Sonos Arc

There’s a lot riding on the Sonos Arc soundbar. This is the company’s first foray into Dolby Atmos, long after most other companies have released products that support the format.

It follows criticism of the company for announcing that its new software won’t support some older Sonos products. And it also has to justify costing almost twice as much as the brilliant Beam soundbar and prove to be a worthy successor to the hugely popular Playbar – that’s a lot of pressure, even for Sonos.

But while Sonos might be late to the Atmos party, now it has arrived, will this soundbar be the heart and soul of it?

Well-proportioned partner

The Sonos Arc is specifically designed to partner bigger TVs. At 114cm, it is a bit wider than a typical modern 49in TV and proportionally best partnered with a 55in model. It’s also significantly wider than the outgoing Playbar (90cm).

The Playbar was designed to work in two orientations, depending on whether it was wall-mounted or placed on a piece of furniture, but we found it sounded better wall-mounted. The Arc is oriented the same way regardless of positioning (Sonos has an optional wall-mount for £79), and even automatically adjusts its frequency response accordingly.

Once it’s in position, most of what you can see of the Arc is a 273-degree grille that hides the array of front-mounted and up-firing