Sonos Arc Ultra vs. Sonos Beam 2: What sound bar of Sonos should you choose?

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Sonos announced a new flagship bar in October, joining the arc of Sonos, Sonos Beam 2 and Sonos Ray.

The Sonos Arc Ultra is located in the upper part of the company’s sound bar, with a design similar to the ARC but with a couple of settings and a new sound architecture.

That in turn means that it looks quite different from the Sonos Beam 2 and offers a fairly different proposal. We have compared the Sonos Arc Ultra and the Sonos ARC in a separate feature, but here we are seeing how the flagship of Sonos Arc Ultra and the range of range 2 are compared.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sonos Beam 2: Price

The Sonos Arc Ultra is the most expensive of the two sound bars that are compared here. It costs $ 999 / £ 999 and went on sale on October 29. It comes in black and white color options.

Meanwhile, Sonos Beam 2 is quite cheap. It also comes in black and white color options, but it is half the price of the Ultra arch to $ 499 / £ 449. It was launched in 2021 and is available to buy in Sonos, as well as multiple retailers.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sonos Beam 2: Design

The Sonos Arc Ultra and Sonos Beam 2 differ quite significantly when it comes to design. The Ultra ARC is long and cylindrical, with a thin profile that allows it to fit under its television. As we mentioned in the introduction, it is similar in design to the ARC, and can read how the arc compares with beam 2 in our separate feature, but has a shelf on the back.

The shelf is designed to keep controls out of sight, allowing a more perfect aspect. The controls have also changed a little from the arch, with a play and a pause in the middle and omit Feel on the right edge.

The Sonos Beam 2 adopts a more square approach to its design, with curved edges but a flat, front and rear. It has capacitive controls at the top, although there is no volume channel, so omitting and returning a track requires a slide through the control pad instead of a touch to each side of the Play/Pause button.

The ports and connections are found in the back of the ARC Ultra and Beam 2, and both offer HDMI EARC, although there is an optical adapter that can buy separately if your TV does not support EARC.

Both also have the feed port on the back, but although beam 2 has a pairing button, the Ultra arch converts this button into a thinner Bluetooth button, more about that in a second. The Beam 2 also has an Ethernet port, while the arc ultra no.

In terms of dimensions, the ARC Ultra measures 46.38 inches wide, 4.35 inches deep and 2.95 inches high. Weighs 5.9 kg.

Hac 2, meanwhile, measures 25.83 inches wide, 3.94 inches deep and 2.68 inches high. It is lighter than the Ultra ARC too, as expected, with a weight of 2.88 kg.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sonos Beam 2: Characteristics

The Sonos Arc Ultra and Beam 2 offer many of the same characteristics. Both connect to a Sonos system, so you can send your TV audio to other Sonos speakers in your home if you wish and you can also use Arc Ultra and Beam 2 as general speakers when they are not being used for your audio television.

Both the ULTRA ARC and the Beam 2 offer Sonos voice control and also offer Amazon Alexa for voice control as well as other characteristics of Alexa. However, only Beam 2 has the Google assistant, since the ARC Ultra does not support Google assistant, as well as Roam 2, Move 2, it was 100 and it was not 300.

Apple Airplay 2 is on board both of the Ultra and Beam 2 ARC, which allows you to send music directly from an Apple device to any sound bar, and there are features such as EQ and Trupay sound on board also, along with the night sound. Both also support TV audio exchange for those of you who have invested in the Sonos Aceic headphones.

However, there are some characteristics of characteristics to consider the ARC Ultra compared to the Beam 2. The speech improvement function offered in all sound bars of current sounds has been improved for the Ultra ARC, with More control over the selection of its preferred level of clarity of the dialogue and makes a big difference. The options are low, medium and high, being the default medium.

For beam 2, you can simply activate or deactivate speech improvement, but you can’t control the level. The Ultra ARC also offers Bluetooth capabilities, which will not be a surprise for many Sonos fans, since the company has been including Bluetooth capabilities in its speakers since the era 100 and was 300 that was launched in 2023.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sonos Beam 2: Performance

The Arc Ultra is the first product to launch with the Mayht Sound technology that Sonos is calling Sound Motion. It is stated that technology is “one of the most significant advances in audio engineering in almost 100 years” and sees that transducers drastically reduce in size, while the largest sound is created from smaller components, which It allows the thinner profile of Arc Ultra in general.

Sonos said that the Ultra arch will offer a clearer dialogue, deeper serious and a more detailed sound compared to the arch, with “double accuracy of serious” of the 2020 model, which means more than that when compared to beam 2 As the arc is lower than lightning 2.

During our review, we were very impressed by the sound quality of ARC Ultra, so although we cannot say that there is definitely twice the bass of the arch, there is certainly a clearer dialogue and a better general sound quality compared to the ARC and Beam 2.

The Ultra ARC is compatible with Dolby Atmos, and offers a 9.1.4 space audio experience with a wide sound scenario and a good height and width representation. Meanwhile, Beam 2 only admits Dolby Digital, so it is something to take into account since the sound experience of the Ultra Arc is more immersive and impressive than Beam 2.

The Ultra ARC has 15 digital class D amplifiers, which includes a sound movement woofer, seven tile domestication tweeters with angle precision (two of which are fired up) and six mid -woofers.

Beam 2 has 5 digital class D amplifiers, a central tweeter and four elliptical Woofers, so there is a difference in sound architecture between these two sound bars, as it would probably have expected to give the price difference.

In general, Arc Ultra is an exceptional sound bar that drives all movies, television programs and musical genres well. However, what we will say is that Beam 2 remains a sound bar of great sound for its price, so it is still a very good sound bar to consider whether you want your television to sound better without spending a fortune.

In other places, the Ultra ARC is compatible with Wi-Fi 6, and admits 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 2.4 GHz/5 GHz rings with transmission capacity. The beam admits any routers with transmission capacity of 2.4 GHz 802.11/b/g/n. For 5 GHz routers, it must enable 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n in router environments, or a sonos product.

The Ultra ARC also has 2 GB of RAM, 8 GB storage and runs in a four -core 1.9GHZ processor, while Beam 2 has 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB storage and runs in a 1 1 , 4 four -core GHz.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs. Sonos Beam 2: Which is adequate for you?

The Sono Arc Ultra is, with much, the best sound bar of these two offers as expected, but it is also quite large and very expensive compared to Beam 2, twice the actual price.

For that price, you get a better sound performance from the Ultra ARC and some additional features on Beam 2, including Dolby Atmos support and the most advanced voice detection that offer more different voices.

However, Beam 2 offers access to the Google assistant and could be better for its configuration, depending on how large its television is and how much space it has.

The appropriate sound bar between you between the Ultra arch and the Beam 2 will depend on what you want. If you have the money to spend on a high -end sound bar, you will not feel disappointed with the Ultra arch, but Beam 2 is excellent as a bedroom sound bar, or for those who have a smaller TV or space.

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