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Sonos Era 300 brings spatial audio home

And there’s a smaller, cheaper Sonos One replacement, too

Dan Grabham Dan Grabham
Sonos Era 300 speaker in black on a plain background

It’s been nearly a century since Alan Blumlein invented stereo sound, but Sonos’s new Era 300 might be about to usher in a new, er, era.

The six drivers inside the speaker all point in different directions – the two woofers are angled left and right along with a pair of side-firing tweeters, another tweeter points forwards, while the fourth aims upwards to reflect sound off the ceiling – meaning you can use it to listen to spatial audio.

Right now, it only supports Dolby Atmos Music via Amazon Music Unlimited, but you can also pair two of the speakers with a Sonos Arc or Beam (Gen 2) for full-on Atmos surround sound.

UPDATE: Sonos has now been in touch to say the Era 300 will support Apple Music spatial audio.

Sonos Era 300 speaker in black connected to a turntable on a sideboard. A plant can be seen in the corner with a window behind.
A Sonos Era 300 speaker in white on a sideboard.
A Sonos 300 speaker in white next to a pile of books.

Six class-D digital amplifiers should give each Era 300 enough oomph to fill a room on its own, though, and Sonos has finally extended its Trueplay customisation tech to Android owners, although it doesn’t use the phone’s microphones for fine-tuning like on iOS. The onboard microphone can also be used for voice control, with Amazon Alexa supported alongside Sonos’s own assistant.

On the back you’ll find a mute button to cover its ears, plus there’s a Bluetooth button for pairing new devices – a new addition for a mains-powered Sonos speaker – although Wi-Fi remains the key connection method. Wi-Fi 6 and AirPlay 2 are both supported.

It’s still possible to connect old-fashioned wired sources to the Era 300, but you’ll need to buy a dongle, which allows you to plug an aux cable into the USB-C port.

Sonos Era 100 speaker on a plain background

The Era 300 is joined by the Era 100 – a replacement for the Sonos One that can’t manage spatial audio but does have two angled tweeters for better stereo performance, a mid-woofer, and three class-D amps to power everything.

The Era 300 will set you back $449/£449, while the Era 100 is much cheaper at $249/£249. We’ll bring you the Stuff verdict on both as soon as we’ve wrapped our ears around them.

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home