I’ll say this upfront: the Sonos Arc Ultra is the first soundbar I’ve used that actually made me forget I was listening to a soundbar. Not because it tricked me into thinking I had speakers in my ceiling, but because it pulled me into movies and music without me overthinking where the sound was coming from.
The Arc Ultra is Sonos doing what Sonos does best: making tech that feels like furniture. It’s long at 46 inches, but the curves, matte finish and wrap-around grille give it the kind of elegance that blends into a living room. It looks equally good under a 65-inch OLED or mounted cleanly to the wall, and unless your setup is really compact, it doesn’t feel oversized.
On paper, Sonos has gone from 11 drivers in the original Arc to 14 drivers in the Ultra, laid out for a 9.1.4 Dolby Atmos configuration. That means you’re getting seven tweeters, six midrange woofers, and one of their new “Sound Motion” compact woofers that’s supposed to displace more air than its size suggests.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Alone, the Sonos Arc Ultra produces bass that the old Arc could never dream of. There’s actual weight to explosions and music has a satisfying fullness around the upper bass (think 250 Hz and up). Watching the sandworm scenes or the ornithopter take-off sequences in Dune actually brought about the layered atmosphere in the foreground, and even the thudding impacts of Bane’s underground sewer fight in The Dark Knight Rises felt more atmospheric.
Switching to music tends to expose a soundbar’s limits faster than movies. But the Arc Ultra shows off what Sonos has been building toward.
With Dream Theater’s Pull Me Under, the sheer density of the mix didn’t collapse into a wall of noise. Guitars, keys and drums all had their own space and you could follow each layer without it smearing together, filling the room with the kind of warmth you only get when a system handles separation properly.
Adele’s Hello showed off the Arc Ultra’s vocal clarity. Her voice came through forward and intimate, slightly bright at times, but never in that fatiguing way that makes you dial the volume down.
For bass sharpness, Boom by Tiesto was a great test. The bassline had the right amount of snap and funk, punchy enough to get your foot tapping but restrained enough not to bleed into the mids.
Metal is usually brutal on soundbars, but Selkies from Between the Buried and Me was surprisingly listenable. The Arc Ultra managed to keep the cymbals crisp, the guitars heavy, and the bass grounded, without letting the whole thing turn into distortion soup.
Detail retrieval really stood out with Pink Floyd’s Shine On and Björk’s Hunter. Instruments floated with precision across the soundstage. But not everything was perfect. The Sonos Arc Ultra doesn’t give you the “shake the room, feel it in your ribcage” bass. Push its bass slider to max, and instead of earth-shattering lows, you just end up with boomy mids. Which is where the Sub 4 enters the picture.
The Sub 4 looks like the Sonos subwoofer we’ve known for years: a clean, sculptural rectangle with that iconic cut-out in the middle. It now comes in a matte finish, and you can stand it up, lay it flat, or hide it under a couch. It’s not a radical redesign, but under the hood, it’s been upgraded with more processing power, new Wi-Fi radios, and dual elliptical 5×8-inch woofers that face inward to cancel out distortion.
Once you pair it with the Arc Ultra, you immediately get that missing low-end heft. The sub-bass effects in the opening flight test scene in Top Gun: Maverick felt present and physical, and the gunfire in The Matrix lobby scene was punchy and percussive. The best part is that you can dial the Sub’s output to your taste for more rumble.
Can you live without the Sub 4? Yes, the Arc Ultra alone is already miles ahead of TV speakers and even many standalone soundbars. But if you’re spending nearly Rs 1 lakh on the Arc Ultra (Rs 99,999), chances are you want the full cinematic punch. And the Sub 4 (Rs 84,999) is the piece of the puzzle that completes that picture.
This isn’t just about movies. The Arc Ultra has little touches that make it genuinely useful in daily use. The Speech Enhancement now has three levels, which is brilliant for late-night Netflix binges when you don’t want to ride the volume button every time an explosion follows a whisper.
There’s also a Night Mode, which tamps down sudden loud peaks so you don’t wake the house. It also supports voice assistants like Alexa, Siri or Sonos Voice, letting you skip greasy-finger volume adjustments while cooking. And Sonos’ Trueplay tuning actually works without feeling like you’re doing a science experiment.
Controls are split: touch-sensitive play/pause/skip buttons sit neatly on top, while the mic mute and pairing buttons are tucked away at the back. This is slightly annoying if wall-mounted, but not a deal-breaker. The connectivity options are simple: one HDMI eARC port, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. That’s it. No extra HDMI inputs, no optical, but routing all sources through your TV works fine for most setups.
Sonos has had a reputation for buggy app updates lately. But during my use, the setup was quick, Trueplay calibration was painless, and the app didn’t crash once.
The Sonos Arc Ultra and Sub 4 are expensive, no two ways around it. Together, they’ll set you back close to Rs 1.85 lakh. For that money, you could build a traditional AV receiver setup with proper rear channels. But that would mean wires, multiple boxes, and the constant tweaking that comes with it.
What Sonos is selling here is simplicity with style. A soundbar that gets 90% of the way to a home theatre without clutter, and a subwoofer that fills in the last 10%. Movies sound immersive, music feels clean and alive, and the design slips into your living room without screaming it’s an “audiophile toy.”
So if you’re already in the Sonos ecosystem, love plug-and-play ease, and don’t mind paying for premium design, this combo makes sense. But if you’re someone who wants absolute control, tinkering or true discrete surround, your money is probably better spent elsewhere.
For me, the Arc Ultra is the best “living room friendly” soundbar I’ve heard. Add the Sub 4, and you get the rumbles and drama that make movies unforgettable. It’s not cheap, but it’s the kind of setup that feels less like buying a gadget and more like upgrading your whole space.
