Bluesound is still gunning for Sonos, this time with powerful new Dolby Atmos soundbars at different sizes
- Bluesound launches the big Pulse Cinema Dolby Atmos soundbar
- And also the much more compact Pulse Cinema Mini
- Pulse Cinema: $1,499 / £1,149 | Pulse Cinema Mini: $999 / £799
Bluesound has announced two serious soundbars in a choice of sizes. The flagship Pulse Cinema is a 47-inch-wide model, making it suitable for TVs of 55 inches and up, and the Pulse Cinema Mini is a more compact 33 inches, so should work for TVs of 40 inches and up.
Both models are pretty powerful, with Dolby Atmos support, hi-res audio and MQA support, and Bluesound’s BluOS multi-room audio platform.
BluOS works with over 20 streaming services including TIDAL, Qobuz, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora and Deezer, and it supports hi-res audio up to 24-bit/192kHz. And the speakers can be teamed up with other Bluesound speakers to create a larger, multi-channel surround system.
Both soundbars are compatible with home systems from the likes of Control4, Crestron, RTI and others.
Bluesound Pulse Cinema and Pulse Cinema Mini: key features and pricing
The Pulse Cinema is the star here, with 500 watts of power driving 16 drivers including a center channel, dual four-inch woofers and dedicated upfiring speakers. There’s on-board digital signal processing to adjust the audio depending on placement – the soundbar can be wall-mounted as well as sat on a unit – and there’s HDMI eARC, optical input, analog RCA inputs, Bluetooth in and out and AirPlay 2. There’s also a subwoofer output.
This makes it an interestingly expandable competitor to the Sonos Arc Ultra – it adds more analogue inputs, and the subwoofer output means you can connect whatever kind of low-end driver you want, similar to the Marshall Heston 120.
But it also costs more than the Sonos Arc Ultra, so that power will have to really come through in the real-world.
The Pulse Cinema Mini is smaller but it still packs a punch: it has 280W of power. There aren’t any up-firing Atmos speakers here but there are angled drivers and Atmos 2.1-channel virtualization. Once again there’s a subwoofer out, optical and RCA inputs, Bluetooth and AirPlay 2 – and again, this makes it more versatile in some ways than the Sonos Beam 2, but also more expensive.
The Pulse Cinema and Pulse Cinema Mini will be available for pre-order on 24 September 2025 with shipping starting on October 24. The prices are:
- Pulse Cinema $1,499 / £1,149 / €1,299 (about AU$2,315)
- Pulse Cinema Mini $999 / £799 / €899 (about AU$1,543)
You might also like
Bluesound launches the big Pulse Cinema Dolby Atmos soundbar And also the much more compact Pulse Cinema Mini Pulse Cinema: $1,499 / £1,149 | Pulse Cinema Mini: $999 / £799 Bluesound has announced two serious soundbars in a choice of sizes. The flagship Pulse Cinema is a 47-inch-wide model, making…
