I’ve always thought the Sonos Beam made a lot of sense for people who wanted better TV sound without putting a massive soundbar across the front of their living room. The Beam Gen 2 was compact, easy to integrate into the Sonos ecosystem, and capable of decoding Dolby Atmos. But there was one part of that formula I could never completely get behind: its Atmos performance depended on virtualization rather than dedicated height speakers.

The new Sonos Beam Ultra finally changes that.

Announced on September 1, the Beam Ultra is a $699 soundbar that keeps roughly the same compact philosophy as the Beam Gen 2 while substantially redesigning what is happening inside. Sonos has moved from five drivers to nine, including two dedicated upward-firing tweeters, and now describes the Beam Ultra as a 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos soundbar. Preorders are open now at Amazon, with general availability scheduled for September 29.

I haven’t heard the Beam Ultra yet, but from looking at the hardware changes, this is the Beam update I’ve been waiting to see.

The Beam Gen 2 Had Dolby Atmos, But Not the Atmos Hardware I Wanted

The Beam Gen 2 has been around since 2021, and its approach to Dolby Atmos was understandable considering the size of the soundbar.

There simply weren’t speakers pointing toward the ceiling. Instead, the Beam Gen 2 used processing to create the impression of height and surround information from its five-driver architecture. Sonos still lists it as a Dolby Atmos soundbar, but its own current comparison material distinguishes that implementation from the physical height channels found in its more expensive models.

That distinction has always mattered to me.

Virtualization can make a soundtrack seem larger than the physical dimensions of a soundbar, and DSP has become surprisingly good at creating spatial effects. But when I’m specifically shopping for Dolby Atmos, I’d rather have speakers actually attempting to reproduce the height information in the mix than rely entirely on psychoacoustic processing.

That doesn’t mean two tiny drivers firing at the ceiling suddenly turn a soundbar into a discrete home theater system. They don’t. Ceiling height, room shape, seating position, reflective surfaces, and the soundtrack itself all affect how convincing reflected Atmos can be.

But it gives the Beam Ultra something its predecessor never had: actual hardware dedicated to reproducing the overhead layer. And for me, that is easily the most important upgrade.

Beam Ultra Adds Four Drivers Without Becoming an Arc

Inside the Beam Ultra are nine Class-D amplifiers powering nine custom drivers. The arrangement includes five tweeters and four low-profile woofers. There is a forward-firing center tweeter, two side-firing horn-loaded tweeters intended to widen the presentation, and, most importantly, two tweeters firing upward through directional horns for Dolby Atmos height effects.

Sonos describes the result as 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos. It is worth putting that number into context. Beam Ultra does not contain ten discrete speakers arranged around your room, and it doesn’t have a conventional standalone ".1" subwoofer inside it. Like practically every all-in-one soundbar claiming a large channel count, some of that surround field is being created through a combination of driver directionality and processing.

What interests me more than the channel number is the physical architecture behind it.

The two side-firing drivers should have more room to create width than the Beam Gen 2, while the two upward-firing drivers are responsible for a part of the soundtrack the old Beam had to simulate.

It Is Bigger Than the Beam Gen 2, But Still Properly Compact

One of my concerns when I first saw "Beam Ultra" was that Sonos might simply make the Beam much larger. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened.

The Beam Ultra measures 29.53 inches wide, 4.13 inches deep, and 2.48 inches tall. The Beam Gen 2 is roughly 25.63 inches wide, so the new model has grown by around four inches, but it remains dramatically smaller than the 46.38-inch Arc Ultra.

That size difference is important. I don’t think everyone buying a 55- or 65-inch television needs a four-foot-wide soundbar underneath it. In a dedicated theater or a large open-plan living room, the Arc Ultra makes more sense. But in an apartment, bedroom, den, or average-sized living room, something closer to the Beam’s proportions can simply be easier to live with.

That has always been one of the Beam’s biggest strengths, and Sonos appears to have preserved it. In fact, that may ultimately be the Beam Ultra’s strongest argument: you can now get physical Atmos height drivers without moving all the way up to an Arc-sized product.

But $699 Changes the Beam Equation

This is where my enthusiasm becomes a little more complicated. Beam Ultra costs $699. Sonos currently lists the Beam Gen 2 at $499, while the Arc Ultra sits at $1,099 in the US. That puts the new model exactly where you’d expect it from a product-positioning perspective — $200 above the old Beam and $400 below Arc Ultra.

On paper, that seems logical. As a buyer, though, $699 feels different.

The Beam was historically the easier Sonos soundbar to justify because it combined the ecosystem and compact form factor with a substantially lower price than the flagship. Beam Ultra moves closer to premium soundbar territory, where it competes not only with Arc Ultra but also with increasingly elaborate systems from Samsung, Sony, Bose, JBL, and others.

