Sonos Era 100 – The Best Smart Speaker Evolves!

Design

If there’s one thing that Sonos do well, it’s design. They’re like the Apple of the speaker world. The Era 100 is no exception to this. It is wonderfully crafted.

The outside of the Era 100 is almost completely wrapped in an all metal grille which not only looks great but also makes it hard wearing unlike the fabric cloth that you find on most other speakers.

The top of the Sonos Era 100 is where you’ll find the touch sensitive buttons for adjusting the volume, playing and pausing your music, as well as skipping tracks forwards and backwards.

Controls

The volume slider allows you to quickly change the volume with just the slide of your fingers rather than having to rapidly press a volume up button a dozen times. Elegantly done.

Whilst there are mics on the Sonos Era 100 so that it can interact with your voice, that is why it’s labelled a smart speaker after all, you can turn this off too. There are two mic mute buttons on the Era 100. A touch senstive one on top which will soft disable the mic, and for those that are completely paranoid there is also a physical mic button at the rear of the speaker that will turn the power off from the microphone entirely.

The rear of the speaker also houses the Bluetooth pairing button as Sonos finally relents and brings Bluetooth to their speakers.

The bottom of the speaker is where you’ll find a USB-C port. For what this is used for we’ll get to in a bit.

Size

The Sonos Era 100 retains it’s compact size measuring in at a little over 7″ tall and 4.7″wide. Despite its small size it’s still pretty heavy at 4.4 pounds or just over 2kg. So there’s plenty of heft and weight to this.

For comparisons sake, the Era 100 is slightly taller than the Sonos One it replaces but still takes up approximately the same footprint.

Connectivity

Wireless

The Sonos Era 100 is predominantly designed to be connected wirelessly over your home Wi-Fi. It also supports Wi-Fi 6 support too. This gives it a stronger and more stable connection, even on a congested network, for those routers that support it.

Sonos has also finally relented and added bluetooth support to the Era 100. This is a feature that many have been asking for from Sonos for years so it’s great to see this feature added. You will get better audio playing music over the Wi-Fi connection but it’s good to have the convenience of Bluetooth. You can now easily stream music to the Era 100 from your mobile phone, tablet, or laptop, without having to install and use the Sonos app.

You can also use Apple Airplay 2 to stream music direct to the Era 100.

Wired

You can also use the USB-C port at the back of the speaker to plug in an external audio source to the Sonos Era 100, such as a turntable, via a 3.5mm audio to USB-C adapter. You can also play music over a wired ethernet connection too!

However there’s a catch, as you have to buy either a $20 or $40 USB-C adapter to use each.I realise that probably helps keep the cost of the speaker itself down, and it’s not something that most people will use, but I still think it’s a miss on Sonos’ part. If you’re going to include a feature in a speaker, you really should provide a way to use it, without paying extra.

Voice Assistants

The Sonos Era 100 supports two voice assistants, Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa. However, setting up either of these wasn’t super straightforward.

Sonos Voice Control is lacking in what I would consider some pretty basic integrations. It doesn’t officially support Spotify yet and so you can’t play music from Spotify using it. You just get a voice error stating that Spotify is’t available yet. So Sonos Voice Control definitely has a bit of catching up to do before it can compete with the other major voice assistants.

Alexa wasn’t without issues either though. During setup it wasn’t linking to my Sonos account properly. I had to disable, and then re-enable, the Sonos skill in the Amazon Alexa app on my phone before it would work properly.

So it’s not as simple as everyone seems to be making it out it adverts, but once it is set up then it’s all good to go.

Selective Hearing

The mic pick up on the Sonos Era 100 is exceptional. It can easily hear you over background noise and music. Oddly though, the mic is less, and more, responsive depending on the Voice Assistant that you pick.

Use Sonos Voice Control and you really have to speak up to be heard. Alexa on the other hand can hear you even whilst whispering. There’s no way to change the sensitivity threshold of either so it’s just something to be mindful of.

The Best Voice Assistant?

