Sonos announced two desktop speakers — the Era 300, which supports spatial audio, and the Era 100, a mid-range replacement for the highly regarded Sonos One.
The new Sonos Era 100 (left) and Sonos Era 300 (right)
The Era 300 has a unique shape, with six built-in Class D digital amplifiers, six powerful drivers, two woofers and four tweeters capable of sending sound forward, up, left and right. In addition to creating a wide stereo effect, the Era 300’s tweeters are able to reflect sound off walls and ceilings for the unit’s brightest feature — immersive Dolby Atmos spatial audio. For a larger soundstage, the Era 300 can also be paired with Sonos Arc bars as rear speakers to create a very powerful 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos home theatre system.
The device also has a new user interface that includes a capacitive volume slider, dedicated skip and playback controls, and a Bluetooth button for connecting devices to the speakers. The speaker supports Sonos Voice Control and Alexa Assistant, though not Google Assistant, likely due to a long-running legal dispute between Sonos and Google. Privacy-conscious users can temporarily turn off their voice assistant by tapping the newly added Voice Bubble Control button or completely power off the built-in microphone via a switch on the back of the device. The device also supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Apple AirPlay 2 and USB-C input.
Unlike the Sonos 5, the Era 300 does not have a dedicated 3.5 mm input but can be connected to other audio devices via the separately sold Sonos Line-In Adapter and auxiliary cable.
The speaker has Sonos’ Trueplay setup built-in, which measures the acoustic characteristics of the room and automatically adjusts the equalizer to optimize the output of the space. Marroquin has worked with stars like Alicia Keys, Kanye West and John Legend.
Sonos also announced today the more compact, traditional-looking Era 100, which offers stereo sound thanks to a tilted dual tweeter layout in a larger enclosure, and a 25% larger mid-woofer for better low-frequency performance.
The Era 100 does not support spatial audio, and connectivity is the same as the Era 300, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Airplay 2 streaming, and USB-C input.
It’s worth noting that with the introduction of the new Era 300 and Era 100 speakers, Sonos also announced that starting March 28, some Sonos speakers will support spatial audio.
The Sonos Era 300 will cost $449 (currently about RMB 3116), while the Era 100 will cost $249 (currently about RMB 1728), and both speakers will be available on March 28, 2023.