So my decision would probably look something like this:

• Beam Gen 2: still interesting if it receives substantial discounts and Atmos height performance isn’t a priority.
• Beam Ultra: the model I’d look at first for a normal-sized living room where space matters but I still want physical Atmos drivers.
• Arc Ultra: the better fit for larger rooms, larger TVs, and buyers who want Sonos’ most ambitious standalone soundbar.

That middle position is exactly what makes Beam Ultra interesting, but it also means the $699 price has to be justified by real-world performance.

Does Beam Ultra Make the Arc Ultra Harder to Justify?

This might be the biggest question I have right now. Arc Ultra remains the more ambitious soundbar. Sonos rates it for a 9.1.4 presentation, it has a much larger enclosure, additional drivers, and the company’s Sound Motion woofer technology. At 46.38 inches wide, it also has a physical advantage when trying to create a broad front soundstage in a large room.

I therefore wouldn’t look at Beam Ultra as a cheaper Arc Ultra. But I do think it changes the question from “Can I afford the Arc?” to “Do I actually need the Arc?” For a reasonably sized living room, I suspect the answer will often be no.

I’d rather have a $699 soundbar that physically fits the room and spend the difference elsewhere in the system than automatically choose the flagship simply because it is the flagship. The remaining $400 could go toward a Sub Mini, rear speakers, or simply stay in your pocket.

That becomes even more relevant because Sonos continues to treat its soundbars as foundations rather than finished systems.

The Upgrade Path Is Still a Big Part of the Appeal

Beam Ultra can operate by itself, but it can also be paired with Sonos subwoofers and rear speakers. Sonos is expanding that flexibility further by allowing compatible portable speakers, including Sonos Play and Move 2, to function as rear surrounds. When you aren’t watching TV, those speakers can return to portable use elsewhere in the home.

I like that idea because it addresses one of the problems with buying a soundbar system: once satellite speakers become permanent rear channels, they usually stop being useful for anything else.

There is also an official Beam Ultra package with Sub Mini, and another with Sub Mini and two Era 100 speakers, reinforcing the idea that the soundbar can become the center of a larger system over time.

Personally, that is how I would approach it. I’d start with the Beam Ultra alone, live with it for a while, and then decide whether the room actually needs more bass or physical surrounds. That makes more sense to me than immediately buying a huge bundled system before knowing what the soundbar can do on its own.

The Smaller Upgrades Matter Too

The Atmos hardware gets most of my attention, but Sonos has updated several other areas. Beam Ultra now supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3, while HDMI eARC remains the main TV connection. There is also USB-C, although it is used with optional Sonos adapters for analog line-in or wired Ethernet rather than acting as another conventional digital input. Apple AirPlay 2 is supported as well.

Trueplay room tuning now works with both iOS and Android, removing another longstanding limitation of older Sonos products.

Dialogue processing has also been expanded. Beam Ultra includes a redesigned center channel and four selectable levels of AI Speech Enhancement, which uses voice detection to bring dialogue forward. Night Sound remains available for reducing the difference between loud effects and quieter portions of a soundtrack.

I’m less interested in the word "AI" than I am in whether Speech Enhancement actually helps without making voices sound unnaturally isolated from the rest of the mix. Dialogue clarity has become a major issue for modern TV and movie viewing, so having several levels rather than a simple on/off switch could be genuinely useful.

Still, I wouldn’t buy Beam Ultra because it has an AI feature. I’d buy it because it finally has the acoustic hardware I wanted the Beam to have in the first place.

This Looks Like the Beam Sonos Should Have Been Building Toward

The Beam Ultra isn’t inexpensive, and I’m not ready to call it the new Sonos sweet spot until I actually hear what those nine drivers can accomplish. But conceptually, this version makes much more sense to me.

The original appeal of the Beam was never that it was the most powerful Sonos soundbar. It was that it offered much of the Sonos experience in a size that worked in ordinary rooms. Beam Gen 2 added Dolby Atmos decoding but still asked processing to do all of the height work.

Beam Ultra finally fills that gap. For $699, buyers now get dedicated upward-firing drivers, side-firing drivers, a redesigned center channel, more bass hardware, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, Android Trueplay support, and a path toward a larger Sonos surround system — all inside a soundbar that is still less than 30 inches wide.

Whether those improvements are enough to justify spending $200 more than Beam Gen 2 will depend on how well it performs outside Sonos’ demonstration rooms.

But the question I’m asking has changed. With Beam Gen 2, I wondered whether virtualized Atmos was too big a compromise. With Beam Ultra, I’m wondering whether I’d need the Arc Ultra at all.