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.

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 grill 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” 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 great. While the bar is entirely made of solid plastic, the subwoofer and satellites add even more to its premium feeling 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 great overall stereo frequency response. Its sound profile is well-balanced and suitable for most audio content right out-of-the-box. It has a room correction feature on iOS devices that adjusts its audio reproduction based on the room it’s in. It also has some customization options that let you control the bass and treble ranges, on top of the subwoofer level, for you to find the best sound for your needs.

Unfortunately, our current test bench doesn’t accurately reflect this and seems to penalize this specific setup too harshly. While we know our measurements are accurate for this soundbar, the way our website analyses the data might not be optimal. For example, our test bench gives substantial weight to the Low-Frequency Extension (LFE) measurements but doesn't take into consideration the low-bass energy that it has. This results in a poor score, as it's only looking at one data point rather than acknowledging the soundbar's ability to reproduce lower frequencies, even if it's under our target curve by over 3dB. Note that we’re aware of this issue and will try to fix it in an upcoming methodology update.

There’s also the fact that our scoring system is based on a set target curve. To investigate this issue, we optimized the subwoofer level - not the Bass EQ - to +9 to make it better suit our target, which results in a much better score. Comparably, we decreased the subwoofer level of the often-compared Samsung HW-Q90R to -3 to see the impact on its score, which turned out to be a lot less significant. To learn more about our testing procedure for this soundbar and our thought process for this review, check out this discussion thread.

Overall, according to our own subjective opinion, the Sonos Arc sounds well-balanced and has many tools for you to make it sound the way you want, even if our scoring doesn’t reflect it. It’s one of the most neutral soundbars we’ve heard in our testing room.

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.

Update 09/21/2020: We've discovered a value input bug that would cause the Dynamics box results to be slightly off. All soundbars reviewed since January 30th, 2020 have been updated.

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. There are noticeable thumping and compression artifacts .

THD performance is very good. There isn’t much harmonic distortion at a typical listening volume level. There’s a small jump in THD when pushed to its max volume, but you shouldn’t hear any noticeable distortion, especially not with real-life content.

The Sonos Arc's center performance is very good. This setup has a dedicated center channel that reproduces accurate dialogue and vocals. However, just like the stereo frequency response, our test results show a lack of bass, but sounds much better than it scores. However, since there aren't many bass frequencies played by this speaker, it shouldn’t be too noticeable with real-life content.

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 rear 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 Atmos performance of the full setup is okay. The full setup’s up-firing speakers on both the bar and the rear satellites bounce the sound on the ceiling, and back to the listener, giving the impression of height. While this is well-done with the Sonos Arc, it isn’t as immersive as dedicated down-firing speakers with typical home theater setups.

The Sonos Arc full setup has plenty of sound enhancement features. It has a 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, 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. It also comes with an HDMI to Optical adapter.

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.

The Sonos Arc doesn’t have a Full HDMI In port.

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.

Like all Sonos soundbars, this one has fairly limited wireless capabilities. You can 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.

There's no Full HDMI In port on this soundbar.

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.

The Sonos Arc doesn’t come with a remote.

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.