The Era 100 and Era 300 joined the Sonos speaker range as part of its revamp back in 2023, and if you are in the market for a new Sonos speaker, what are the differences between to two?
We’ve pitted them against one another, not necessarily to tell you which speaker is better but which speaker would be better for you depending on your needs. We’ve gone through the design, the feature set and sound quality to help you decided if you’re contemplating getting either or both speakers for your home.
Without further ado, here’s the Sonos Era 100 versus Era 300 face-off you’ve been itching to read.
Price
There’s a big price gap between the Sonos Era 100 and Era 300, so much so that they’re not really direct rivals. When it first launched, the Sonos Era 100 was $249 / £249 / €279. During sales events it often falls to around £199.
The Sonos Era 300 is $449 / £449 / €499 but it can do things that the Era 100 can’t do with its more complex driver set-up and support for Dolby Atmos.
Design
The Sonos Era 300 takes a bigger footprint that the Era 100, with a width of 260mm and depth of 185mm. For comparison, the Era 100 measures at 120mm wide and 130.5mm deep, although it is taller if that makes any difference to where you place the speaker.
Both come in matte black and white options, it’s rare for Sonos to offer a product in any other colour aside from its portable speakers. We find the Era 300 to be one of Sonos’ more striking looking speakers with an hourglass figure that’s best suited to being sat on its belly as if you tip the speaker up, it’ll stop playing audio. You can also purchase third party stands to place the speakers on as well.
Both speakers have a toggle switch that deactivates the built-in microphone if you don’t want the voice assistant listening to you. Touch capactive buttons are included on the top surface, and they’re the same for each speaker with playback and volume control options
Features
When it comes to features, both speakers cover most of the same ground. They offer the same connectivity options, with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, as well as a USB-C line in for a physical connection to your smartphone or laptop. Neither carries an Ethernet port, which now requires an adapter through the USB-C port.
Both speakers support Trueplay tuning and voice commands through the likes of Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control. Quick Tune is a newer feature Sonos introduced with the Era speakers, and it allows for faster optimisation than the normal Trueplay process. This is especially useful if you have an Android device as Trueplay isn’t supported on that platform.
You can pair both with another speaker of its type for a stereo pairing but you can’t have a stereo pair with an Era 100 and Era 300 together. You can, however, create a multi-room system and have the two speakers connect on the same Wi-Fi network, with the ability to play music on all speakers, or play different music on each one.
This is possible through the Sonos app, which experience several problems when Sonos relaunched the app in 2024. A number of the problems have been fixed but Sonos is still ironing out the gremlins. In any case, the control app allows for music streaming from a range of music apps such as Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz and plenty more.
The biggest difference between the two speakers is that the Era 300 supports Dolby Atmos support for immersive spatial sound, with can fire audio that’s bigger and more taller. That said, if you have a Sonos soundbar, you could pair it with two Era 300 speakers acting as the surround speakers, and the same can be done with an Era 100. We’d say the Era 300 goes better with the Arc Ultra soundbar, while the Era 100 is better for the Beam Gen 2.
Sound Quality
In terms of the speakers within each speaker the Sonos Era 100 features 3 class-D digital amplifiers, two tweeters and a single midwoofer. Sonos has doubled the specs for the Era 300, with 6 class-D digital amplifiers, 4 tweeters and a pair of woofers to maximise low-end output. What difference does that have?
For the Era 300 you get a much bigger sound, especially with Dolby Atmos mixes, with the speaker able to create a sense of instruments and voices being placed near or far, out wide and up above. The speaker does need some space to operate and not block where the sound is coming from but we found the effect to be very impressive. It does depend on the song and how well it’s mixed in Atmos though.
The Era 100 doesn’t have as big a sound, but for a speaker of its size it does deliver a wider soundstage. It offers a bigger emphasis on bass, which adds to the speaker’s warmer presentation. Treble is bright and clear though, and the midrange has more weight to its sound that the Sonos One did.
But we prefer the crisper, more detailed presentation of the Era 300. It’s a more balanced, nuanced and clearer sound, and even with non-Atmos music, it can create a soundstage that gives the impression of stereo, though it’s not the widest soundstage you’ll ever hear.
Verdict
The Era 100 and Era 300 aren’t speakers that are competing against each other. Which one you go for depends on the experience you want to have.
The Era 300 offers a bigger, room-filling experience with a sound that’s much wider and taller than the speaker if you’re playing Dolby Atmos tracks. The size and sound of the Era 100 is for more smaller rooms, but it would make a good case for parties that’s to its bass performance and loudness of its sound.
Each Sonos speaker is very good, with both earning 4.5 stars. Depending on what you’re using them for, you can’t go wrong with either one.
