Caroline is a journalist with around 15 years covering consumer tech, smart home, and digital entertainment. She started out as a film journalist in London before moving into B2B technology at IT Pro, then spent years in affiliate and buyer's-guide journalism, reaching editor at Top Ten Reviews. She tests products hands-on and writes to help readers spend well, translating specs into what they mean in everyday use rather than reciting them. Away from work, she's usually deep in film, TV, and music, with her black cat, Jet.
When it launched in 2018, the original Sonos Beam cost just $399 and sounded much bigger than a bar its size had any right to, so it was no surprise it became the default compact soundbar for so many living rooms. By 2021, the second-generation Beam added Dolby Atmos, even though not a single speaker was aimed toward the ceiling, and Sonos has relied on processing to conjure its overhead effects ever since.
Now, the Beam Ultra, on sale since 29 September for $699, finally adds genuine height channels, but the Beam’s oldest limitation, a single HDMI port that routes everything through your TV, hasn’t changed, and neither has the missing DTS:X support.
If you watch discs, play on a console, or have a TV that's particular about soundbars, the gaps Sonos left back in 2018 haven't closed as tightly as you might think.
The Atmos gap has been addressed
But it took eight years to get here
The Beam Ultra looks much more serious on paper than the Gen 2 it replaces, as Sonos has managed to fit nine drivers and nine class-D amps, with four low-profile woofers, a forward-facing tweeter, two side-firing horn tweeters for width, and two angled up-firing tweeters to bounce sound off the ceiling. The Gen 2, in contrast, uses a single center tweeter, four midwoofers, and five amps.
Those two up-firing tweeters are what let Sonos call this a 7.1.2 bar, though the seven and the one are mostly down to Sonos' processing, since you won't find a subwoofer or rear speaker in the box.
The two height channels are the real physical upgrade here, so rain, helicopters, and anything else mixed overhead should finally sound like it's actually above you, rather than a clever trick that only works in a room with the right acoustics. Sonos asks for about four inches of clearance above the bar if it's under your TV, though, and without that, the app reverts to a simulated mode that's much closer to the Gen 2.
At just under 30 inches wide, it's only about four inches broader than the Gen 2, and Sonos suggests it's best for TVs up to 65 inches. In other words, it's the bar I'd look at first for a smaller living room where rear speakers just aren't realistic, or for anyone who'd rather avoid the drama of a full Dolby Atmos setup.
DTS:X is still missing
But Sonos hasn't ruled it out
The Beam Ultra handles Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, multichannel PCM, and DTS Digital Surround, but not DTS:X, the object-based format that competes with Atmos. The pricier Arc Ultra skips it too, so this looks like a Sonos-wide stance rather than a mid-range compromise. Brandon Holley, a Sonos product lead, told What Hi-Fi that the company hasn't closed the door on DTS:X, but also didn't promise it would arrive.
With Dolby Atmos now the default on most streaming services, most people won't notice it's gone. However, if you have a shelf of 4K Blu-rays or occasionally watch the handful of IMAX Enhanced titles on Disney+ that use DTS:X, it'll be harder to ignore. In those cases, the Beam Ultra usually drops back to the 5.1 DTS core, which discards the very height effects those new tweeters were meant to deliver.
It's a little frustrating, to say the least, given that this upgrade seems to have been about finally getting that sweet, sweet sound from above.
Everything still goes through your TV
And that's been true since the first Beam
The Beam Ultra offers a single HDMI eARC port and no HDMI inputs, and Sonos' own setup instructions ask you to plug your streaming box, console, or disc player into the TV instead. That keeps the cabling tidy (one HDMI cable, one power cable), but it also means your TV decides what reaches the soundbar, and not every TV is generous.
Some TVs won't pass certain formats over eARC, or they convert them to PCM, and if you're not sure what yours does, our guide to soundbar audio formats and TV passthrough is a good place to start. The soundbar also takes up the TV's eARC port, which on some sets is one of only a couple of full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 inputs, so a console could end up fighting the soundbar for the best connection.
A soundbar with HDMI inputs sidesteps most of this, since your sources connect directly. If your TV is older and doesn't have eARC, a box like the HDFury Arcana can sit between your source and the TV and pull the full audio stream off for the soundbar, though that's another device (and another bill) in a setup Sonos sells on its simplicity.
Most people won't miss any of it
Yet the Beam Ultra costs $200 more than the Gen 2
Sonos would argue most buyers won't notice any of this, and for many that's probably true. Netflix, Disney+, and most other services stream Atmos using Dolby Digital Plus, which the Beam Ultra handles without objection, and if everything you watch comes through your TV's built-in apps or a streaming stick, one cable and one remote genuinely is the easier way to live.
That argument was easier to make when the Beam cost $449. The Gen 2 now sits at $499, the Ultra adds another $200, and at $699 you're in territory where soundbars with DTS:X and HDMI inputs are easy to find. I don't object to expensive soundbars being worth it, but here most of the extra money goes towards the ceiling, without touching the connections.
If you stream nearly everything and already live in the Sonos app, I'd buy it, especially now that Sonos' new Portable Surround feature lets a matching pair of Play or Move 2 speakers stand in as rear surrounds later. Anyone with a physical media collection is in a different spot.
For them, the Ultra plays the same DTS tracks the Gen 2 did, albeit through better hardware, and still waits for the TV to hand over the audio first, which isn't quite what I'd expect from a $699 soundbar eight years into the Beam's life.