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.
