Review of Sonos Era 300

Review of Sonos Era 300. The Era 300 is one of two brand-new Sonos devices that will launch the firm into a brand-new era.

The Era 300 is unquestionably more intriguing, even though the smaller Era 100 is likely to be more popular due to its lower price. Here’s Review of Sonos Era.

Read more: Samsung Galaxy A34 5G Review

Review of Sonos Era 300:

It comes with the same welcome connectivity concessions, such as Bluetooth and a line-in, but also has spatial audio support and a radical physical redesign to make the most of it. Here’s a Review of Sonos Era.

The good news is that the Era 300 sounds fantastic regardless of what you throw at it, and Dolby Atmos support guarantees that a pair of these is the new prerequisite for the best Sonos surround setup.

The bad news is that while the spatial audio is great, it can only be used with single-speaker setups and has poor software support, so you probably won’t use it much. The potential is clear, but at this cost, you’d best be certain that you’re also satisfied with the current results.

Design & build:

Unusual hourglass shape
Excellent touch controls
Black or white options

While the Era 300 is obviously intended to replace the outdated Play:3, this is not a straightforward upgrade. Even from the outside, it is clear that Sonos had to start over. Review of Sonos Era.

With an hourglass shape that broadens out to the front and back and tapers in the center, the Era 300 has a somewhat odd appearance. Instead of being merely straightforward, the fluted design is intended to optimize its spatial output, with one of the six speakers inclined slightly upward to blast audio out into the room.

The design protects the speaker from blocky blandness, and I quite like it, but I’m sure it will cause controversy elsewhere. It is at least done in the trademark Sonos design, with minimal details like a little logo along with black or white color options.

One drawback of the form is that you must be precise with the speaker placement because it can only be set in one direction; therefore, it cannot be hung from a wall or used in other ways as easily. This is not a speaker you can tuck into a corner or hide in Ikea storage shelves in order to maximize the spatial audio; instead, you must position it somewhere with space above and around it.

The 300 has two further design changes that are also present in its smaller Era 100 sister.

Review of Sonos Era

The first is updated touch controls with play/pause, track changing, and voice control buttons conveniently placed at the front, a voice control button farther back, and volume controls cleverly placed in a tactile trough you can slide along. The overall result is that controls are more difficult to accidentally hit and easier to locate at a glance or even without looking.

The construction of the speaker is the second modification. The speaker is now more environmentally friendly and, presumably, simpler to repair because screws have replaced glue. Review of Sonos Era.

Connectivity:

Bluetooth included
Line-in and Ethernet via dongle
Wi-Fi 6

As a Sonos speaker, it should come as no surprise that the Era 300 is intended to be used over Wi-Fi.

That it isn’t your only choice can come as a bigger shock. To begin with, similar to the Era 100, this now has a Bluetooth option, which I’ve been testing with my record player that supports Bluetooth.

It’s encouraging to see Sonos add Bluetooth compatibility after previously limiting it to its portable Move and Roam speakers. It’s also encouraging to see Bluetooth audio being able to be shared with the rest of your Sonos setup via the app.

The fact that I have noticed performance to be so inconsistent is less appealing. Even though my record player is only two feet away from the Era 300, signal losses occasionally occur on each disc, probably because Sonos is still using the outdated Bluetooth 5.0 standard. Additionally, spatial audio cannot be streamed over Bluetooth, but that is to be expected.

Aux line-in support has also been added by Sonos, but there’s an even bigger catch: a dongle is needed to connect to the speaker’s USB-C connection. Since existing 3.5mm-to-USB-C connectors are typically monodirectional and cannot transmit audio from a 3.5mm source, Sonos sells the aforementioned dongle for $19/£19/€25, so you will likely need to purchase it. Both mine and yours are probably useless.

Think twice before buying one because you could need a second dongle entirely. That’s because the Era 300 now requires the $39/£39/€45 combination adapter in order to add an Ethernet connection (along with a line-in connector, thus this one serves dual purposes).

Of course, going wireless may make you happy, but if your current Sonos setup relies on a wired connection and you’ve grown accustomed to its performance, having to pay extra to keep it that way stings.

Sound quality:

The excellent sound across a range of genres
Spatial audio works – when you can find it
Great surround potential

The Era 300’s audio output can actually be divided into stereo or spatial categories, so let’s keep things straightforward and start with the former.

The Era 300 performs admirably when used to listen to normal stereo records. Four tweeters and two woofers make up the six speakers, which can adequately cover the spectrum. Custom waveguides also improve audio dispersion, even on stereo mixes, which lessens the significance of the acoustic “sweet spot” and makes music sound fantastic no matter where you are in the room.

