After months of speculation and leaks, Sonos has finally officially finished its new multi-room speakers: the Sonos Era 100 and Era 300.
As expected, the audio tech brand revealed two desktop speakers today – the Dolby Atmos capable Era 300 and the midrange Era 100 which is a direct replacement for the venerable Sonos One.
We tried them both – read our first impressions of both in our Sonos Era 100 hands-on review and our Sonos Era 300 hands-on review.
The Era 300 has an unusually shaped, bi-angled frame that houses six Class D digital amplifiers, six powerful drivers: two opposing woofers, and four compression drivers to shoot the sound forward, up, left and right. law.
In addition to being able to create surround stereo, the Era 300 drivers are capable of reflecting sound off walls and ceilings, allowing it to support the device’s calling card features for immersive Dolby Atmos surround sound.
For an even larger soundstage, the Era 300 can be paired with Sonos Arc soundbars as rear speakers, creating a very powerful and indeed expensive 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos home theater setup. We tried it and it sounds pretty incredible.
There’s a brand new user interface with a capacitive volume slider, dedicated skip and play controls, and a Bluetooth button to pair devices to the speaker. Sonos Voice Control and Alexa Assistant are back on board, although Google Assistant support is noticeably absent, presumably due to Sonos’ long-running legal dispute with the search engine giant.
Privacy-conscious users can temporarily disable their voice assistants by tapping the new speech bubble, or completely de-energize the built-in microphone by flipping the switch on the back of the device.
There’s also one of the most extensive connectivity options we’ve seen from a Sonos device, with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi for lossless streaming, Apple AirPlay 2, and a USB-C line-in.
Unlike the Sonos Five (which remains on sale), it doesn’t have a dedicated 3.5mm input, but the Era 300 can be connected to other audio devices, such as one of the best turntables, using the separately sold Sonos Line In Adapter when paired with a cable auxiliary.
As always, there’s the Sonos TruePlay setup feature, which measures room acoustics and automatically adjusts EQ to optimize output for the space, while Sonos says the Era 300’s overall sound has been tuned and tweaked by a number of renowned audio experts, including Coldplay engineer Emily Lazar and mixing specialist Manny Marroquin, who has worked with artists such as Alicia Keys, Kanye West and John Legend.
Another new era
The more compact and conventional-looking Era 100 was also announced today.
The cylindrical speaker is slightly deeper and wider than its predecessor, the Sonos One, and can now provide a wider stereo soundstage thanks to the angled dual tweeter in the larger housing, while the 25 percent larger midrange driver provides much better sound quality. bass.
While the Era 100 does not support surround sound, it offers a similar set of connections, with support for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi streaming and AirPlay 2, as well as a similar USB-C line-in setup, including 3.5mm support using an adapter.
The Sonos Era 300 costs $449 / £449 / AU$749 and the Era 100 costs $249 / £249 / AU$399. Both speakers can be ordered from the Sonos website and will launch on March 28, 2023.
For more multi-room audio, check out our best wireless speaker (opens in a new tab) and the best smart speaker (opens in a new tab) letters.