Budget soundbars that cost between $100 and $200 make bad TV speakers sound better by adding basic audio enhancements. However, they are still limited by cheap drivers, low processing power and simple audio architectures that make sound louder without actually improving quality. Premium soundbars like the Sonos Arc Ultra cost more because they use acoustic engineering that rivals dedicated home theater systems, and they have advanced driver arrays, proprietary technologies like Sound Motion that change the way speakers work, and processing that can make real spatial audio instead of just fake effects.
Right now, the Sonos Arc Ultra is on sale for $879 on Amazon on Black Friday, down from $1,099 and it is a record-low 20% discount that makes Sonos’s flagship soundbar available at prices close to those of mid-range options that don’t perform as well. The 9.1.4 channel Dolby Atmos makes soundscapes that sound like they’re coming from above, beside and behind you. No matter what the marketing says, budget bars can’t do this.
Sound Motion Technology
The proprietary Sound Motion transducers use new architecture to move air more efficiently in much smaller sizes, getting rid of the need for traditional cone-based speaker design. This new technology makes it possible to fit more powerful drivers into slim soundbar profiles without the big boxes that physics usually requires for good bass reproduction. The end result is a small unit that sits quietly under TVs and fills the room with sound, unlike bulky alternatives that need their own furniture to be placed in front of them.
The 9.1.4 channel setup with 14 carefully placed drivers makes real overhead sound effects that put helicopters, rain, and other sounds above the listener instead of just pretending to do so with psychoacoustic tricks. Dolby Atmos content mixed for height channels shows details and immersion that stereo soundbars can’t reproduce. This changes action scenes, nature documentaries, and atmospheric thrillers by using directional audio that matches what you see. The spatial accuracy lets you hear exactly where sounds are coming from in three-dimensional space, as opposed to the vague left-center-right positioning that flat soundbars give you.
AI-powered Speech Enhancement looks at conversations in real time to make voices clearer without making everything sound fake or compressed, like basic “voice mode” settings on cheap soundbars. The processing finds the frequencies of human voices and boosts them while leaving music and effects alone. This keeps the audio balanced instead of making everything sound like talk radio. This is very helpful during movies when mumbled dialogue or strong accents make sense without needing subtitles or having to change the volume all the time.
The Sonos app uses Trueplay room calibration to look at the acoustics of your room and find the best EQ settings for it by measuring how sound bounces off of walls, furniture, and other surfaces. Trueplay will record sound from different places while you walk around with your phone. Then, you’ll see how automatic adjustments fix problems in the room that would make static settings sound bad. To keep the sound from being too harsh, hard-surfaced rooms get treble reduction. To make up for this, carpeted rooms get boosts. This makes sure that the sound is always the best it can be, no matter what kind of interior design choices you make that affect acoustics.
The HDMI eARC connection lets you listen to lossless audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, which streaming services compress into lossy formats. This means you can hear the full quality of Blu-ray collections or high-bitrate streaming sources. The single cable makes setup easier than optical connections with limited bandwidth, and the fact that it works with TV remotes means you don’t have to learn new controls or deal with multiple remotes, which can make setting up a budget soundbar more difficult.
Adding a Sonos Sub for deep bass and Era 300 rear speakers for true surround sound makes systems that are as good as home theater systems that cost $5,000 or more, but are much cheaper and easier to set up. You can start with just the Arc Ultra and then add more pieces as your budget allows, instead of having to buy the whole system all at once. Because the components connect wirelessly, you don’t have to run speaker wires across rooms, which makes installing traditional surround systems a nightmare.
The soundbar is more than just a TV sound enhancer because it can stream music over WiFi, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, and Spotify Connect. The sound quality when playing music is as good as that of dedicated wireless speakers, which makes systems that combine TV sound and music into one platform. With multi-room audio, you can add Sonos speakers to different rooms in your home so that they all play the same thing or you can control each room separately.
The sleek design, with clean lines, high-quality materials, and little branding, fits in with entertainment centers instead of standing out with loud colors. The slim design fits under most wall-mounted TVs without blocking the screen or looking out of place. It also works well on a tabletop with built-in feet.
At $879, the lowest price ever for Black Friday, Sonos’s flagship soundbar with real 9.1.4 Dolby Atmos, Sound Motion technology, and AI-powered dialogue enhancement is hundreds of dollars cheaper than when it first came out, and it sounds better than any other budget option. The combination of spatial audio, room calibration, an expandable ecosystem, and music streaming at 20% off retail price makes this a great deal. This deal makes Sonos engineering available at prices that have never been seen before, so you can get home theater audio that justifies its high price through actual performance instead of just specs.
