now this sound bar the sonos arc has changed the way i look at sound and today i'm going to
take a look at all of the reasons why i think it is one of the best sound bars that you can buy
and holy 800 we're gonna see if it's worth it now guys i haven't been sent the soundbar
or sent any money for doing this review so you can be sure that this is just
my opinion as much as this soundbar is just
it's not perfect now guys how has the sonos arc blown my mind well look you could say i'm a bit
of a sound system virgin well well i'm not totally unexperienced and i have experienced
proper surround sound but i haven't personally had a massive high-end system so this sound bar
was a shock from at best having a sound bar that probably cost about 250 quid going to this one i
mean it's over triple the price but wow what a difference it's made and honestly up until now
i have been the kind of guy who would just put up with the built-in speakers in a tv
and from getting used to having this soundbar for a little while
that has changed so before i go into a bit more detail about what the sonos arc is i'm going to
give you a bit of a demo of it so i've managed to get myself these binaural microphone headphone
things and i'm gonna put them on and watch the tv so one of the reasons i'm using these microphone
headphones is so that you can get an idea of the virtual surround sound that's being created
by this sound bar now this sound bar isn't just a normal sound bar it's a dolby atmos soundbar that
means it's not just sound coming straight out of the sound bar this speaker's coming
at you but the speakers also aimed around the room and even up at the ceiling and what this
does it gives you an almost fake surround sound experience by bouncing the sound around the room
and if you want to learn a little bit more about that i have done a video which explains things
like audio channel numbers and dolby atmos so feel free to go and watch that one after this
this is dolby cinema
have you felt it
so yeah i am massively impressed with the sound quality of this thing
first of all all the way from high tones all the way down to the base it is really good and
i'm surprised that even without a subwoofer this is still creating a really good rumble
now for a lot of people virtual surround sound isn't enough and i get that and one of the great
things about the sonos ecosystem is that you can actually expand it with different speakers so once
you've set up the arc which is surprisingly easy to do you do need to download the sonos app and
add it to that but it walks you through the whole process and it is very very simple now once this
is set up and plugged into your tvs hdmi e-arc port you can start adding other sonos speakers
like the sonos sub and you can also get some of their smaller one sls to go around the room and
work as sort of rear speakers now ultimately i have nowhere near enough money to do that
just yet but hopefully i will be able to share that experience with you as i slowly grow
that ecosystem now one of the benefits of this is that it's an entirely wireless surround sound
experience so you can just have all these speakers plugged in in different corners of the room and
it's all going to come together without the need of wiring in audio cables it's so easy and so easy
and you can control it all through the sonos app but we're not here to talk
about all of the other speakers we're here to talk about the ark the 800 pound or 800
arc so let's break down some of the facts it comes in two colors you can get a black one or you can
get a white one it weighs over six kilograms so it's fairly heavy but you don't actually have to
be carrying around a lot oh and you can also wall mount it on your wall if you're wall mounting your
tv it's a fairly easy little stand that just goes straight on the wall and the sound bar just sort
of hooks onto it really really easy we have only two ports on it there's a hdmi port and there's
a power port no hdmi passthrough which for some people is going to be a massive letdown and that's
something that they probably could have improved now thomas do give all the spiel how about people
have calibrated it and you got professionals in to check that it's right but i mean the sound is
really good the arc has 11 amplifiers three angled tweeters and eight elliptical mid woofers now they
do everything from creating clear precise vocals all the way to giving you deep impressive bass
now in the sonos app you can go in into the eq and change everything so if it's a bit too bassy for
you or not quite enough you can go in and have a little fiddle and get it exactly as you want it
now if you're the type of person who struggles in movies to make out what people are saying
you can go into the app as well and turn on vocal enhancement and it does that very
well without sacrificing the quality of the sound that is also a night mode that you can switch on
to stop it being too intense for you maybe if you have little people upstairs
or angry neighbors now it does support pretty much all audio formats like dts dolby digital
the main one being dolby atmos which in my opinion is probably the best one that you can get
now a few things you do have to be aware of you do need wi-fi and create a sonos account to get
this thing properly set up so if you don't want to do that then maybe this might not be one for
you now what's my experience been with it well ultimately since i started using it i haven't
really had to change much in the settings i did go around the room and do the mapping that you can do
from the app and that's where it tunes the speaker depending on what room you're in but other than
that i think the eq's been fine just out of the box so i haven't really had to play with that at
all and ultimately as just a standalone soundbar with nothing else no subwoofer no rear speakers
or anything it is absolutely phenomenal if you're looking at leveling up your sound
and you want something that's amazing and you just don't quite want to go for the full surround sound
or you can't quite get there yet this is a pretty good compromise now we do also have some features
smart wise you can use the arc as an airplay speaker so you can put music on your phone
straight to it through the wi-fi you can also do it through the sonos app as well
is enabled for alexa i do find it's not really working to its best potential is finding it
difficult to set up and i think a lot of people have had that issue i haven't tried google
assistant with it yet so that might be a little bit of a better story but assuming you can set
up amazon elixir on it that's a really good useful feature for you they do have some controls on the
soundbar itself which is really useful if you're wanting to just quickly turn it down you don't
know where the remote is you can just go up and do it manually but is it worth it 800 pounds or 800
is a lot of money especially when you can get a sound bar for a couple hundred quid and actually
for 800 pounds you can get a full surround sound system for that sort of money so why should you
go for this instead of getting an actual surround sound well that's a difficult one and i think your
home cinema should be a journey i don't think you should just jump in and get everything all
at once ultimately things do change over time and things get better so you want to be able to have
that ability to upgrade but actually going on that journey is an amazing experience and i'm
going on that at the moment now is this sound bar gonna be better than a 5.1 surround sound system
for the same price maybe not but this sound bar is definitely going to be better than the front
speakers of that 5.1 surround sound system but you then have the flexibility of being able to
add the surround sound and the extra speakers behind you and because it's dolby atmos supported
you also have the up firing speakers and let's be honest most people aren't going to be fitting in
speakers into their own ceiling so is this going to replace your 5.1 surround sound system
no but this is the best starting point for what i think is going to be one of the best
surround sound systems you can get fitted in your home but maybe you disagree with me
a lot of people do what surround sound system do you have what is the best one that you can
get stick it in the comments and we'll have a discussion there and guys if this sound bar is
a bit too expensive for you then click this video here to get a cheaper option that i've
reviewed in the past thank you very much for watching and i'll see you in the next one