Sonos Beam Ultra review: one of the best compact Dolby Atmos soundbars around

Sonos Beam Ultra review The Sonos Beam Ultra doesn’t merely feel like an evolution of the pre-existing Beam products.

Instead, it feels like something of a middle child between the Sonos Beam Gen 2 and the Sonos Arc Ultra.

After all, it sits bang in between its sibling models when it comes to channel configuration, boasting a 7.1.2 setup with nine drivers, and while it has up-firing drivers for true Dolby Atmos, it still maintains a fairly compact design.

But the Beam Ultra certainly isn’t an awkward middle-child; it’s a highly capable mid-range option that provides striking cinematic sound, while still being able to fit into a smaller setup.

But is the Sonos Beam Ultra worth its $699 / £699 / AU$1,099 asking price? Like most of the best soundbars , the Sonos Beam Ultra supports Dolby Atmos (though notably Sonos omits DTS:X), and it handles the format very effectively.

When watching a 4K UHD Blu-ray of The Mask , the soundbar seamlessly tracked the titular character as he tornadoes across the screen, with audio sounding as if it far exceeded the limited confines of the soundbar.

When The Mask jumped upwards, diagonally, his upward trajectory was captured with precision. (Image credit: Future) And the Beam Ultra continued to impress me with its height effects across multiple movies.

For instance, in Godzilla Minus One , the sense of a plane flying overhead was replicated more naturally than I expected from a mid-range bar.

When Godzilla first appeared, the width of the kaiju’s movement was handled brilliantly — it sounded as if the creature’s stomping and destruction were emanating from different corners of the testing room, rather than a set of speakers, even without the help of surround speakers.

What’s more, the Sonos Beam Ultra nails the fundamentals.

Watching Top Gun: Maverick , the roar of jet engines was palpable, and I found this to be the case across multiple films.

For a mid-sized standalone bar, the Beam Ultra produces incredibly regimented, deep, and responsive low-end sound, which is excellent for movies with high-octane action sequences and dark, impactful scores.

The Beam Ultra can also get seriously loud if you want to fill a more open space, but I never noticed any tinniness or harsh compression.

Still, this doesn’t come at the expense of sounds elsewhere in the frequency range.