Even larger rooms may be filled by a single Era 300, which can easily handle my open-concept living room and kitchen. Even at louder volumes, the bass on Pink Floyd songs continues to thud along as the guitar and vocals fade in and out, never becoming muddy in the process.

When you add a spatial audio track using Dolby Atmos, the format that Sonos supports, this effect is really what is increased.

I’ve been testing a single Era 300 speaker, and it can’t, by itself, produce the immersive sound that the format claims will immerse you in the song. The sweet spot is not completely eliminated by Sonos’s efforts to bounce the sound up and out throughout the room, nor are your ears fooled into thinking the believing that a source other than the speaker is where the sound is coming from.

Review of Sonos Era

With a solid mix, as some of the most recent Beatles Atmos remasters, the Era 300 can separate each component to produce more wide audio and an open soundstage. Here’s complete Review of Sonos Era.

At first, it’s undetectable, but once it’s gone, other music starts to sound nearly flat in comparison.

I’m unable to say whether the effect is more noticeable with a stereo pair or evaluate how well it performs when used with 300s in a surround setup. However, if you stick with just one speaker, the spatial audio is nice but not enough of a reason to upgrade on its own — not to mention how awkward the software side of the experience is. Here’s complete Review of Sonos Era.

Smart features:

Spatial audio only through awkward Sonos app
Trueplay tuning – on both iOS and Android
Basic voice controls – but no Google Assistant

The sonos era 300 features some built-in intelligence like all Sonos speakers, although it has been somewhat lost along the road.

The Era 300 can be connected to the rest of your Sonos setup for multi-room audio, or integrated into a stereo pair or full surround sound array (though this is only possible with the Sonos Arc or Beam Gen 2, plus any Sub). The speaker is primarily controlled by the official Sonos app, which also lets you manage settings, adjust sound, and hook up the Era 300 to the rest of your Sonos setup for multi-room audio.

You can link accounts from different streaming providers to the app and directly manage music playback through it.

Currently, there is no other option to stream Dolby Atmos spatial content. The only streaming providers supported for Spatial are Amazon Music and Apple Music, and you must use the Sonos app to access their catalogs rather than using those services directly.

Unfortunately, the Sonos app does not provide any indication while you are browsing as to whether a particular song or album is Atmos-enabled; it only does so once it has started playing. In order to locate the version of an album that makes the most of your $449/£449 speaker, one must experiment with albums that have many versions.

The experience is so poor that I started looking for Atmos versions of songs in the Amazon Music app, then repeating the same searches on Sonos to discover the compatible files, switching between apps whenever I wanted to switch albums. Hopefully, things will improve because they are miserable right now and might discourage you from ever attempting to find any Atmos music.

Things are better elsewhere. You can use the Sonos app to adjust your Era 300 for its precise location in your room using the company’s Trueplay technology, whether or not you wish to take advantage of spatial audio.

An easier version that was previously only available on iPhones is now also available on Android phones, using the speaker’s own microphones rather than your phones. Even with this brief change, the speaker’s depth and clarity are greatly improved, and iOS users can still make more precise adjustments by sweeping their phone around the room for a minute.

Finally, voice controls are obviously included with the speaker. Both Amazon’s Alexa and Sonos’ own in-house speech assistant are back, and both are functional for playing music, but not much else (and not if you use Spotify, either).

Google Assistant is absent this time. Previously, this was a feature of Sonos hardware, but ongoing legal disputes between the two companies appear to have prevented this. The Era 300 cannot serve in place of a Google smart speaker, which is a drawback if, like me, you have Google incorporated in other areas of your smart home.

Price & availability:

You can purchase an Era 300 for $449/£449/€499 directly from Sonos or from retailers like Amazon.

That price puts it in competition with the older Five, which still likely outperforms the Era 100 in stereo but lacks spatial audio support from the Era 300 and is likely due for an upgrade to the Era 500 soon.

Remember that you’ll need to spend double that much if you want a pair for stereo or a surround configuration. Line-in costs an additional $19/£19/€25 per speaker, and Ethernet costs an additional $39/$39/€45.

Check out our complete ranking of the best Sonos speakers or the best Bluetooth speakers for audio for further choices.

Specs:

Alexa or Sonos Voice Control
Far-field mics
Two woofers
Four tweeters
Six Class-D amplifiers
Touch controls
Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5.0
USB-C port (line-in and Ethernet via dongle)
160x260x185mm
4.47kg