Sonos is refreshing its home theater offerings with a new high-end soundbar, the Sonos Arc. The one-piece speaker system is the company's first Dolby Atmos-compatible device with upward-firing drivers, and features the same voice assistant support found in the Sonos Beam.
The $799 Sonos Arc provides 5.0-channel or Dolby Atmos surround sound on its own, thanks to eight woofers and three angled tweeters. That's significantly more power (and several more drivers) than the Sonos Beam and Sonos Playbar soundbars, which have four woofers and one tweeter, and six woofers and three tweeters, respectively. More importantly, the Arc supports Dolby Atmos, and is capable of producing directional sound thanks to its angled tweeters and audio processing.
The Arc replaces the Sonos Playbar soundbar and Playbase sound base, standing as the company's new, singular flagship home theater device, and the only Dolby Atmos-capable one. The soundbar also takes some cues from the lower-end Sonos Beam, adding a far-field microphone array to the mix for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant (one or the other, not simultaneously) voice assistant support.
The older Playbar and Playbase lacked any microphones for voice assistants, so it stands as a significant upgrade in the Arc, in addition to the extra woofers and Dolby Atmos compatibility. The microphone also supports room calibration with an iOS device through Sonos' Trueplay feature, seen previously on the Sonos Move speaker.
As a Sonos speaker system, the Arc can be incorporated into any Sonos multi-room sound system, and can work alongside the Sonos One and other Sonos speakers. It can also be paired with two Sonos One speakers for use as physical rear surround satellites and/or the Sonos Sub subwoofer. The Arc supports HDMI ARC and eARC connectivity, and also works with Apple AirPlay 2 for wireless media streaming from your iOS device.
The launch of the Arc comes alongside a major software update and two iterative product updates from Sonos. The new Sonos app builds on Sonos' S2 platform, which powers the new Arc and Sonos' other new products. The app enables support for Dolby Atmos and other high-resolution audio, and improves security and usability, according to Sonos.
On the product side, Sonos is updating the Sonos Sub with its new Sonos Sub (Gen 3), and its Play:5 speaker with the new Sonos Five. The two product revisions also work on the S2 platform, and are otherwise minor updates to their predecessors that enable new features in the future thanks to increased memory. Curiously, while the new Play:5 is simply called the Five, it isn't getting a microphone array and voice assistant support like the Sonos One got when it was released as an improved version of the Play:1.
All three new Sonos speakers are available for preorder today, and ship in June, with wider retail availability planned for June 10. The Sonos S2 app launches June 8.
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