TL;DR: The AED 3,299 Sonos Beam Ultra delivers true 7.1.2 Atmos, crystal-clear dialogue and painless setup in a compact, great-looking bar. Paired with Sonos Plays, it becomes a real home theater and gets surprisingly close to the Arc Ultra.

 

Soundbars occupy a strange space in the home entertainment world. Nobody dreams about owning one, yet almost nobody wants to keep straining to hear through the anemic speakers built into modern flat panels, where every whispered line of dialogue seems to get swallowed by an explosion three seconds later. The Sonos Beam has been the sensible answer to that problem for years, offering musical, tidy sound without demanding the furniture real estate of the Arc. Its one nagging weakness was always height: its 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos relied on virtualisation, so overhead effects were more suggestion than reality.

The Sonos Beam Ultra, priced at AED 3,299 in the UAE, is Sonos addressing that weakness head-on, and then using the occasion to pile on features its predecessor never had. You get nine drivers instead of five, genuine upward-firing tweeters, true 7.1.2 Atmos, Bluetooth, AI-powered speech enhancement and the ability to recruit portable Sonos speakers as surrounds. I tested it in my own living room, the same space where my Sonos Arc Ultra normally lives, which gave me a demanding benchmark and a very honest point of comparison. After putting it through movies, TV, games and music, I’m convinced this is the most complete Beam Sonos has ever built.

Setup takes minutes, not an afternoon

Getting the Beam Ultra running is refreshingly painless. I connected it to my TV’s HDMI eARC port using the included cable, plugged in the power, opened the Sonos app, and the app took over from there with clear, step-by-step guidance. Within minutes the bar was on my network, linked to the TV and playing audio. My existing TV remote controlled the volume automatically, with no codes to hunt down and no universal remote gymnastics required.

That simplicity matters more than spec sheets admit. A soundbar that frustrates you during setup tends to sour the whole relationship, and Sonos has clearly polished this part after the app turbulence of recent years. In the box you get the soundbar, a power cable, an HDMI cable and the setup guide, which covers everything most people need. The optical adapter, Line-In Adapter and Combo Adapter for wired networking are sold separately, but if your TV has HDMI eARC, you won’t need any of them to get started.

Trueplay makes the room part of the tuning

Once the bar was running, I ran Trueplay, which analyses the acoustics of your room and tunes the Beam Ultra to match. My living room isn’t an acoustically perfect space, and that’s exactly the point: furniture, hard surfaces and wall distances all colour how a soundbar sounds, especially one relying on side-firing and upward-firing drivers. The process is quick and guided through the app, and the difference afterwards was clear to me, with a more balanced presentation and better-defined effects around the room. Sonos now supports Trueplay on both iOS and Android, so nobody gets left out of the most important tuning step.

There’s also a thoughtful fallback for awkward placements called Simulated Overhead Sound. If your bar sits beneath a shelf or inside a TV unit, you select that setup in the app and the Beam Ultra optimises its height effects rather than firing them into wood. It won’t match an unobstructed bar, because you’re back to processing rather than physics, but it means cramped setups don’t waste the hardware. Combined with Night Sound and adjustable bass, treble and loudness, the Beam Ultra adapts to real living rooms better than most bars its size.

Nine drivers fill the whole room with true 7.1.2 Atmos

Sonos has rebuilt the internals around nine Class-D amplifiers, each powering its own driver: five tweeters and four low-profile woofers. A forward-facing tweeter locks dialogue to the center of the screen, two horn-loaded tweeters fire sideways to stretch the soundstage beyond the cabinet, and two more sit inside a directional horn pointing upward to bounce Atmos height effects off the ceiling. This is what powers the true 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos claim, and in my living room the result was genuinely room-filling. Vehicles moved convincingly across the space, overhead effects had real lift, and quieter ambient details landed around me rather than staying pinned to the TV.

What impressed me most was the separation. With more dedicated drivers, effects, music and voices each had their own space even during dense action, and games benefited as much as films, with positional cues staying distinct instead of collapsing into a wall of noise. Dolby Atmos Music gets the same physical height treatment, which makes spatial audio tracks far more engaging than on the old Beam. Bass is warmer and fuller than a 65mm-tall bar has any right to deliver, though it’s solid rather than chest-rattling, so anyone craving floor-shaking low end will still want a Sub Mini or Sub 4.

Clear dialogue, with AI on standby

The dedicated center tweeter gives voices a firm anchor, and dialogue came through cleanly in my testing even before I touched a setting. That’s the Beam Ultra’s quiet superpower, because clear speech is what you notice every single night, long after the novelty of overhead helicopters wears off. When a mix gets messy, AI Speech Enhancement detects voices and lifts them above everything else, with four levels: low, medium, high and max. I like that granularity a lot, since dialogue boosters on cheaper bars tend to be blunt instruments that thin out everything else.

A gentle low setting is perfect for a slightly mumbly drama, while max is there for those Christopher Nolan moments where the score seems determined to win. Night Sound handles the opposite problem, reducing loud peaks and lifting quieter details so late-night action doesn’t wake the household. Between them, they make the Beam Ultra a far more livable everyday soundbar. These aren’t flashy features, but they’re the ones you’ll use every week.

A pair of Sonos Plays turns it into a real home theater

This is the feature that elevates the Beam Ultra from “good soundbar” to “interesting soundbar.” I paired it with two Sonos Play speakers as wireless rear surrounds, and the process was as easy as tapping the Beam Ultra in the Sonos app, choosing “Add surrounds” and following the prompts. Within moments, sound that had been projected from the front suddenly wrapped properly around the room. Effects moved behind me with real conviction, and the whole experience shifted from impressive soundbar to proper home theater.

