Review: Sonos Era 300

No, of course you don’t buy a speaker to look at it. But should your gaze fall upon your speaker while you’re enjoying its sound, ideally the sight of it shouldn’t make you wince. So it’s just as well that Era 300, the latest Sonos wireless speaker and the company’s first foray into spatial audio (except for its Dolby Atmos–enabled soundbars, of course), is such an impressive and accomplished performer—its physical appearance is easy to overlook. Unless you somehow find it in your field of vision unexpectedly, anyhow, in which case it never ceases to be startling.

It’s fair to say Sonos’ ubiquity has, until now, been established as much on its utterly painless ownership experience as on the sound its products actually make. “Reasonably competitive” sound quality is plenty good enough for many listeners if it’s accompanied by class-leading ergonomics, an impeccable control app, and the simplest, most straightforward multi-room audio ecosystem around.

With Era 300, though—and with the smaller, more affordable Era 100 stereo speaker that launched at the same time—Sonos has retained all its established virtues and added audio performance that’s a match for any price-comparable, size-adjacent alternative. And in the case of the Era 300, spatial audio performance to boot.   

Spatial audio (which basically means “more than two channels,” and is almost always based on Dolby’s Atmos format) has been gaining significant traction outside its original home in the cinema, thanks in no small part to evangelical support from the likes of Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, and Tidal music streaming services.

Sonos doesn’t support Tidal’s catalog of Dolby Atmos content (boo!), but it does at least support Amazon’s and Apple’s spatial audio offerings. And though Apple, thanks to its Homepod smart speaker, is a full-service provider of spatial audio music, it’s safe to say that when it comes to the hardware, the Sonos Era 300 wipes the floor with 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 an impression of immersive, enveloping sound. There are four tweeters: one facing forward, one left, one right, and one loaded into a horn and firing upward to reflect sound from the ceiling and create a sensation of sonic height. Then a couple of mid/bass drivers are angled out to the left and the right to generate some width (and offer separation when the speaker is playing stereo content). Each driver gets an individual block of Class D amplification—this being Sonos, though, the amount of power that’s available is privileged information.

On the top of the cabinet—so unhappily angular and wonkily proportioned that my youngest daughter physically recoiled at the sight of it—there are a few physical controls. Touch-surfaces cover play/pause, skip forward/backward, and voice-assistant interaction (the Era 300 is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control), and there’s an indented (and very nicely implemented) volume slider. Aside from a brand logo and a defeatable tell-tale LED, the front of the cabinet is featureless. The bottom has a couple of little rubber feet and fixings for the cost-option stand. And at the rear, there’s a socket for mains power, a switch to kill the mics, a USB-C shaped auxiliary input (unforgivably, the bespoke line-in adapter for use with this input is a cost option, too) and a button for Bluetooth pairing.

Oh yes, Bluetooth. After who knows how many years of dismissing Bluetooth as an inferior technology fit only for its portable speakers, Sonos has undergone a Damascene conversion. So in addition to using its exemplary control app, into which any number of streaming services can be integrated, it’s possible to stream to the Era 300 using Bluetooth 5.0 with bog-standard SBC and AAC codec compatibility. Apple AirPlay 2 is also available, as is streaming via Wi-Fi—Wi-Fi 6 is supported.

As well as grouping all your preferred streaming services together, the app offers some EQ adjustment and the latest version of Sonos’ admirable Trueplay room calibration software. Newly available for Android (although in somewhat truncated form) as well as iOS, Trueplay doesn’t take long and proves brilliantly effective at tuning Era 300 to your specific environment.

The app also offers multi-room and multi-channel possibilities (if you have a couple of Era 300, they can act as rear speakers in a home cinema system along with, say, the Sonos Arc Dolby Atmos soundbar). The app remains the paradigm, the gold standard … and it makes Sonos ownership seem a profoundly sensible option regardless of any other considerations.

With Apple Music, BBC Sounds, and Tidal streaming services loaded into the control app (and with a decent period of bemoaning the unavailability of Tidal’s spatial audio content observed), and with Trueplay having done its rapid and worthwhile thing, the listening can begin. And right from the off, it’s safe to say Era 300 makes a more immediately positive impression than any Sonos speaker since, well, I don’t know when.

From the Dolby Atmos mixes of Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, stereo versions of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express and Saya Gray’s *19 Masters—*and with some spoken-word content from the BBC’s Radio 4 thrown in—this Sonos speaker is never less than expressive, informative, and entertaining. This, it’s safe to say, has not automatically been the case with previous Sonos speakers, and it makes Era 300 one of the most compelling pound-for-pound wireless speakers around.   

Spatial audio is the party-piece, of course, and the Sonos makes good on the promises of its specification. Sound spreads from the inelegant cabinet in all directions, and for a considerable distance—the width, depth, and, yes, height that it’s capable of generating never stops impressing.

Despite the scale and the complexity of its presentation, though, there’s no lack of definition to the speaker’s sound, and a definite suggestion of location for each individual strand of a recording.

And no matter if you’re enjoying Dolby Atmos or (suddenly dismally antiquated) stereo sound, Era 300 is a poised and eloquent listen. It retains and reveals an absolute stack of detail both broad and fine from a recording and gives just the right amount of emphasis and context. Bass sounds are deep to a frankly unlikely degree, properly controlled at their leading edges and absolutely packed with information regarding texture and timbre. There’s a stack of variation to low-frequency stuff, a proper sensation of momentum, and, as a consequence, convincing rhythmic expression.

It’s a similarly gratifying story throughout the rest of the frequency range. Voices in the midrange are articulate, nicely positioned in enough space to do their thing without becoming crowded, and always expressive where character and attitude are concerned. From the close-mic’d confessions of Billie Eilish to the none-more-dispassionate stylings of Ralf Hütter, a singer’s motivations are never less than explicit.

At the top end, there’s substance and shine to treble sounds in equal measure, similarly lavish levels of detail, and an admirable determination to avoid getting hard or edgy, even at considerable volume. And there’s no two ways about it—the Sonos Era 3 is capable of considerable volume.

The speaker demonstrates great tonal consistency throughout the frequency range, and even when it’s doing its utmost to create sound as far from its actual cabinet as possible, there is a tangible sense of unity and togetherness to its sound. Despite the fact that some strands of a recording may be quite a distance, in physical terms, from some others, they never sound estranged or detached. It’s not an easy feat, and it’s perhaps the single most impressive thing about Era 300’s presentation—and that’s when judged against any number of other impressive aspects.

On the downside, the Era 300 represents, among other things, 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 era, where a pecking order is much less straightforward to discern.

But as an overall package, Era 300 represents a pretty successful day at the office for Sonos. It sounds great, it does the usual Sonos thing where your wider audio system is concerned, and it’s accomplished enough with spatial audio to make the format seem less a gimmick and more a coming force. Just make sure you’ve steeled yourself before you look at it.