Sonos Era 300

The Sonos Era 300 is the brand’s first Dolby Atmos speaker, and is an impressive-sounding from what we’ve heard, offering height, width and depth that expands the soundstage for movies and music.

Introduction

The Sonos Era 300 has the potential to be a gamer-changer. This is a Dolby Atmos device with upfiring speakers that can function independently or within a Sonos home cinema system.

The Era 300 has been speculated about and indeed leaked well in advance of the announcement, but I’d wager that once people can hear what it can do, the levels of anticipation may sky rocket as it nears its release date.

No matter where you live, you’ll need to part with a fair chunk of your local currency to afford the Era 300. It goes on sale on the same day as the Era 100, at the price of $449 / £449 / €499 / AUD$749. That’s £100 less than the Sonos Five, which in fact you can currently find at similar prices to going rate for the Era 300 when it launches.

Though the main difference there is that Era 300 supports Dolby Atmos, where the Five is just a stereo speaker.

Design

• Hourglass design
• Smaller and weighs less than Sonos Five
• Can be disassembled for self-repair

While adhering to Sonos’ industrial look, the Era 300 is one of Sonos’ more striking-looking speakers. For and function has given rise to a speaker that has a concave, hourglass shape that’s only suited to being positioned on its belly (as it were). It weighs 4.46kg, which is on the heavy side of the equation, but isn’t as big as you might expect – it’s smaller and lighter than the Sonos Five is.

The front of the speaker opens out, a flower blooming is probably the best way to describe it, with a waveguide inside to help distribute the sound towards the listener. Around its rear are a series of woofers and tweeters to help produce the immersive Atmos soundscape.

Everything else matches what you’d find on the Era 100. There’s a toggle switch (the hardware solution) for deactivating the speaker’s built-in microphones; or you can use the touch button to disable them (the software solution). There are buttons for playback in front of a volume slider, with a LED at the top of the speaker’s front-facing grille to indicate the mode it’s in.

There’s a USB-C port for which adapters can be used to connect products via aux, Lightning adapters or an Ethernet adapter to connect to a router for a hardwired connection. Again, like the Era 100 it is constructed from recycled plastic, engineered to draw on less power and can be serviced by the customer themselves if something goes wrong by disassembling the unit via its screws. Colour options include matte white and black finishes.

Features

• Dolby Atmos support,
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Features Quick Tune Trueplay

Everything that you’d expect from a Sonos speaker in terms of its features is included here, as is the case with virtually every other wireless speaker Sonos sells. The app provides the ability to customise settings, initiate updates, adjust the EQ (treble, bass and loudness) and access music streaming services from the likes of Tidal to Pandora and Deezer.

Connectivity has been expanded to include Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 6 and AirPlay 2, with casting over Wi-Fi supporting Spotify Connect for playing music directly from the speaker. The main headline feature here is the support of Dolby Atmos, which opens the speaker to being used with Amazon Music and Tidal’s Atmos content on their premium tiers.

It also means the Era 300 can be used in Sonos home cinema set-ups, but with its upfiring speakers to get genuine Atmos sound from the rear surrounds. If you were to use the Era 300 with a Sonos Arc and Sub, the configuration would be a 7.1.4 Atmos set-up, with upfiring effects from both in front of the listener and behind filling out the room. While Sonos supports DTS soundtracks, it doesn’t include DTS:X among its list of soundtracks, so you won’t be able to hear films with that level support in their native presentation.

And with a new variant of Trueplay in Quick Tune, the Era 300 doesn’t require the use of an iPhone’s microphones to optimise its performance for the space it’s in. Available in both iOS and Android, all that’s needed is a tap to begin the process, the speaker’s onboard microphones will assess and measure the acoustics of the room and calibrate the speaker. The only thing to remember is that this is not automatically doing this all the time, unlike the Apple HomePod 2 or Sonos’ portable speakers, as it needs to be triggered with the Sonos app.

Sound Quality

• Broad and tall soundstage
• Upfiring speakers for Atmos
• Clear, detailed performance

Again, much like my time with the Era 100, I only spent a brief amount of time listening to the Era 300, but it sounded really impressive with Dolby Atmos content.

The speaker configuration is four tweeters: one a forward-firing mid tweeter, with two side-firing efforts to create stereo separation and an upfiring tweeter for Atmos content. That’s supplemented by two woofers angled to the left and right to push sound out from the speaker.

What impressed me most was just how un-directional the speaker sounded with Atmos content played from Amazon Music. The sound of instruments and the vocals of musicians easily escaped the confines of the speaker box; much taller and wider than I’d have expected, delivering a spacious sound that at times almost wrapped around so I could hear some effects closer to my ear. Given this is a one-box Atmos system, the height, width and depth of the sound was genuinely impressive.

Sonos also demoed the speakers in a home cinema configuration, with two Era 300s as the rear speakers connected to a Sonos Arc and Sonos Sub. The Atmos effect was excellent here too, a true hemisphere of sounds was generated that placed me within a bubble of sound.

The clip was the “coffin corner” clip from Tom Gun: Maverick, the effects of fighter jets and missiles flinging across the soundstage was well done, panning from the front to rears added immersion and discrete effects like the counter measures deployed by the fighter all served to immerse you within the scene to the point where I just took it for granted and just paid attention to what I was seeing and hearing rather than taking notes.

There’s no doubt that a home cinema system with the Era 100, sub and soundbar is an expensive proposition, but at least with the Sonos Arc, it elevates the performance of whatever you’re watching into proper Dolby Atmos.

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