Sonos Era 100 review

The Era 100 may boast a brand-new name, but it takes up a familiar spot in the Sonos line-up: this is a direct follow-up to the Sonos One, itself the successor to the Play:1. 

That’s an excellent lineage of compact wireless speakers, the affordable(ish) entry points to Sonos’s often not-so-affordable larger ecosystem. The Era 100 has some big shoes to fill. 

The Era 100’s strength is that it takes the great Sonos sound we’ve always raved about and pairs it with more flexible features including line-in, Trueplay on Android, and even Bluetooth support – but all is not quite as rosy as it seems.

This may be a new era for Sonos, but change is never easy.

Design & build 

• Larger, more curved design 
• Streamlined touch controls 
• Available in black or white 

At first glance the Era 100 looks similar to the old Sonos One, though things have changed a little. For one thing, this is slightly taller and deeper than the older speaker – it won’t totally change where it will fit in your home, but gave Sonos room to squeeze in a little more sonic oomph. 

The design has also been curved further, with an oval shape to the body instead of the rounded circle in the previous generation. 

The Sonos design language is still all over the Era though, from the choice of black or white finishes to the simple logo and sleek metal grille that covers most of the body. 

The biggest changes are actually to the speakers top, where the touch controls have been completely re-arranged. The best addition is a new groove across the centre, which you slide your finger along in either direction to raise or lower the volume.  

Dominic Preston / Foundry

The play/pause and back/forwards buttons have moved closer to the front edge of the speaker for easy reach when you need to tap at them quickly, while the less-used button to activate the voice controls sits on the back edge. A Bluetooth button is found right on the rear side of the body, as is a physical mute switch for the microphone. 

Both the product and its packaging use more recycled materials than before, and the speaker has been assembled with screws rather than glue, which should also improve repairability.

Connectivity 

• Wi-Fi 6 
• Bluetooth option 
• Line-in and Ethernet through dongles – sold separately 

Connectivity is arguably where Sonos has changed the Era 100 most, with small tweaks, two major new additions, and one downgrade that’s certain to frustrate some existing owners considering an upgrade. 

The biggest change is the introduction of Bluetooth – included for the first time in one of Sonos’s fixed home speakers, having previously been limited to the portable Move and Roam. 

Dominic Preston / Foundry

See also  Bose Smart Soundbar 600 review

Sonos still recommends Wi-Fi over Bluetooth, which might be why it opted to include the aged 5.0 spec Bluetooth. Much as I like the option to let friends quickly connect over Bluetooth, or stream music from my Bluetooth-enabled record player, quality clearly dips – as does stability, with sporadic drops even at incredibly close range. 

Audio from a Bluetooth source can be shared around the rest of your Sonos system using the app, though you’ll have to keep the Era 100 in that speaker group – if you remove it, the Bluetooth stops. If for some reason you want the Era to receive the Bluetooth signal but only play the audio elsewhere in the house, the only option is to temporarily drop the Era’s volume to zero. 

You may prefer the option to connect with an aux line-in – not a total first for Sonos, but new to its smaller speakers. There’s a wrinkle here though: to take advantage, you’ll need to buy the $19/£19/€25 official line-in adapter, which plugs into the speaker’s rear USB-C port.  

Dominic Preston / Foundry

Don’t go thinking you can use an existing headphone adapter either: the USB-C-to-3.5mm adapters given away for free with many smartphones are monodirectional, designed to send audio out to 3.5mm headphones, not in from a 3.5mm audio source.  

Mine didn’t work, and Sonos warns that most won’t – you really might have to cough up the 20 and buy the official part, at least until third-party companies step in to offer cheaper alternatives. At the time of writing this simple adapter has backdated orders for the next two months on the Sonos UK site, suggesting Sonos may have underestimated our demand for an aux-in. 

Things get worse if you want Ethernet. While an Ethernet port used to be included as standard, it’s now been taken away. You can add it back in – but that dongle is $39/£39/€45, for a combo adapter that includes both Ethernet and 3.5mm in one. So if you don’t trust your Wi-Fi network, you now have to spend extra to wire the speaker in. 

That’s a problem given that during my time reviewing the Era 100 – and its larger 300 sibling – I’ve had both speakers drop in and out of my Sonos network a little inconsistently. It’s not clear if this is a Wi-Fi issue specifically, or some other firmware glitch, but rebooting the speaker and/or my router works as a temporary fix. This is the kind of performance problem I’m not really used to from Sonos though – and I would have loved an Ethernet option to give me some insurance.

Smart features 

• Sonos app support 
• Basic voice controls  – but no Google Assistant
• Trueplay tuning – on both iOS and Android 

For the most part, the smart side of the Era 100 is business as usual for Sonos. 

The speaker will either work on its own or connect into an existing Sonos network in your home, at which point you can control it through the official Sonos app, which you can in turn connect to your streaming service or radio of choice.

Setup is quick and efficient, though the app itself remains a fairly clunky way to manage your speakers and music playback – when you can, it’s usually easier to just control music through your normal music app of choice. 

