Sonos is refreshing its home theater offerings with a new high-end soundbar, the Sonos Arc. The one-piece speaker system is the company’s first Dolby Atmos-compatible device with upward-firing drivers, and features the same voice assistant support found in the Sonos Beam.
At a high level, Arc is a 45-inch-wide soundbar, which makes it notably bigger than the 35-inch Playbar. Sonos went with this size because most consumers are buying bigger and bigger TVs these days, and the extra size gives the company room to pack the Arc with two more drivers than you’ll find inside the Playbar. All told, the Arc has dedicated center, left and right channels, along with surround left and right and two upwards-firing speakers for height.
The $799 Sonos Arc provides 5.0-channel or Dolby Atmos surround sound on its own, thanks to eight woofers and three angled tweeters. That’s significantly more power than the Sonos Beam and Sonos Playbar soundbars, which have four woofers and one tweeter, and six woofers and three tweeters, respectively. More importantly, the Arc supports Dolby Atmos, and is capable of producing directional sound thanks to its angled tweeters and audio processing.
The Arc replaces the Sonos Playbar soundbar and Playbase sound base, standing as the company’s new, singular flagship home theater device, and the only Dolby Atmos-capable one. The soundbar also takes some cues from the lower-end Sonos Beam, adding a far-field microphone array to the mix for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant (one or the other, not simultaneously) voice assistant support.
The older Playbar and Playbase lacked any microphones for voice assistants, so it stands as a significant upgrade in the Arc, in addition to the extra woofers and Dolby Atmos compatibility. The microphone also supports room calibration with an iOS device through Sonos’ Trueplay feature, seen previously on the Sonos Move speaker.
As a Sonos speaker system, the Arc can be incorporated into any Sonos multi-room sound system, and can work alongside the Sonos One and other Sonos speakers. It can also be paired with two Sonos One speakers for use as physical rear surround satellites and/or the Sonos Sub subwoofer. The Arc supports HDMI ARC and eARC connectivity, and also works with Apple AirPlay 2 for wireless media streaming from your iOS device.
Sonos has long resisted the inclusion of Atmos or other newer surround sound technologies, but said that the Arc included them in line with the proliferation of Dolby’s technology on streaming services, and the accessibility of films and TV with Atmos sound. Some 25 streaming services now support the technology and Sonos’s software has been updated to support the higher quality audio.
