After months of speculation and leaks, Sonos has finally officially announced its new multi-room speaker: Sonos Era 100 and Era 300.
As expected, the audio technology brand today unveiled two desktop speakers – Spatial Audio powered by the mid-range Era 300 and Era 100, which are direct replacements to the venerable line of speakers. Sonos One.
And we’ve tried both – read our first impressions of both in our practice Review Sonos Era 100and our practice Review Sonos Era 300.
The Era 300 has an unusually shaped, dual frame housing six class-D digital amplifiers, six heavy-duty drivers, two subwoofers and four tweeters, allowing sound to be emitted both forward and above, as well as left and right.
Along with spacious stereo sound, the Era 300’s tweeters can bounce sound off walls and ceilings, enabling the device’s call card feature to support immersive Dolby Atmos Spatial Sound.
For an even bigger soundstage, the Era 300 can be paired with Sonos . arc soundbars as rear speakers to create a very powerful and really expensive 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos home theater setup.
There’s a brand new user interface, with a capacitive volume slider plus dedicated skip and playback controls and a Bluetooth button for pairing devices with the speaker. Sonos voice control and Alexa assistant are on board once again, although Google Assistant support is noticeably absent, likely due to Sonos’ protracted legal dispute with the guy. giant search engine.
Privacy-conscious users can temporarily turn off their voice assistant by tapping the new speech tile control, or completely disconnect power from the built-in microphone by sliding a switch on the back. of equipment.
There’s also one of the widest array connectivity options we’ve seen on a Sonos device, with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi for lossless streaming, Apple AirPlay 2, and USB-C input all available. feature.
Unlike the Sonos 5, there is no dedicated 3.5mm input, but the Era 300 can be connected to other audio devices such as turntables via the separately sold Sonos Input Adapter in combination with the cable. extra.
As always, Sonos’s Trueplay setup is built-in, which measures the acoustics of the room and automatically adjusts the EQ to optimize output for the space, while Sonos claims the overall sound of the room. The Era 300 has been tuned and tuned by a host of big name audio professionals including Coldplay engineer Emily Lazar and mixing expert Manny Marroquin, who have worked with the likes of Alicia Keys, Kanye West and John Legend.
Another new era
Finally announced today is the more compact and conventional looking Era 100.
The cylindrical speaker is slightly deeper and wider than its predecessor Sonos One and can now provide a stereo soundstage thanks to an angled dual tweeter arrangement inside a larger housing, while the woofer is in 25% larger middle improves bass.
While the Era 300 doesn’t support spatial audio, it has a similar range of connections, with Bluetooth support, Wi-Fi streaming, and Airplay 2, along with a similar USB-C input setup.
The Sonos Era 300 is priced at $449/ £449/ €499/ AUD $749, while the Era 100 is priced at $249/ £249/ €279/ AUD $399. Both speakers are available now from the Sonos website and launch on March 28, 2023.
For more multi-room audio equipment, check out ours best wireless speaker (opens in a new tab) And best smart speaker (opens in a new tab) list.
