The top soundbars of 2025
Best Overall
Sonos Arc Ultra
$999
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Budget Selection
Roku Streambar
$129.99
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Best Compact Soundbar
Bose Smart Soundbar
$549
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Best Mid-Range Soundbar
Klipsch Flexus Core 200
$549
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More Affordable Sonos Option
Sonos Beam (Gen 2)
$499
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Ultimate Upgrade
Sennheiser AMBEO Soundbar Max
$2,997.99
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Honorable Mention
Marshall Heston 120 soundbar
$1,299.99
Get Deal
“Sound constitutes 50 percent of the movie-watching experience.” This statement comes from Hollywood legend George Lucas, someone who undoubtedly understands the art of creating iconic cinematic experiences.
The implication is straightforward: part of the enjoyment of visiting a commercial theater comes from the grand scale of its sound system. This holds true for our home theaters as well: you may possess an outstanding large-screen TV, but if you depend on the built-in speakers of your flat-screen, you’re missing a crucial element. At the very least, acquiring a soundbar is necessary.
The finest soundbars will render explosions more realistic, improve the clarity of dialogue, and fully immerse you in your movies and shows. In essence, it elevates the overall experience to a more cinematic level.
But with the plethora of technical jargon and buzz, the likelihood of selecting the ideal soundbar can seem as challenging as predicting the next Oscar winners. From Dolby Atmos to room correction to subwoofers, you could save yourself considerable time by considering expert opinions. Not only have Mashable tech journalists evaluated some of the leading soundbars from brands such as Samsung, Sonos, and Bose, but we have also sought guidance from numerous audio specialists.
Ty Pendlebury conducts tests and research on TVs and home entertainment technology for CNET, a sister site of Mashable, also owned by Ziff Davis. He has been assessing audio-visual devices, including soundbars, for more than 20 years.
“I estimate that I’ve reviewed over 100 soundbars during my career,” Pendlebury mentioned to Mashable.
In crafting CNET’s best soundbar guide, he evaluated soundbars in the CNET AV Lab, utilizing various types of media, including films, music, and games, to ascertain which soundbars deliver superior sound quality.
Below, we have merged Pendlebury’s evaluation results and expertise with Mashable’s latest soundbar assessments to identify the finest expert-reviewed soundbars available in 2025.
Is investing in a soundbar worthwhile?
Built-in speakers on modern TVs are generally situated at the rear, angled downwards, which is not optimal for achieving quality sound. Soundbars resolve this by projecting sound outward into the room, excelling in handling the vital center channel, fundamental for clear dialogue.
So what price does this solution entail?
Soundbars can range from as low as $75 to more than $1,500 and beyond. Clearly, that’s a broad spectrum, but most of the soundbars we endorse fall within the $200 to $700 range. Our selections are positioned approximately at the low, mid, and high tiers of that spectrum, to provide you with diverse choices for various budgets.
The top soundbar: Sonos Arc Ultra
Sonos Arc Ultra
$999 at Amazon
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Check out our complete review of the Sonos Arc Ultra.
Target Audience
Individuals seeking the premier Dolby Atmos experience in a single-speaker soundbar, with ample options for expansion as their space and budget permit.
Reason for Selection
We acknowledge — this soundbar is firmly positioned at the upper end of the price scale, but we wouldn’t include it if we didn’t believe it justified the cost. The Sonos Arc Ultra is an extraordinarily impressive speaker, delivering some of the highest-quality sound you can find for under $1,000. As Mashable contributor Timothy Beck Werth noted in his review: “While a single soundbar can’t rival the booming speakers you’d experience in a movie theater, this speaker provided the closest approximation to that experience I’ve ever encountered in my living room.”
The Arc Ultra achieves this through its remarkable hardware, which features 14 drivers and 15 Class-D digital amplifiers. It can effortlessly manage the three-dimensional demands of Dolby Atmos, and the brand’s Sound Motion technology accounts for the most powerful bass we’ve ever experienced without needing an additional subwoofer.
Even in the absence of additional speakers, Beck Werth claimed he could “feel the bass in my chest. It genuinely felt as though sandworms were bursting from the desert all around me,” while viewing Dune.
This encapsulates our admiration for the Arc Ultra. You can certainly spend more on a single-speaker soundbar (refer to Sennheiser