The clever part is that the Plays don’t lose their day jobs. Pick one up and carry it to another room, and it drops out of surround duty; bring it back, and it rejoins the system automatically, with no re-pairing needed. Move 2 speakers work the same way, so for anyone already living in the Sonos world, rear channels come without spending another dirham. That kind of seamless flexibility is what Sonos’s ecosystem was always supposed to deliver, and it’s the strongest reason to pick this bar over rivals.

Beam Ultra vs Arc Ultra: how close does the little one get?

Having my Arc Ultra in the same living room made this comparison unavoidable, and it’s the one many Sonos fans will care about most. The Arc Ultra remains the more powerful system, with 14 drivers, a 9.1.4 configuration and a much larger cabinet that delivers more scale, deeper standalone bass and a wider, more expansive sense of height. In a bigger room or for serious cinephiles, it still justifies its flagship status. Side by side, the Arc Ultra simply has more headroom and authority when a film really goes for it.

What surprised me is how much of that experience the Beam Ultra captures in a far smaller body. Dialogue clarity, room-filling Atmos and overall polish are closer to the Arc Ultra than the price gap suggests, especially once Trueplay has done its job. The Arc Ultra stretches to around 1,178mm wide, while the Beam Ultra is 750mm, so it suits smaller TVs and tighter consoles that the Arc would overwhelm. At AED 3,299 versus AED 5,199, the Beam Ultra delivers a large chunk of the Arc Ultra experience for considerably less money, and for most living rooms that’s the smarter balance.

A soundbar you’ll actually want on display

Most soundbars are designed to be tolerated, but the Beam Ultra is one I’d happily leave front and center. The softly rounded body, matte black or white finish and clean, minimalist lines make it feel more like furniture than electronics, and it sits comfortably alongside the rest of the Sonos lineup. At 2.88kg and only slightly larger than the Beam, it fits apartments and smaller TV setups beautifully. The dedicated Beam Ultra Wall Mount, sold separately, gives you a flush, tidy alternative to placing it on furniture.

Day-to-day control is pleasantly effortless. Your TV remote handles volume, the Sonos app handles everything deeper, and voice control covers the rest, so the capacitive touch strip on top is more of a backup than a necessity, even if it could be a touch more responsive. Status LEDs keep you informed at a glance, and a rear switch that physically cuts power to the microphones is a privacy feature I’d love to see more brands copy. It’s thoughtful hardware that respects both your living room and your privacy.

Format support and connectivity cover nearly every base

Format support is broad: Dolby Atmos, Atmos via Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, stereo and multichannel PCM, Dolby Multichannel PCM and DTS Digital Surround. Lossless formats like TrueHD and multichannel PCM require HDMI eARC, so owners of older ARC-only TVs won’t get everything. DTS:X isn’t on the list, which matters more to Blu-ray collectors than streamers. Helpfully, the Sonos app’s Now Playing screen shows exactly which format is being decoded, so you’re never left guessing whether your Atmos stream is actually Atmos.

WiFi 6, AirPlay 2 and Sonos Voice Control are on board, alongside the long-overdue arrival of Bluetooth 5.3 with a dedicated pairing button, which finally lets guests stream from their phones without touching the Sonos app. TV Audio Swap lets you send the soundbar’s audio to Sonos headphones, Dolby Atmos included, by pressing and holding the content key, and it pairs naturally with the Ace Ultra. Headphones, surrounds and multi-room music all speaking the same language is where the Sonos ecosystem argument is strongest. Few competitors can match that level of integration.

UAE price and value: a sensible middle, with extras to budget for

At AED 3,299, the Beam Ultra sits AED 950 above the Beam (Gen 2) at AED 2,349 and AED 1,900 below the Arc Ultra at AED 5,199, while the entry-level Ray stays far cheaper at AED 895. That premium over the Beam buys real upfiring Atmos drivers, four extra drivers, true 7.1.2 instead of virtualised 5.1.2, Bluetooth, granular AI dialogue enhancement and portable-speaker surround support. Those are meaningful upgrades rather than spec padding. Sonos also points to recycled materials, plastic-free packaging and 25% lower idle power consumption than the Beam.

The catch is that the Beam Ultra feels like the start of a spending journey rather than the end. If you already own Play or Move 2 speakers, the value improves dramatically, because surround sound costs nothing extra, as my own setup proved. If you don’t, adding surrounds and a subwoofer quickly pushes the total higher, and rival bundles with a subwoofer in the box will deliver more raw cinematic punch for similar money. The Beam Ultra rewards Sonos households most.

Verdict

The Sonos Beam Ultra fixes the Beam’s biggest compromise by adding true upward-firing Atmos drivers, then wraps that hardware in some of the smartest software Sonos has shipped in years. In my living room, it delivered room-filling 7.1.2 sound, consistently clear dialogue and a setup process that took minutes, with Trueplay tuning making a clear difference. Pairing it with two Sonos Plays transformed it into a genuine home theater, and against my Arc Ultra, it held up far better than its size and price suggest.

It isn’t flawless. Bass lovers will still want a subwoofer, DTS:X is absent, the touch strip could be snappier, and the full experience leans on owning other Sonos gear. The Arc Ultra remains the choice for big rooms and maximum scale, but at AED 3,299, the Beam Ultra is the easiest Sonos soundbar to recommend for most homes, especially for existing Sonos users who value clarity, convenience and flexibility over raw rumble.