Should You Upgrade to the Sonos Arc Ultra Soundbar? It’s Complicated

It sounds great. But is it $1,000-great?

Published November 20, 2024

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Updated November 22, 2024

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I’ve been a Sonos Arc owner for the better part of three years. Since I purchased it, I’ve hosted Super Bowls, big fights and countless movie nights. The soundbar isn’t paired with surrounds but it is connected to a Sonos Sub. It’s been great.

Sonos Arc Ultra comparison — The Arc Ultra (pictured) is slightly longer and slimmer than the original Arc.

For the past few weeks, however, I’ve been testing Sonos’s Arc Ultra ($999), the company’s new flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar and the longterm replacement for the four-year-old Arc (which, at the time of writing, Sonos continues to sell).

Just like with its predecessor, I’ve been impressed. However, it’s not a night-and-day difference over the original Arc. Which begs the question, who the hell should buy it?

The answer isn’t straightforward.

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New soundbar, familiar feels

If you’ve owned a Sonos Arc, the Arc Ultra will feel quite familiar. It looks almost identical and is basically the same size and shape. It’s also just as easy to use — it connects to power and your TV (via HDMI eARC) and the app walks you through the setup process and TruePlay tuning.

There are a few physical differences, of course. The Arc Ultra is slightly longer and slimmer than the Arc. The most convenient difference — and the easiest way to tell the two apart — is that Sonos gave the Arc Ultra a back control bar for the new volume slider and voice assistant button.

Unfortunately, the Arc Ultra still only has one HDMI input (needed for TV connectivity) and lacks support for DTS (Dolby Atmos is the only supported immersive audio format). Both would’ve brought standout improvements over the original Arc.

Bluetooth streaming … cool?

One thing that the Arc Ultra does have over the Arc is support for Bluetooth streaming. In fact, it’s the first Sonos soundbar with it. There’s even a new Bluetooth button on its back to initiate pairing.

While this may seem like a cool addition on paper, I’m not sure I’d ever use it since I stream most of my music over wi-fi, anyway. I’d have to be in a really strange situation to use Bluetooth audio on my soundbar — such as, playing music from a YouTube video on my phone.

So, like the addition of Bluetooth in Sonos’s Era 300 and Era 100 speakers, Bluetooth simply is not as novel as it sounds.

(While not related to Bluetooth, it’s worth noting that Arc Ultra supports Quick Tune, a TruePlay alternative for Android owners — TruePlay is still only supported for iPhones and Androids — that allows Sonos’s more recent speakers to use their own mics for room calibration.)

More drivers, better sound

The real reason to upgrade to the Arc Ultra, as far as Sonos is concerned, is its sound quality. That’s because it promises more bass with clearer dialogue than the Arc.

The Arc Ultra is the first Sonos soundbar to have a woofer integrated with “Sound Motion” — a transducer technology developed by Mayht (a company Sonos acquired in 2022). This helped Sonos shrink the woofer’s size while doubling its bass output, but it also made space for Sonos to add more drivers to the same-sized soundbar.

For example, the Arc Ultra has 14 total drivers compared to the Arc’s 11. The bulk of these additional drivers are in the Arc Ultra’s redesigned center channel. This, along with a more advanced Speech Enhancement feature, promises to make dialogue sound clearer than on the Arc. And here’s the thing, it does.

Is that alone worth upgrading from the already great-sounding Arc? I can buy it if you have hearing loss. But otherwise, let’s call it what it is: marginally improved dialogue.

A standalone upgrade

I’ve spent the last few days going back and forth between the Arc and Arc Ultra. I’ve watched, and rewatched, the same things on the two soundbars (and, yes, recalibrated TruePlay repeatedly) to see if I can tell a difference.

In short: I can.

But while the Arc Ultra sounds like a huge upgrade on paper — Sonos touts the Arc Ultra as a complete 9.1.4 system on its own compared to 5.0.2-channel Arc — I’m not sure the gulf in sound quality between the two is as vast as that.

Sure, the Arc Ultra has more punch and its midrange is crisper. This is especially noticeable when using Arc and Arc Ultra as standalone soundbars. However, the difference wasn’t as striking when I grouped them with my Sub (Gen 3), which took the bass responsibilities from the soundbars.

So, is the Arc Ultra worth it?

The Sonos Arc Ultra is a fantastic Dolby Atmos soundbar and a definite upgrade over the original Arc. But the difference between the two soundbars didn’t blow my socks off. The Arc continues to sound great, even in the shadow of the new Ultra.

If you already have Arc, an $899 soundbar that Sonos still sells, it’s difficult to recommend the $999 Arc Ultra to replace it.

In the past, I’ve heard that some people find the midrange of the Arc to be a little muddled. I’ve never felt that way but clearer dialogue is probably the Arc Ultra’s biggest flex over the Arc.

As far as who should buy the Arc Ultra, that actually seems pretty easy to me: somebody who doesn’t have the Arc and is looking for the best Dolby Atmos soundbar Sonos sells.

The Arc Ultra’s improvements in bass and midrange — and just buying a more future-proof soundbar — are worth the extra $100.

Also, for people who need to have the best-sounding home theater that Sonos offers — and money isn’t an object — well, then, the Arc Ultra seems like a no-brainer.

However, if you already have an Arc soundbar but lack a subwoofer or rear surrounds, your budget might go further elsewhere. For example, a Sub ($799) or a pair of Era 300s ($449/each) would still cost less than upgrading to the Arc Ultra.

I know where my money is going.

Sonos Arc Ultra

Specs

Drivers	Seven silk-dome tweeters, six midrange drivers, one Sound Motion woofer
Amplification	15 Class-D digital amplifiers
Connectivity	Wi-Fi, Ethernet, optical, Bluetooth