The Sonos Arc Ultra's soundstage performance is great. The width is about the size of the bar's length, though Atmos content sounds a bit wider, thanks to the side-firing drivers. Focus within the bar is also great, with the array of drivers ensuring that content tracks well across the sound field.

The stereo dynamics performance is impressive. This bar gets quite loud, enough to fill a large living room or small home cinema room with sound. There's even less compression present than with with the original Sonos Arc, even as you turn the volume up, so audio sounds pure even as you approach max volume.

The Sonos Arc Ultra's center performance is excellent. It's a step up from the original Arc, ensuring that vocals are clear and well differentiated against the rest of the mix. It's a discrete center channel, so its frequency response is even across the full range, so voices of all cadences are easy to understand.

The surrounds performance is passable. There are side-firing drivers built into the bar that help create a more immersive sound but it's not quite the same as having dedicated rear speakers. You can always add a pair of Sonos Era 300 speakers to bolster the surrounds performance.

As is often the case with Atmos-compatible speakers, the Sonos Arc Ultra features up-firing drivers that bounce sound off the ceiling, creating the impression of height in Atmos content. While these drivers reproduce mid and treble range content well, there's a lack of rumble in action-packed sequences.

Subjectively, we found that Atmos content sounds reasonably wide and immersive but lacks a sense of verticality. With sounds like ascending drones, there's plenty of detail in the sound of the drone's rotors, but the tracking can become muddled as they ascend or move diagonally across the sound field. The height of the sound field doesn't seem to extend much further than the height of your TV.

This bar comes with a few sound enhancement features that can help tailor your audio experience to your preferences. Sonos TruePlay is a room correction feature that adjusts the frequency response to the unique acoustic characteristics of your room. It's initiated via the Sonos app (which is now available with both iOS and Android devices) and you can choose between quick and advanced calibration modes. Quick calibration plays a short test tone, whereas advanced calibration (only available on iOS) will walk you through the setup multiple times from different positions. 

There's also a Voice Enhancement feature (with three levels of intensity) and night mode, which applies extra compression to keep loud noises in check. There are also sliders for bass and treble adjustments, although there's nothing as granular as a graphic EQ and no EQ presets. 

The Sonos Arc Ultra features an HDMI eARC port, but other connections are somewhat limited. If your TV isn't compatible with HDMI ARC or eARC, you can use an HDMI to optical adapter. However, while the original Sonos Arc included this, you'll have to buy one separately off the Sonos website in this instance. There's also an ethernet port for connecting the bar to your home network.

This soundbar has outstanding audio format support. There's support for the whole gamut of Dolby formats, as well as DTS. However there's no support for Dolby DTS:X, which might precluded you from playing back certain Blu-rays in their intended audio format. That said, we were able to playback DTS:X and DTS-HD MA content during testing, though with some downmixing.

This soundbar doesn't come with an optical port or an HDMI-optical adapter. That said, you can purchase one separately from the Sonos website if you have an older TV.

Audio latency via ARC is great. Generally speaking, your audio is in sync with your visuals, so there's not much scope for lip sync issues. That said, each TV and app will compensate for latency different, so your experience will vary. You can always use the TV Dialogue Sync option in the Sonos app to manually compensate for delay.

The Sonos Arc Ultra features an improved suite of wireless playback options compared to the original Sonos Arc. Building on the original's Wi-Fi and Apple AirPlay compatibility, this bar also features Bluetooth support. Apple users will be able to take advantage of AirPlay 2 support.

Furthermore, if you own a pair of Sonos Ace Wireless headphones that are connected to the same Sonos network, audio will seamlessly switch from the bar to the headphones once you put them on. 'Wearing Detection' will first need to be enabled on your Sonos Ace headphones for this to work.

The interface at the front of the bar is minimalist, to say the least. There are now three LEDs (a small step up from the two in the Sonos Arc), and they flash when the bar receives an input.

This soundbar has a few touch-sensitive controls that are distributed across the top and back of the bar. You can play/pause content, adjust the volume, or toggle voice commands on/off using the panel at the top. There's a switch to turn the mic on/off, as well as a Bluetooth pairing button, both of which are located at the back near the inputs.

There's no remote to control this soundbar as you're encouraged to control it using the Sonos app (here's a quick video rundown of its capabilities). There's been quite a bit of controversy surrounding the revamped Sonos app since it launched in May 2024, with Sonos themselves admitting that it lacked features and functionality upon launch. While many of these issues seem to have been ironed out, it's still worth noting that you might experience issues while using the app.

This soundbar comes with built-in capabilities for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. You can toggle these on/off via the voice command toggle button on the top of the bar or switch the mic off entirely using the mic mute button at the back.