Sonos Arc Ultra review: Best sound bars we’ve heard at its price point.

Sonos announced the expansion of their wireless home speakers offerings with the addition of the Arc Ultra sound bar and Sub 4 subwoofer. I have had the opportunity to spend the past few weeks listening to music, as well as watching movies and TV shows on the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 combination, and we daresay that these are Sonos’ best yet. However, before you spring for the purchase, there are a couple of things to consider, especially if you are already invested in the Sonos ecosystem like me.

In my case, I already have the original Sonos Arc and Sub 3 combination, paired with two Sonos One SL speakers as surrounds. How much better of an experience should and can I expect from the new sound bar and subwoofer, and more importantly, is it worth upgrading from the “older” Arc to the newer Arc Ultra?

From a pricing standpoint, both the Arc and Arc Ultra are positioned as premium soundbar offerings, and while the newer model has newer features befitting its status as Sonos’ flagship soundbar, the older Arc continues to be sold alongside, instead of being discontinued.

This makes things tricky because the Arc was and still is an excellent sound bar. Launched sometime in 2020, the original Arc goes for as low as Ksh 180,820, while the Arc Ultra is Ksh 245,445. For an additional Ksh 64,625, what do you get?

Design

At first glance, it appears that both soundbars look very much alike. In fact, the Arc Ultra does not really depart from the visual language of the original Arc, with Sonos’ signature minimalist aesthetics and a hard grille on the outside.

There are a couple of slight differences, however, the first being that the touch controls on the Arc are now placed on what we can only dub a ledge at the rear of the Arc Ultra. Buttons to play, pause and skip tracks are placed in the centre of the ledge, while the touch volume controls have been moved to the far right.

In addition, the Arc Ultra’s dimensions are a little different. It’s about 4cm wider but 1.2cm shorter, which makes it a better fit for setups where the sound bar sits directly under the TV. Of course, it must be pointed out that the Arc Ultra will not perform its best if there is obstruction from above, as this will impact the sound coming from the top side of the sound bar.

An important new addition to the Arc Ultra is Bluetooth connectivity. The odd thing is that Sonos places the button to activate Bluetooth pairing mode on the back. If your Arc Ultra is wall-mounted, getting to the button can be a pain. Similarly, the switch that turns off the voice control microphones on the Arc Ultra is also placed at the back. This is turned on by default, so users will need to remember to turn it off if they are concerned about the Arc Ultra listening in on conversations.

One of the major complaints of the Arc Ultra’s predecessor was that it had just one HDMI eARC port. Sadly, the Arc Ultra doesn’t improve on that and continues to have just one HDMI eARC port with no passthrough. This can be tricky for users with multiple video sources and TVs that don’t have sufficient HDMI ports. If it’s any consolation, the wall mount holes are in the exact same spot as the Arc, so owners upgrading can easily wall mount their Arc Ultras without fuss.

Features

The biggest change that the Arc Ultra brings to the table is in its built-in speaker arrangement. The Arc Ultra comes with 14 speaker drivers in a 9.1.4 channel configuration. In comparison, the original Arc only comes with a 5.0.2 setup. The woofer in the Arc Ultra is what Sonos calls a “Sound Motion” woofer, which lets Sonos deliver better bass performance from a smaller speaker. While both sound bars support Dolby Atoms audio, the additional drivers on the Arc Ultra provide better sound overall. Speaking of which, Dolby Atoms remains the only spatial audio format that Sonos supports. The Arc Ultra still does not support DTS.

Sonos continues to not provide a standalone remote control with the Arc Ultra. However, owners can still control and interact with the Arc Ultra using their own TV remote control or the Sonos app. The Arc Ultra also supports Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can control it with voice commands as well.

Simple and quick setup is something we’ve come to expect from Sonos, and in the case of the Arc Ultra and the Sub 4 that were sent for review, both were good to go from unboxing, powering up to connecting to the Sonos App in about 20 minutes total. This included the time it took to optimize the setup using Sonos’ Trueplay room-tuning feature.

Interestingly, Sonos now has a new express version of True play, which uses the Arc Ultra’s own mic array to assess the room using a series of what my kids now call the pew-pew-pew tones. True play optimization done this way is considerably quicker, sounds just as good, and does not require me to walk around the room waving my phone around looking like a complete doofus. Additionally, True play is also finally available on Android devices.

As mentioned above, Sonos adds Bluetooth connectivity to the Arc Ultra. This makes Bluetooth a standard feature on Sonos’ latest, including the Era 100 and Era 300 speakers. This makes it easier to use the Arc Ultra to play music from your devices. With Bluetooth connectivity, you can easily play music from your phones, tablets, and even Bluetooth-enabled sources like CD and record players. The Arc Ultra also supports Airplays and Spotify Connect.

The Arc Ultra also works with the audio-swap feature of Sonos’ new Ace wireless headphones. This lets you conveniently transfer audio from the Arc Ultra to the Ace headphones with a press of a button.

Performance

Even in the limited confines of my living room, the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 combo sounded excellent. I was particularly impressed with its balanced and powerful sound, and clear speech sound.

To properly evaluate the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 speakers, I opted not to use my existing pair of One SL rear speakers. Even without them, the Arc Ultra and Sub 4 performed remarkably and had convincing and powerful spatial sound representation. You could clearly make out sounds coming from all around you. Speech Enhancement feature was another standout feature and is particularly useful when you have to watch movies with the volume turned down in the later hours of the night.

To be sure, the original Arc is no slouch by any means, but the Arc Ultra is a clear improvement in every way possible. Throwing in a set of surrounds, say a pair of the newer Era 300s, would no doubt improve its performance by another level.

I’m more of a casual music listener, relying mostly on Spotify as my main provider of tunes. Listening to music on my older Arc was merely average, but the Arc Ultra made me really take notice of what was playing. Vocals were noticeably crisper and the bass too was appreciably more forceful, clean, and precise. The overall delivery was energetic yet balanced – a tough act to accomplish.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that if the Arc Ultra is on your shortlist, you should also consider adding the Sub 4 into the mix. Adding an additional subwoofer is a definite improvement to overall low-frequency performance and depending on your living room or home theatre design, you might even want to add in a second Sub 4 for an even more potent low-frequency kick.

This leads me nicely to buying advice. I think there are two types of buyers to address: existing owners of the Sonos Arc, and those who are new to Sonos.

The Arc Ultra is a mostly great soundbar, even if it has some glaring shortcomings. To start, there’s only a single HDMI port and it doesn’t support DTS, but otherwise, it has almost everything else you need. Crucially, it sounds fantastic and it’s extremely easy to set up and get going. For me, the convenience is worth a great deal.

Existing owners of the older Sonos Arc will have to consider carefully if the Arc Ultra is worth the upgrade. Though the newer Arc Ultra is unquestionably the better-performing sound bar, the older Arc is still a mighty competent thing and it’s by no means bad or even outdated just because the Arc Ultra exists. I think a lot will depend on how much you can get for your Arc on the second-hand market. And that probably won’t be helped by the fact that Sonos appears to have lowered the price of the Arc to Ksh 174,458.

At the end of the day, there’s plenty to like about the Arc Ultra. It sounds magnificent, it’s easy to set up and use, and it also looks sleek enough that it’ll fit into most living rooms nicely. It’s not cheap, but I think those who can afford it will find that it’s money very well spent.

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