No, of course you don’t buy a speaker to look at it. But if you stare at the speaker while enjoying its sound, ideally seeing it won’t make you wince. So it’s just good that Era 300Latest Sonos wireless speaker and the company’s first foray into spatial sound (except Dolby Atmos–enabled sound system, of course), is such an impressive and accomplished performer—it’s easy to overlook its appearance. Unless you somehow unexpectedly find it in your sight, anyway, in that case, it never ceases to be startling.
To be fair, Sonos’ popularity has, so far, been founded on a completely painless ownership experience as well as the sound its products actually produce. The “reasonably competitive” sound quality is good enough for many listeners if accompanied by top-notch ergonomics, a flawless control app, and the simplest multi-room audio ecosystem.
However, with the Era 300—and with a smaller, more affordable version 100 . Era stereo speakers launched at the same time—Sonos has retained all of its established advantages and added audio performance to match any similarly priced, sized alternative. And in the case of the Era 300, the spatial acoustic performance kicks in.
Humble Homepod
Spatial sound (which basically means “more than two channels” and is almost always based on Dolby’s Atmos format) has gained considerable traction outside its original home of cinemas, thanks to a in no small part on missionary support from the likes of Amazon Music Unlimited Music Streaming Services, Apple Music, and Tidal.
Sonos does not support Tidal’s Dolby Atmos content catalog (boo!), but it at least supports Amazon and Apple’s spatial audio services. And even though Apple, thanks to Homepod smart speaker, as a full service space music provider, it can be said that when it comes to hardware, the Sonos Era 300 has surpassed the Apple Homepod. Yes, it’s more expensive—but it’s worth it, and then some.
The Era 300 uses six speaker drivers to create the impression of immersive, enveloping sound. There are four tweeters: one facing forward, one left, one right, and one that is loaded into the speaker and fired upwards to reflect sound from the ceiling and create a sense of height. Then a few mid/bass drivers are tilted left and right to create some width (and provide separation when the speakers are playing stereo content). Each driver receives an individual Class D amplifier block — this being Sonos, however, the amount of power available is privileged information.
Paragraph Four now concludes: “And Era 300, among other things, represents the end of an era for Sonos. The company used to have the clearest, most logical naming convention for its speakers—but now we’re in the Era, where the ranking order is much more difficult to distinguish.”
On the top of the cabinet—unfortunately angled and proportioned that my youngest daughter startled when she saw it—there are a few physical controls. The touch surface includes play/pause, forward/backward, and voice assistant interactions (Era 300 is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control) and has an indented (and very implemented) volume slider. unique). Aside from the brand logo and beatable LED indicator, the front of the cabinet is nothing special. The bottom has a few small rubber feet and fixing pins for a cheap optional stand. And at the back, there’s a mains socket, a microphone mute switch, and a USB-C shaped auxiliary input (unforgivably, an input adapter specifically for use with this input). is also a charged option) and a button for Bluetooth pairing.
Sonos sees blue light
Oh yes, Bluetooth. After years of dismissing Bluetooth as an inferior technology only suitable for its portable speakers, Sonos has undergone a Damascene transition. So in addition to using its sample control app, in which any number of streaming services can be integrated, you can stream up to the Era 300 using Bluetooth 5.0 with codec compatibility Standard SBC and AAC are bogus. Apple AirPlay 2 is also available, as is Wi-Fi streaming—Wi-Fi 6 is supported.
In addition to grouping all your favorite streaming services together, the app also offers a number of EQ adjustments and the latest version of Sonos’ admirable Trueplay room correction software. Newly available for Android (albeit in a slightly truncated form) as well as iOS, Trueplay doesn’t take long and proves to be wonderfully effective at tailoring the Era 300 to suit your particular environment.
The app also offers multi-room and multi-channel capabilities (if you have several Era 300s, they can act as rear speakers in a home cinema system alongside Sonos. Dolby Atmos Arc sound bar). The app is still the model, the gold standard… and it makes Sonos ownership seem like a deeply logical choice regardless of other considerations.
