{"id":625362,"date":"2023-04-03T13:12:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T18:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/03\/sonos-era-300-review-stunning-spatial-superior-sound\/"},"modified":"2023-04-03T13:12:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T18:12:00","slug":"sonos-era-300-review-stunning-spatial-superior-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/03\/sonos-era-300-review-stunning-spatial-superior-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonos Era 300 Review: Stunning Spatial, Superior Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

No, of course<\/span> you don\u2019t buy a speaker to look at it. But should your gaze fall upon your speaker while you\u2019re enjoying its sound, ideally the sight of it shouldn\u2019t make you wince. So it\u2019s just as well that Era 300<\/a>, the latest Sonos wireless speaker<\/a> and the company\u2019s first foray into spatial audio<\/a> (except for its Dolby Atmos\u2013enabled soundbars<\/a>, of course), is such an impressive and accomplished performer\u2014its 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to say Sonos\u2019 ubiquity has, until now, been established as much on its utterly painless ownership experience as on the sound its products actually make. \u201cReasonably competitive\u201d sound quality is plenty good enough for many listeners if it\u2019s accompanied by class-leading ergonomics, an impeccable control app, and the simplest, most straightforward multi-room audio ecosystem around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Era 300, though\u2014and with the smaller, more affordable Era 100<\/a> stereo speaker that launched at the same time\u2014Sonos has retained all its established virtues and added audio performance that\u2019s a match for any price-comparable, size-adjacent alternative. And in the case of the Era 300, spatial audio performance to boot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Homepod Humbling<\/p>\n

Spatial audio (which basically means \u201cmore than two channels,\u201d and is almost always based on Dolby\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sonos doesn\u2019t support Tidal\u2019s catalog of Dolby Atmos content (boo!<\/em>), but it does at least support Amazon\u2019s and Apple\u2019s spatial audio offerings. And though Apple, thanks to its Homepod<\/a> smart speaker, is a full-service provider of spatial audio music, it\u2019s safe to say that when it comes to the hardware, the Sonos Era 300 wipes the floor with the Apple Homepod. Yes, it\u2019s more expensive\u2014but it\u2019s worth it, and then some.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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\u2014this being Sonos, though, the amount of power that\u2019s available is privileged information.<\/p>\n

On the top of the cabinet\u2014so unhappily angular and wonkily proportioned that my youngest daughter physically recoiled at the sight of it\u2014there 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Sonos Sees the Blue Light<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2014Wi-Fi 6 is supported.<\/p>\n

As well as grouping all your preferred streaming services together, the app offers some EQ adjustment and the latest version of Sonos\u2019 admirable Trueplay room calibration software. Newly available for Android (although in somewhat truncated form) as well as iOS, Trueplay doesn\u2019t take long and proves brilliantly effective at tuning Era 300 to your specific environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a>). The app remains the paradigm, the gold standard \u2026 and it makes Sonos ownership seem a profoundly sensible option regardless of any other considerations.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s spatial audio content observed), and with Trueplay having done its rapid and worthwhile thing, the listening can begin. And right from the off, it\u2019s safe to say Era 300 makes a more immediately positive impression than any Sonos speaker since, well, I don\u2019t know when.<\/p>\n

Best Sounding Sonos Speaker Yet<\/p>\n

From the Dolby Atmos mixes of Billie Eilish\u2019s\u00a0When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?<\/em>\u00a0and Fleetwood Mac\u2019s\u00a0Tusk,<\/em>\u00a0stereo versions of Kraftwerk\u2019s\u00a0Trans Europe Express<\/em>\u00a0and Saya Gray\u2019s\u00a0*19 Masters\u2014*and with some spoken-word content from the BBC\u2019s\u00a0Radio 4\u00a0thrown in\u2014this Sonos speaker is never less than expressive, informative, and entertaining. This, it\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2014the width, depth, and, yes, height that it\u2019s capable of generating never stops impressing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Simon Lucas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, of course you don\u2019t buy a speaker to look at it. But should your gaze fall upon your speaker while you\u2019re enjoying its sound, ideally the sight of it shouldn\u2019t make you wince. So it\u2019s just as well that Era 300, the latest Sonos wireless speaker and the company\u2019s first foray into spatial audio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":625363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[534,661,22090],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-625362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial","8":"category-review","9":"category-sonos"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}