It’s the end of the line for the Sonos Arc

Ever since the Sonos Arc Ultra launched, the future of the original Sonos Arc has looked precarious. The newer model improves on the original in several ways and for not much more money.

Now it seems the end is near for one of the best soundbars ever made.

If you pop along to the Sonos website just now, you'll see that the Arc has acquired a "last chance" flag – which is what Sonos usually puts on products it has discontinued. The good news is that there's also a hefty discount of £180 off, bringing the Arc down from £899 to £719.

By comparison, the Arc Ultra has a RRP of £999 in the UK ($999 in the US and AU$1,799 in Australia). So that's quite a big difference.

How does the Arc compare to the Arc Ultra?

The Sonos Arc sounds fantastic, and if we only judged on its audio prowess we'd have given it the full five stars. However, as you can see from our Sonos Arc review there are some design and connectivity issues we weren't so keen on at the time.

So, is the Arc Ultra worth spending £280 more on? We reckon it is the best-sounding single-box soundbar on the market right now, with impressive Sound Motion technology and improved speech performance.

It's a significant upgrade over the Arc – especially in the bass department. It does have some of the same issues as its predecessor, though. There's only a single eARC HDMI, for example, and no HDMI passthrough.

At normal prices there was just £100 difference between the £899 Arc and the £999 Arc Ultra, and the improvements in the latter definitely made that £100 worth spending. But when the gap's £280, I think many would-be Arc buyers will find the original does more than enough for the money.