I heard the Sonos Beam Ultra, its 7.1.2 channels of Dolby Atmos sound make it sound way, way bigger than it is

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Sonos recently announced that it's launching a new soundbar to fill the gap between the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) and the Sonos Arc Ultra — it's called (perhaps predictably) the Sonos Beam Ultra. It's launching on September 29th 2026, and it costs $699 / £699 / AU$1,099.

It's small, like the regular Beam, but it features nine drivers to deliver 7.1.2 channels of Dolby Atmos, including upfiring drivers (which the Beam doesn't have).

Sonos' promise is that it's a bigger, more expansive, and meatier home theater experience than the regular Beam, and I got a chance to listen to a demo — though we'll have a full and in-depth review later when we can test more thoroughly.

But my time with the Beam Ultra was enough to really impress me. We started by listening to some music in Dolby Atmos, and the soundbar was extremely good at separating the sound from the hardware — the audio felt spaced across the whole room in front of me, rather than feeling like it was emitting from a compact soundbar.

Bass dispersion was really impressive, as was a feeling of 'airiness', in a good way, to vocals and positional instrument effects. Every element felt like it was able to float in the room very naturally and individually.

Switching to something bass-heavy, which is an area Sonos says it specifically wanted to improve, what stood out to me was the weight of the mid-bass. Often, in smaller speakers, this is where things fall off — they might be tuned to give good punch at their lowest point, but can't always maintain good strength as they move towards the mid-range.

There was no problem with that here: bass felt really solid throughout the range. Being a small soundbar, it's not like it can hit hard on really low-end frequencies, but there's loads of presence across the bass, so it feels satisfying.

Switching to movies and TV, we watched a clip from the Apple TV+ show Widow's Bay , emphasizing the improvement to the clarity of the center channel — dialogue came through clear over background noise.

But the real test was watching Sinners , in the big music scene of I Lied to You , which has become a common demo scene for companies to use. I was so impressed by the positional Dolby Atmos effects of elements that were way off to the side — the width was far better than other small soundbars, and was better than most big soundbars I've tested.

There's a real sense of instruments being positioned right in the far forward corners of the room, a good six feet beyond the edges of the TV we were watching, let alone beyond the edges of the small soundbar.

However, when we get it in to review, I want to test the height channels more deliberately. I wasn't feeling a lot of height effect from the demo — which might have been for a few reasons, so I can't cast judgment against the Beam Ultra for it yet. We'll be keeping an ear out for it, though.

I also got to try the same scene using the Sonos system's new ability to add some portable speakers as rear satellite speakers for surround sound. Two Sonos Play speakers were brought in and placed just behind me, and they instantly connected to the soundbar without needing the app at all.

A little tone emitted from the Beam Ultra to indicate that the Plays had connected themselves, but all the detection and connection is done invisibly by the system, and it seemed really slick.

The Plays made for a really good set of rear speakers in the demo, too — I got really clear positional effects from them, and they have a great dynamic range for movies.

Sonos confirmed that with the Plays (or a pair of Sonos Move 2 speakers, or static rear options such as the Sonos Era 100 ) connected, it can describe the system as a 7.1.4-channel setup, though the extra two height channels will be virtualized.

I was surprised that Sonos went with the small size of the Beam for a soundbar to sit below the Arc Ultra in its range, because I assumed that would mean a compromise on how expansive it would be — that's definitely not a concern for me anymore, and I'm really looking forward to hearing how it handles our movie library in our test rooms.