Sonos Arc review (April 2022): Watching television has never sounded so good

Sonos Arc is a phenomenal soundbar that brings bombastic Dolby Atmos sound to any television. Not only that, but it doubles up as a way to wirelessly beam your favourite albums, radio stations, and podcasts with any other Sonos speakers around the house. Coupled with Alexa and Google Assistant, Sonos Arc is the complete package. If you can stomach the high price tag, this is a game-changing bit of audio kit from Sonos. Find the latest Sonos Arc prices, our definitive verdict, and review below…

Sonos Arc review: Price and Availability

Sonos Arc launched on June 10, 2020 and can be found in most high street stores and online retailers. Find the latest UK prices for the Sonos Arc below…

Sonos Arc review

Sonos already makes some seriously good telly-boosting speakers, like the brilliant Sonos Beam soundbar and Playbar, which will now be replaced by the Arc in the current Sonos lineup. But the Sonos Arc takes things to another level and the smile this clever speaker can put on your face is worth every penny of its £799 price tag. From the simple set-up to the rich audio, there’s really very little not to love about the Arc. The genius of the latest Sonos speaker is there from the minute you start the set-up process.

If you already have any Sonos kit in your home then all you have to do is plug in the Arc and add it to your current collection of speakers via the smartphone app. After that, you’ll be able to play music from the Arc with – or without – any of your existing speakers joining in. But if you don’t have any Sonos gear, it will take slightly longer as you’ll need to download the latest Sonos app then set-up an account but it’s all very straightforward.

The Sonos Arc speaker can be plugged straight into any Smart TV via an HDMI Arc port or optical cable …after that, it’s just a question of following the on-screen instructions.

The only thing that does take a little patience is the Trueplay setting, which requires you to move around the room with your smartphone in hand whilst the speaker belts out an irritating piece of audio. However, it’s well worth a few minutes of your time as it optimises the Arc for your home and should mean the audio sounds pitch-perfect. It’s worth noting that Trueplay is only available if you own an iPhone, so Android fans will sadly miss out on this ultimate optimisation.

Once that’s all done it’s time to sit back relax and let the Sonos Arc show what it’s made of. And boy, it sounds good.

This speaker includes 11 high-performance drivers which have all been tuned by Oscar award-winning mixing engineers. There’s no question that the audio is impressive with the speaker literally making our floor shake as we put it to the test watching the final battle sequence in Avengers End Game.

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The boom of the bass could rattle the fillings out of your teeth and, with the hidden speakers pointing in all directions, you get a surround sound experience without needing to spend anything extra.

What’s also so great about the Arc is the clarity it produces between all the different aspects of what’s displayed on the screen. For example, during the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Disney+, your body will be shaken by the bass-heavy explosions yet you can still hear each note of the music score and every word the actors say. And that’s all without the optional standalone subwoofer that Sonos sells to expand its home audio set-ups.

It makes watching movies so much more enjoyable as there’s such distinction between every sound and you’ll never find yourself rewinding to hear what someone has just said.

To help the Arc perform this audio feat is some clever software tuning which allows it to adjust its sound profile based on the home theatre set-up and what’s playing on the screen, whether the input is stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, or Dolby Atmos.

Other nice extras include Speech Enhancement to further clarify vocals and Night Sound which tempers things such as loud explosions so you won’t annoy the neighbours during a late evening movie binge.

Owners also get all the usual smart features with instant access to Alexa and Google’s Assistant both built-in. You can also control the audio with your TV remote and iPad, iPhone and Mac owners can beam content straight to the speaker using AirPlay 2. As you may have noticed from the pictures, Sonos has changed the design somewhat with Arc getting a sleeker but much longer design. This is to fit in with the growing popularity of bigger TVs.

We tested the Arc with a 55-inch Samsung Smart TV and the Sonos Arc fit perfectly in front of the screen. That said, the Sonos Arc’s design might not suit all homes and you certainly can’t stand your television on top of it, like you could with the Playbase that it has replaced in the lineup. It’s worth checking your media unit and furnishings with a tape measure before placing your order as Sonos Arc is very big and might dominate the room.

In our time with the Sonos Arc, we’ve found so much to love about this Dolby Atmos-equipped soundbar, but all of that technology does come at a very high price. This speaker will set you back a whopping £799, which is more than most people want to spend on their TVs.

That price looks even more expensive when you consider that Sonos is currently selling its smaller Sonos Beam and two Sonos Ones for £778 – that’s more speakers for less money. And these can double-up as a way to wirelessly beam audio around your home, which will be better with three speakers in the living room compared to a single soundbar.

There is another thing to be aware of – in order to get the best experience the Arc needs to plug straight into your HDMI ARC port, something that select older TVs don’t include this port. That could mean you end up having to buy a new television after you’ve just spent £800 on this expensive speaker. Yikes.