Recently, I wanted to buy my first soundbar in my life and I randomly decided to order a Sonos Arc from as I find my TV audio to be lacking. After researching for a while, I decided to pre-order the latest and greatest Sonos Arc. I was deciding between Sonos Beam or Sonos Arc and decided to splurge for the Arc since it looked better on the TV console. 

The Sonos Arc is not cheap and it cost me $1499 SGD on the Lazada store. The Sonos beam with 2 Sonos One would cost me $1297 and I would get surround sound. But I decided that I do not want extra peripherals due to limited space and hence the decisions with the Arc.

About the Arc

The Arc came in a fancy box with a unique mechanism for opening the box. After opening the box, you will find that there is pretty much nothing in the box. There are instruction manual, HDMI cable, power adaptor and optical audio cable. 

The device measures 45 inches wide and it is slightly smaller than my 55inch LG C9 tv. The device is made of full metal and looked nice enough with my TV console. 

There are 3 buttons on top of the Sonos; volume down, play pause, volume up. When I hit the play button, it resume playing the last song from Spotify. I cannot skip a song using the buttons (Unless I miss out something) 

Setting up the Arc

Once you plug in the power, you will need to download the Sonos app to continue the setup on iPhone or Android device. Surprisingly, I had issues with my iPhone and I used my Android phone to continue with the setup. Once setup is completed, there should a firmware update will appear before you can use the device. It is not that complicated and the longest wait is probably the part where it updates the firmware.

If you are using an iPhone, you will have an additional “trueplay tuning” option. The Arc plays a series of high pitch sound and tunes itself based on the inputs received from the microphone of the iPhone. It might be good to try and borrow an iOS device to try this as the option to enable and disable appear on my Android after I have completed the tuning. However, do note that this process is rather loud, so it’s not a good idea to try at night.

Using the Arc without the TV

You will need to set your expectation that the arc is not a Bluetooth speaker. Hence, you can only play things that Sonos allowed. Sonos does cover most of the popular services like Spotify, youtube music, apple music and TuneIn. There is also Sonos own music services which are generally podcast and radio stations. 

On my android device, I can also play music from my music library. 

Additionally, even if you did not download the Sonos App, you can also make use of the Spotify Connect within the Spotify app on your device and select the Arc to play the music. 

As such, I am somehow ok without the need for Bluetooth to play music from my devices. This also meant that my phone is free for my use as the Arc is playing music independently. 

Using the Arc with my TV

Everything works perfectly well with the HDMI Arc input. My LG C9 detected everything automatically. Since this is the first soundbar, I did not have any basis for the comparison. However, the sound is much better than the TV. There are many times when a certain portion of a video goes very soft and jumps back to be very loud when played on the C9. However, I stop facing this issue after installing the soundbar. The audio seemed to be maintained at a stable volume no matter what scene the shows are playing. 

The Arc does not come with its own remote control (thankfully) as the audio can be controlled via the TV’s own remote control. This meant that I have 1 less remote control around the house. However, you cannot really see the audio level when adjusting the volume via the TV remote control. This is occasionally annoying especially when turning on the TV without knowing the actual volume of the TV.

Sound Quality

Sonos Arc is supposed to have a total of eight elliptical woofers, as well as firing drivers for Dolby Atmos effects and 3 angled silk-dome tweeters. All of this should make the Arc a beast of its own, but I do think that I am slightly disappointed for my first soundbar. 

The audio from tv shows does seem better as I could definitely hear them better. However, I cannot really tell if the music playback is $1499 worth. It felt that there is a lack of bass when playing music even after Sonos have issued a firmware update. 

Voice Assistance

Sonos is technically compatible with 2 voice assistance, Google and Alexa. However, somehow Alexa is not available in my region in Singapore (My smart home runs on Alexa). Only Google assistant is available.

The 4 far-field microphone picked up my voice relatively well. You can use it to do the usual Google Assistant stuff. 

Conclusion

I don’t regret buying the Sonos Arc. It is my first soundbar and I guess that I had expected too much. The soundbar is definitely better than my TV and Alexa Dot and I can play most of my audio. 

Buy it for the appearance, especially if you wanted a nice looking white soundbar. There are times where I regret not getting a cheaper soundbar until I looked at how nice it matches with my TV.

You can consider clicking this link to Amazon for the Sonos Arc if you like my content