Sonos a r c

£799

The Arc is more than just a Dolby Atmos soundbar. It’s also a wireless speaker with access to practically every music streaming service, and it can be combined with other Sonos speakers in order to create a more complete surround sound arrangement or a multi-room system. Sonos smarts and Dolby Atmos? No wonder it was product of the year at 2020’s What Hi-Fi? Awards, and a Best Buy in its category in 2021. The Arc has already set the benchmark at its price.

First thing to consider though is that the Arc is designed to partner bigger TVs. At 114cm, it is wider than a typical modern 49in TV and so is best partnered with a set of at least 55in. The curvy design masks its dimensions and makes it look svelte, but its 8.5cm height is not inconsiderable.

The Arc’s Dolby Atmos soundfield is generated by 11 Class D digital amplifiers that power 11 custom drivers – eight elliptical woofers and three silk-domed tweeters, two of which fire diagonally into the room. Sonos refers to the Arc’s arrangement as 5.0.2, which clearly doesn’t add up to 11 but makes more sense if you think of it as using its 11 drivers to attempt to replicate the soundfield of a five-channel surround sound system with no subwoofer and two height speakers. That ‘0’ can be turned into a ‘1’ via the addition of a sub, and other Sonos speakers can be used as dedicated surrounds.

The Arc uses its array of speakers to bounce sound off your walls and ceiling to create a 3D audio effect, and the soundfield is tailored to your room using Sonos’s Trueplay technology. The ’bar outputs a series of test sounds that are measured by your iOS device, first from the listening position and then from around the room.

SERIOUS ATMOS

The Arc runs exclusively on Sonos’s latest S2 platform, and it’s worth remembering that some older Sonos devices are incompatible with the latest software. For playing music, the device appears as a playback device in the Spotify and Tidal phone apps, and AirPlay 2 allows for almost any audio to be sent to it from an iOS device. It can also be controlled via Alexa or Google Assistant, with the four far-field microphones able to pick up your commands, even when music or a movie is blasting out. The Arc can also talk to your TV using HDMI-CEC: the Arc will turn on and switch to TV audio when you turn on your set, you can control the Arc’s volume using your TV’s remote, and turn your TV on by aiming your voice at the Arc. Even the majority of soundbars with upward-f