Dominic Preston / Foundry

If you prefer you can enable voice controls. You have a choice of using Sonos’s own voice assistant – which can handle music playback, but not much else, and isn’t compatible with Spotify – or link it up to Amazon Alexa instead. Support for Google Assistant is no longer available however, which may limit how well this slips into your smart home. 

One definite improvement comes from Trueplay. This is Sonos’s longstanding tech to tune the speaker’s output and optimise it for the acoustics of the room it’s in. Previously this was limited to iOS devices only, using the iPhone’s microphone to understand the speaker’s sounds, but the Era 100 now supports a version of the tech on Android too. 

It’s a simpler iteration described as ‘quick tuning’, a development of the automatic Trueplay found on its portable speakers. It uses the Era’s own microphones to tune the audio, not your phone’s, so can only ‘listen’ from one point in the room. If you’re on an iPhone, you’ll see both this option and the older ‘advanced tuning’. 

I found that even this quick Trueplay had a notable impact on sound quality, deepening and rounding out the soundscape. Switching it back off made the Era 100 sound thin and almost tinny by comparison. Upgrade to the iPhone’s advanced Trueplay didn’t improve things much further, so Android users won’t miss much from using this simpler version. 

The only downside is that Sonos says this quick Trueplay won’t be added to older products, leaving Android owners with other Sonos gear still unable to make the most of it. 

Sound quality 

• Punchy, well-rounded sound 
• Plenty of volume 
• Sounds great from almost any angle 

The guts of the Era 100 have mostly been carried over from the Sonos One, so you shouldn’t expect a radical overhaul to the speaker’s sound if you already own an older model. 

The bigger build has allowed Sonos to pack in a little extra though, with the One’s mid-woofer and tweeter joined by a third speaker, an additional tweeter. The twin small speakers are now angled outwards slightly, with a wave-guide aperture in front, to create a wider dispersion of sound. 

Dominic Preston / Foundry

This is a trick Sonos learnt from its portable speakers, and it creates a more open soundscape. The aim, the company says, is to remove the ‘sweet spot’ for listening and help the Era 100 sound just as good from anywhere in the room. 

The effect isn’t quite perfect – move around and you will hear the sonics shift – but for the most part the Era sounds great wherever you are. Even sitting directly behind the speaker the sound is solid, mostly only losing some mids. 

Overall the sound profile here is rich, warm, and balanced. The Era 100 should suit most genres, with deceptively powerful bass for its size, but not so much that it overwhelms.  

It’s capable of some real clarity, especially with Trueplay enabled, with crisp separation of tracks’ various elements. 

Dominic Preston / Foundry

Serious bassheads or those filling large rooms will of course have to upgrade to something larger – that’s just physics I’m afraid – but for smaller spaces and most use cases this is about as good as it gets at the price. 

You can both connect this to other Sonos speakers through the app for multi-room audio, connect this to another Era 100 for stereo sound, or link it to a soundbar and Sub Mini as part of a surround setup, though with only a single Era 100 I haven’t been able to test these latter options. 

Price & availability 

At $249/£249/€279 the Era 100 is a little more expensive than the Sonos One it succeeds, but still the most affordable of Sonos’s home speakers (only the portable Roam costs a little less), and far less than the $449/£429/€499 Era 300. 

Still, it’s not cheap, and anyone hoping for a stereo pair will have to spend a pretty penny. Remember too that if you want to use line-in that’s a further $19/£19/€25, going up to $39/$39/€45 if you want Ethernet too. 

Dominic Preston / Foundry

The sound quality mostly justifies the price, though the omission of Google Assistant support means owners of many smart home set-ups (including myself) will find the Sonos option less appealing than before – you can probably find similar sound, including Google, elsewhere for less. 

For the moment in fact, you can find exactly that in the old Sonos One – that speaker is still on sale, though no longer manufactured, so stock will run out eventually. 

For more options, check out our full ranking of the best Sonos speakers, or the best Bluetooth speakers for audio from other manufacturers. 

Verdict 

The Sonos Era 100 may represent a new age for Sonos, but the company is stepping into it haltingly. 

Audio quality is hard to argue with, improved slightly from the previous generation thanks to a combination of hardware tweaks and the roll out of simplified Trueplay tech to more devices. 

Adding Bluetooth should have been an easy win, but spotty performance from the older 5.0 spec has made a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the company’s preference for Wi-Fi tech. The line-in option is great too, but limiting it – and Ethernet – to expensive extra dongles is off-putting when the price has already gone up. 

Throw in the fact that Google Assistant support has been jettisoned and I suspect many buyers will find the previous gen Sonos One the more appealing option as long as it’s still on sale, with Google and Ethernet included as standard. 

If you don’t need Google Assistant, aux-in, or Ethernet, then the Era 100 is exceptional. But if you do, the added costs sting and make this Sonos feel a little less smart. 

Specs

• Alexa or Sonos Voice Control
• Far-field mics
• 3.5in mid-woofer
• Two tweeters
• Three Class-D amplifiers
• Touch controls
• Wi-Fi 6
• Bluetooth 5.0
• USB-C port (line-in and Ethernet via dongle)
• 182.5x120x130.5mm
• 2.02kg