Out of the two, Alexa is the more mature and complete voice assistant. So if you’re looking for a whole house solution then it is the better option, but I’m loving what Sonos are trying to do with their voice control though by just providing a system that controls music and nothing else. Only time will tell whether Sonos can make their assistant more functional than it is at the moment.

The glaring admission here though is Google Assistant support. There is no mention of Google Assistant being available at launch, or even that it will be coming in an update. Given the legal issues between both Sonos and Google I don’t see that changing any time soon, which is a shame as Google Assistant is my favourite voice assistant out there.

The Mobile App

As well as being controlled by your voice, the speaker can also be controlled via the Sonos mobile app which serves as an amalgamator and can connect to almost a hundred different music services. From Spotify to Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, and beyond. It is one of the most mature music streaming apps out there.

If you have more than one Sonos speaker you can also use it to play to multiple speakers at this same time. So you could control all the speakers around your house using the one app. You can also change the EQ of each speaker from within the app and adjust the bass and treble, as well as a loudness toggle for even more bass. Firmware updates are also available for your speakers.

Sounding at its best

All Sonos speakers are equipped with “True Play” which uses your phone to optimize the sound of your Sonos speaker for the acoustics of your room. Doing it definitely improves the sound of these speakers. Previously this has only been available to iPhone users. However, “True Play” is now available for Android users too, which is great.

However, there’s a catch because there’s now two “True Play” modes. There’s “Quick Tune” which uses the internal mics on the speaker to measure the room, and that only takes a few seconds. You don’t even need a mobile phone for this as the calibration is being done by the mics in the speaker itself. However Sonos themselves have said that you’ll get better results if you use the “Advanced Tuning” option. This is the traditional “True Play” method that uses the phone and the speaker itself and unfortunately it’s still iPhone only. So yes, everyone gets “True Play”, kind of. It’s still better than nothing though.

I noticed a definite Improvement after Quick Tuning the Era 100 when moving it from one room to another. So it’s definitely worth doing.

The Sound

The Sonos Era 100 comes with two tweeters dedicated to the high frequencies which are angled outwards so as to give you a rich left and right stereo experience, at least according to Sonos. The woofer is dedicated to the lower frequencies and is 25% bigger than the one on the Sonos One. Powering all of that are three class D digital amplifiers.

“Wave guides” are built into the speaker grille to help create a wider sound stage from the compact speaker.

Sonos speakers have always sounded great, and the Era 100 really doesn’t disppoint. There is plenty of bass, especially for it’s size. I’d say it even gives larger speakers a run for their money. There’s plenty of weight and presence to the bass but it’s still controlled and not woolly.

The two tweeters also ensure that vocals are clear and well heard over that bass. It doesn’t really sound stereo. Well, no, The two tweeters are just too close together so there’s no real stereo separation A single speaker just can’t beat a pair of speakers for stereo separation. You can ofcourse buy two Era 100’s and connect them together for true stereo playback if you wished.

You could even take a pair or Era 100’s and make them the rear channels of a gome cinema system, paired up with either a Sonos Beam 2 or Arc Ultra. Add a Sonos sub to that and you now have an full home cinema surround sound system.So you can build your setup over time. You don’t have to buy everything at once.

The Sonos Era 100 also has an incredibly wide soundstage for a speaker of it’s size. Certainly better than the previous Sonos One speaker. Music sounds as though the sound it’s coming from the general direction of the speaker rather than exactly from it. So it creates a wall of sound, rather than a point of sound. It is a just great room-filling.

Verdict

So if you’re after great sound, with lots of connection options, all wrapped up in a solid well-designed compact package, then you really can’t go wrong with the Sonos Era 100. It really is a great speaker.

Unless you’re wed to the Google Assistant ecosystem that is.

Having said that, Alexa works great, Sonos Voice Control is getting better, and you can still control what’s playing on your speaker from the Sonos app, Spotify, or pretty much any other music streaming app you’re using. So it’s not a loss that I think most people will notice.

The Sonos Era 100 is available in black or white and retails for $249 US dollars.