It looks like Sonos are ready to move on from the popular Sonos One with two new home speakers launching in Australia later this month – the Era 300 and the Era 100.
Given the brand’s reliable reputation for sound and design innovation, these should both be a substantial push forward for the fiercely competitive category of home Wi-Fi speakers, especially since the top tier of the two – the Era 300 – will make use of Dolby Atmos spatial audio. That’s why it’ll come with a hefty $750 price tag.
And yes, $750 is a lot to pay for a speaker, but Sonos isn’t generally known for being an affordable brand outside of budget-friendly devices like the Sonos Roam and Sonos Ray. The Era 300 has been built with six high-performance drivers too, in a similar manner to a soundbar, push sound left, right, forward and upward to complement the Dolby Atmos spatial audio format.
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The slightly odd hourglass design is intentional, and while it may not look as seamless as the Sonos One, there’s no reason to doubt the company’s claims of “unparalleled clarity and depth.” Each angle of the shapely speaker has been carefully designed to enhance the direction and dispersion of sound to make these just as appropriate for use as your back channels in any home cinema set-up.
Sonos has confirmed that up to two Era 300 speakers can be paired with the Sonos Arc or the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) to create a fully-formed Dolby Atmos experience that should, theoretically, take any home cinema more than a few steps up.
“Just like the shift from mono to stereo, spatial audio is the next evolution in listening – creating a sound experience that wraps you in music,” explained Giles Martin, VP of Sound Experience at Sonos.
The Era 100 is more affordable and is better thought of as a refined take on the classic Sonos One speaker. The $399 speaker is only slightly larger than its predecessor but the internals has been completely restructured with two angled tweeters and a larger mid-woofer for crisper audio and more powerful rolling basslines.
In terms of connectivity, it looks like Sonos is sticking with the hybrid model that was introduced with the Sonos Move. As such, you can use either Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, as well as an AUX cable and the Sonos Line-In Adapter for both speakers. There’s also support for Sonos Voice Control, further splintering the relationship between Sonos and Google by completely cutting support for Google Assistant.
Dolby Atmos finally making its way to home speakers, as opposed to just soundbars, isn’t the only first for the company either. For the first time, you can now use Sonos TruePlay – which intelligently calibrates speakers based on their environment by bounding sound off nearby objects – on Android. Until now, only iOS users had the privilege.
The Sonos Era 100 and Era 300 will be available for retail in Australia from March 29, 2023.
