The Sonos Arc Ultra is a worthy successor to the popular Arc, with improvements in bass, dialogue, and music quality.
Sonos Arc Ultra MSRP $999.00 Score Details “The Arc Ultra improves just about every aspect of Sonos ' flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar.” Pros Cons By any measure, it’s been a lousy year for Sonos . The company’s much-anticipated entry into wireless headphones — the Sonos Ace — should have been a triumphant moment . Unfortunately, the Ace’s debut was overshadowed by the company’s botched app update, which continues to dog the company despite a slew of patches that have largely fixed the problems.
If you’re familiar with the Sonos Arc, the Arc Ultra is nearly identical. It comes in the two standard Sonos colors and its dimensions make it hard to tell the two apart at a distance. At 46.3 inches in width, the Ultra is only about two inches wider than the Arc, and yet it’s shorter, with a height of 2.9 inches instead of the original’s 3.4 inches. The Ultra is even a little shallower.
Unfortunately, the placement of the Bluetooth button is awkward. Unlike the same buttons on the Era 100, Era 300, and Move 2, which are positioned for easy reach at the top of the speaker’s rear surface, it’s nestled in the same small rear cavity that houses the HDMI and power connections, as well as the Ethernet port and physical microphone switch.
Despite the recent headaches with the Sonos app, I set up the Ultra just as quickly and painlessly as any other recent Sonos product. The app recognized the speaker almost as soon as I plugged it in. The app used to have separate tabs that let you jump between what you were listening to, what you were looking for, and a view of the Sonos speakers in your home. At first, I didn’t mind their absence, but the more I use it, the more I miss them.
OK, I’m done picking on the app. Besides, if you’re already a Sonos owner, I’m preaching to the choir.All about that bass Under the grille is a totally new driver arrangement. The Arc’s 5.1.2-channel, three-tweeter/eight-woofer/11-amp configuration has been replaced with a seven-tweeter/six-mid-woofer/13-amp combo, plus the star of the show, Sonos’ new Sound Motion dual-membrane, quad-motor, bi-amped woofer.
I’ll admit, I said something similar in my review of the original Arc, when it debuted in 2020. At the time, I think it was a fair assessment — few soundbars back then could improve on the Arc’s bass without the help of a subwoofer. In the four years since, however, soundbar bass has improved a lot — and the Ultra means that Sonos has kept pace.
Turning on Speech Enhancement will likely help those who need greater separation of voices from background sounds, but you may not like what it does to the rest of the soundtrack, especially at its highest level. This is where Sonos could benefit from a physical remote. It would be handy to quickly switch Speech Enhancement on or off without reaching for my phone.
On its own, it doesn’t replace a discrete speaker home theater system or even a multispeaker soundbar package like the Samsung HW-Q990D. For that kind of performance, you’ll need a set of Sonos Era 300 as rear speakers and a Sonos Sub. You can mitigate this a little using the EQ settings , but since this also affects the rest of the mix, it’s an imperfect solution.
Dolby Atmos Soundbars Multiroom Audio Sonos Sonos Arc Ultra Soundbars Wireless Speakers
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