Sonos Arc Ultra review: is this the new gold standard for soundbars?
Sonos Arc Ultra review: is this the new gold standard for soundbars?
Share:
The Sonos Arc is dead. Long live the Sonos Arc Ultra, a technologically advanced soundbar that aims to be the pinnacle of home cinema. Copy link. twitter. facebook. whatsapp. Price: £999, Sonos. Also available for £999 at Amazon, John Lewis, and Currys. Our rating: 9 out of 10.
We like:. We don’t like:. The Sonos Arc soundbar was launched to universal acclaim back in 2020. Since then the company has introduced a second generation of its midrange soundbar, the Beam, as well as a budget option called the Ray. But other than regular firmware updates, the Arc has remained entirely unchanged, until now.
It’s a tribute to the essential rightness of the Arc Gen 1 that it has remained the de facto premium soundbar recommendation for so long. With more recent competitors (such as Sony’s Bravia Theatre Bar 9 and Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus) jostling for plaudits, however, it clearly was high time the Arc Gen 1 had a refresh.
In truth, the new Sonos Arc Ultra we’re testing here probably would have arrived much earlier, had it not been for the ongoing damage to its reputation from the well-documented ‘Recycle Mode’ farce of 2019 in which customer’s older Sonos products were ‘bricked’ as part of a trade-up programme. Sonos then replaced its excellent app with a buggy, barely functional effort, and initially blamed its user base for failing to share its ‘vision’.
The company says it’s confident that it has now sorted most of the app-related issues, but more on that later. First, let’s take a closer look at the new kid on the block… does the new Sonos Arc Ultra have what it takes to rescue its maker’s battered reputation?.
