Sonos Arc Review: A Simply Remarkable Soundbar

Sonos is back and this time it brings us the Arc - its first soundbar with support for Dolby Atmos. The device doesn’t come cheap so if you are having an eye for it, read our Sonos Arc review to see if the soundbar is the one for you.

Setup And Operation

The setup process is simple. Place the soundbar in front of your TV, plug in the HDMI cable, and power cord. The HDMI port is usually on the back of the TV and is labeled eARC or ARC.

While the Arc is one of the best Sonos soundbars 2020, this ARC/eARC connection is its rare downfall but more on that later.

Now launch the Sonos app on your smartphone and follow the instruction. It should take you under five minutes to complete the process.

The True Play tuning is there to help you optimize the Arc to fit your particular room. All you have to do is to wave your iPad or iPhone about. Please bear in mind that this cool feature is available for Apple devices only because of the variances of microphone quality on Android smartphones.

Using the soundbar is just as simple. If you want to listen to music, open the Sonos app, which has support for almost all music streaming services you can think of, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

Watching TV is even more straightforward. Turn on the TV like usual and the soundbar will switch on.

Users can link multiple soundbars together if they like to and the Arc can work with a sub and surround speakers.

TV And Movies

The next on our Sonos Arc review is how the soundbar performs when it plays movies.

The Arc is the first Sonos’s product to support Dolby Atmos surround sounds. This means if the movie you are watching features a flying helicopter, you will feel like the sounds come from above, not from the sides of you. The soundbar also has support for the old stereo and Dolby Digital.

The effect created by Dolby Atmos is dramatic, especially for blockbusters, documentaries, and football.

Compared to others like it – the category of one-box soundbar, the Arc does a great job of creating an enveloping soundstage. The height production and bass are good and the quality isn’t far off from a 7-speaker surround setup.

Readers of our Sonos Arc review who want value for money won’t want to miss this soundbar as its dialogue clarity is truly impressive and most of everything is crisp, full, and clear.

The Night Sound mode eases the differences between loud sounds and quiet, a handy feature when you want to make out what is going on when hearing at a lower volume.

Getting Sound

The above section introduces you to what the soundbar can do, but don’t expect too much from it if you don’t have a comparable TV to accompany the Arc. Before you decide to stretch your budget, finish our Sonos Arc review first to make a more informed decision.

No matter how terrific the Arc is, the quality of sounds will depend heavily on what you provide the soundbar with, or in other words, how good your TV at its job.

A small number of more recently-launched TVs have eARC, which is needed for the best-quality Dolby TrueHD sounds.

However, the majority of TVs have support for ARC on a minimum of one port, which limits the ability to only Dolby Digital+ with an Atmos layer added, the combination used by many popular streaming services including Disney+, Amazon, and Netflix.

ARC Problems

Earlier on our Sonos Arc review 2020, we mention the downfall of this soundbar and those like it. Let’s discuss this in detail here.

The Arc uses ARC instead of HDMI pass-through and this means the Arc suffers from the same problem that plagues every soundbar connected in this way – the lipsync issue.

The problem of pictures and sounds out of sync is difficult to solve even when many devices have audio-delaying features to compensate.

The issue stems from the fact that you are using an external device connecting to your TV rather than an integrated app and service on your TV.

Music

The majority of soundbars on the market do a decent job play TV and movie sounds but their downfall is always music. However, when doing this Sonos Arc review, we’re thrilled to learn that the Arc is fantastic where most other soundbars fall.

The sounds are rich, highly-detailed, and full-bodied. The highs are crisp, the bass is well-controlled, and mids are warm. On the off chance that you listen to a track with a really deep artificial bass line, would you notice there isn’t a sub in the room.

Overall, the soundbar can handle most genres with ease, with only a few hiccups with orchestral music.

Price

Let’s end our Sonos Arc review with the price you have to pay to get one of these soundbars.

Sonos Arc 2020 price is $799 and users have the choice to acquire the device in either white or black.

When you compare Sonos Arc vs Sonos Beam, the latter seems to have an edge with a cheaper price of $399. However, if quality of sounds is what you are looking for, you can never go wrong with an Arc.

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