Sonos Arc with Sub + One SL Speakers Soundbar Review

The Sonos Arc is a high-end soundbar from 2020. It’s technically sold as a standalone soundbar, but you can easily buy the Sonos subwoofer and the One SL speakers to make it a full 5.1.2 setup. It comes after the releases of the Sonos Playbar and the Sonos Beam, but its main competitors are the Samsung HW-Q90R and the LG SN11RG.

The Sonos Arc looks sleek. It’s entirely made of plastic but is a lot longer than the Sonos Beam. It feels high-end and sturdy. You can purchase it in 'Black' or 'White' color variants.

The Sonos Arc's subwoofer has a unique design with a glossy finish and two subs facing each other in the center hole.

The Sonos Arc satellites are two Sonos One SL speakers. They have a metal grille protecting the speakers and feature touch-sensitive controls on their top side. They seem very well-built and are quite heavy, which gives them a premium feel.

The Sonos Arc is a rather large bar and doesn’t fit between the legs of most 55 inch TVs. On the upside, it’s not too tall and won’t block the bottom of your screen.

The subwoofer isn’t much larger than a typical desktop, so you shouldn’t have any issues placing it anywhere in your room since it connects wirelessly to the bar.

The Sonos One SL speakers aren’t too big. They can only be placed in a vertical position and need to be plugged into a power outlet but don’t require any wired connection to the rest of the setup.

The Sonos Arc has a single hole in the back for its power cord and access to its inputs. You can also find the wall-mounting holes on the backside, but you need to purchase proprietary brackets as they aren’t included in the box.

The back of the subwoofer is very plain. You only have access to the pairing button and the status light. The ports are in the middle of the sub.

You can find the pairing button and an ethernet port on the back of each satellite speaker. You also need proprietary mounting brackets for them.

The build quality of the full Sonos Arc setup is excellent. While the bar is entirely made of solid plastic, the subwoofer and satellites add even more to its premium feel, thanks to their metal construction. It feels as sturdy as the Bose Soundbar 700.

• 4x power cables
• HDMI cable
• HDMI to Optical adapter
• Cleaning cloth
• Manuals

The Sonos Arc full setup has a very good stereo frequency response. Out-of-the-box and with its room correction feature on, this soundbar has a balanced mid-range that can reproduce vocals and lead instruments clearly, though higher frequencies may sound a bit bright. While it has an extended bass, it still has some trouble reproducing the deep thump and punch found in bass-heavy music genres or action-packed movies. It also comes with several sound enhancement features, including bass and treble adjustments, to help you customize its sound to your liking. However, their room correction feature is only available on iOS.

With calibration and its room correction feature turned on, the Sonos Arc full setup has an excellent stereo frequency response. Using the suggested bass and treble adjustments, this soundbar has a very neutral sound profile that's suitable for listening to lots of different audio content. It can reproduce a warm, thumpy bass without overwhelming vocals and lead instruments.

This soundbar setup's stereo soundstage is great. It sounds wider than the standalone Sonos Arc by itself, although the focus isn’t as good. Nevertheless, it’s still fairly good and objects come from an accurate location rather than a diffused location. For a 5.1 setup with an even better soundstage performance, check out the Bose Soundbar 700 with Speakers + Bass Module.

The Sonos Arc has good stereo dynamics performance. While it can get quite loud for large rooms or parties, it struggles to perform well at max volume, especially in the bass range, so there are noticeable thumping and compression artifacts.

This soundbar has a great stereo THD performance. At normal listening volumes, most of the frequencies fall within good limits, resulting in mostly clear and pure audio reproduction. At max volume, there's a jump in THD. However, this may not be noticeable with real-life content.

The Sonos Arc with Sub + One SL Speakers has an impressive center channel performance. Thanks to its dedicated center channel, it can reproduce clear and accurate dialogue. While the frequency response lacks a bit of bass, this shouldn't be too noticeable in real-life as there isn't a lot of bass present with content played over the center speaker.

Update 08/13/2020: We've updated the review to say that this is a 5.1.2 setup, and not a 7.1.2. When using the rear satellites, the soundbar repurposes its side-firing speakers to help the left and right speakers.

This 5.1.2 full setup has an excellent surround performance. With dedicated satellite speakers, sounds seem to be coming around you rather than from just in front. The sounds on surround tracks are only played by the satellites, and nothing comes from the bar itself, giving you a very good surround experience.

The Sonos Arc with Sub + One SL Speakers has an acceptable Atmos performance. When playing Atmos content, it uses up-firing speakers on the bar to bounce sound off the ceiling and back to the listener to simulate height. However, this doesn't sound as immersive as dedicated down-firing home theater speakers. Its satellite speakers don't have up-firing speakers, either.

Update 06/14/2021: We updated the soundbar's firmware to 13.1.2. This bar now offers a height level adjustment feature. We've updated the test results accordingly.

The Sonos Arc full setup has plenty of sound enhancement features. It has a 'Trueplay' room correction feature that adjusts the setup’s audio reproduction based on the room it’s set in, but it’s only available on iOS. Unfortunately, unlike the Samsung HW-Q850A, it doesn’t have a proper EQ for you to customize the sound, but you can still play around with the bass and treble adjustment settings. Every customization option can be found in the compatible Sonos app, but you won’t be able to use the room correction feature on Android.

The Sonos Arc doesn’t have a lot of ports. It only features a single HDMI ARC port, so you won’t be able to use this soundbar as a hub for your different devices. It also features an Ethernet port to connect it to your home network, and it comes with an HDMI to Optical adapter.

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 full soundbar setup features an HDMI port that allows for most audio formats. Its HDMI ARC port also supports eARC, so you’ll be able to enjoy lossless surround formats as well. Unfortunately, it only supports Dolby formats and not DTS.

If you're looking for a soundbar with a Full HDMI In port, check out the Samsung HW-Q850T.

When using the HDMI to Optical adapter, the soundbar can only play Dolby Digital. It doesn’t support DTS like most other soundbars such as the JBL Bar 9.1 do.

Update 03/18/2021: There was a mistake in our methodology where we measured the latency using every second frame (eg. 120fps). We now re-evaluated the footage using every frame at 240fps for more accurate results.

This soundbar has an outstanding latency performance. When you connect it to another device like a TV over ARC or Optical In, it has low latency, making it suitable for watching videos and movies. However, some apps and TVs can compensate for latency differently, so your real-world experience may vary.

Like all Sonos soundbars, this one has fairly limited wireless capabilities. You can't cast via Bluetooth, and only Wi-Fi is supported. On the upside, there are a few apps like Spotify that have built-in support so that you can 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.

This soundbar doesn't have a Full HDMI In port, so it can't support 4k passthrough.

The sub connects wirelessly to the soundbar. You can also connect the setup via the Ethernet port to your home network.

The satellites connect wirelessly to the rest of the setup but need to be connected to a power outlet. They also have an Ethernet port on their back.

The interface is quite minimal. There’s one light that blinks or changes color depending on the command you input. There’s also another one that lights up whenever the soundbar’s microphone is activated.

The control scheme is straightforward. You can play/pause, raise or lower the volume, and mute the microphone with the touch-sensitive buttons.

This soundbar offers built-in support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. If you don't want the voice assistant to listen to you, you can mute the microphone using the mic mute button on the bar.

The Sonos S2 app offers tremendous control over all your Sonos products. It’s the main way to control the Sonos Arc as there’s no remote. 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.

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 such as the volume of the soundbar.