2024 has been a tough year for Sonos. The company’s potentially triumphant entry into the crowded headphone market was dashed by a disastrous app redesign. Because of the poor software update, the company decided to delay products that were ready to ship to give itself more time to get back on track. Consumer trust eroded, and those who already owned Sonos gear were living in a constant cycle of disappointment.
Thanks to rumors, we already knew that one of the pending product releases was the Arc Ultra ($999). A few weeks ago, the company decided not to wait any longer to reveal it.
While the design is mostly unchanged from the Arc that debuted in 2020, there are several key changes inside that make it a better all-in-one solution for people who don’t want to add more speakers to their living room setup. Sonos is promising better bass performance thanks to the new speaker technology debuting in the Arc Ultra, but how good can it be?
Design
The refined design of the original Arc was much better than the Playbar, and much better than Sonos’ compact Beam soundbar. Honestly, in my opinion, its aesthetic is very timeless, and it’s a look that will hold up well for years to come. Still, it makes sense that Sonos would retain the design for the Arc Ultra, only making some minor changes to the exterior.
The Arc Ultra still comes in both black and white options, allowing you to choose what will look best in your living room or home theater. Sonos has updated the controls by moving them to a bar at the top of the back to mirror the controls available on the new Era 100 and Era 300 speakers. There’s a volume slider on the right, with play/pause and skip controls in the middle. On the left, Sonos gives you a microphone control so you can mute the built-in mic if needed.
And that’s all you can see in terms of design changes. The Arc Ultra is slightly shorter than the Arc in terms of height and it’s slightly wider than its predecessor. Neither of these make a huge difference and they won’t change much in the way you place the speaker under your TV.
Inside, Sonos has re-engineered the Arc Ultra to improve audio performance. The biggest part of this overhaul is the new Sound Motion woofer that enables better bass performance than adding a standalone wireless sub.
The achievement here, thanks to the acquisition of audio company Mehut, is that the new component lies flat, taking up less space than a traditional cone-shaped woofer. The Sound Motion driver also helps deliver increased clarity and depth, in addition to doubling the bass output of the original Arc.
During the process of adding the Sound Motion woofer, Sonos redesigned the entire acoustic architecture of the Arc Ultra. The soundbar now has three more drivers than the Arc, a list that includes seven tweeters (two of which are upfiring), six mid-range drivers (midwoofers, as Sonos calls them) and the aforementioned woofers, for a total of 14. The company also packs in 15 class-D digital amplifiers along with far-field mics for tuning and voice control.
There’s still just one HDMI (eARC) port, which allows most modern TVs to control the soundbar’s volume and mute options from your TV remote. Furthermore, the Arc Ultra is compatible with Wi-Fi 6 and the recently added Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity allows you to stream from any device. And of course, AirPlay 2 is still on the spec sheet. One last thing I’d like to mention here is that the Arc Ultra doesn’t come with an optical adapter if you prefer that connection. The company will sell you one for $25.
Software and features
Since the Arc Ultra is a Sonos product, it has many of the core features that are similar to those on the company’s other devices. You can use the soundbar as part of a multiroom setup and Trueplay tuning is here to adjust the audio to the room’s acoustics. There’s still an adjustable EQ with options for bass, treble and loudness and a Night Sound mode makes things less banging when someone in your house is trying to work or sleep.
While Trueplay will give you the best sound customisation for the sound characteristics of your living room, Sonos is enabling a Quick Tune feature for the first time on the Arc Ultra. Here, the soundbar will provide a certain degree of correction using its internal mic as opposed to your phone. The company says it wanted to give people some quicker options than Trueplay, although the full tuning process doesn’t take too long.
Speech enhancement has been a useful feature on Sonos soundbars for a while, giving you the ability to improve dialogue clarity as needed. Before now, this was an all-or-nothing feature, but on the Arc Ultra, the company introduced three levels of Speech Boost to give you more options to suit your needs.