Sonos has for more than 20 years innovated in the whole-house audio category, and through its history it has released products like the PLAY:5, Arc Ultra and Sub 4, among many others. Fast forward to Sonos’ latest all-in-one speaker solution and the subject of this review, we’re taking a look at Sonos’s competitively priced Era 100.
CE Pro & Cons
Pros:
- The Era 100 installs easily using the app and its footprint integrates into most rooms
- The speaker produces a big soundstage that will fill small- and medium-size rooms
- With the Bluetooth and AirPlay options users can stream from their smart devices
Cons:
- Sonos is the benchmark home audio company, but its app navigation isn’t as user friendly as it used to be
- Occasionally the AirPlay connection will lock up
Sonos Era 100 Features
The all-in-one speaker provides homeowners with high levels of versatility through the ability to use pairs of Era 100 in larger rooms as more of a traditional set of stereo speakers. Dealers can also setup the powered speaker as surround speakers in a Sonos surround sound system/immersive audio system.
Sonos’ small-footprint, room-friendly speaker is just over 7 inches tall by a little more than 5 inches deep and about 4.7 inches wide to support its placement in a variety of locations. Internally, the Era 100 utilizes a trio of Class D amplifiers to power a pair of tweeters and a single woofer. The speaker also incorporates a far-field microphone array to drive its beamforming and echo cancellation technologies, as well as its voice control technologies that includes a choice of Sonos Voice Control and Amazon Alexa.
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Additionally, the Era 100 utilizes the company’s S2 operating system that includes the ability to stream services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, TIDAL, TuneIn, and the company’s Sonos Radio.
Moreover, Sonos says the speaker is humidity resistant.
Additional Specs
- Multi-driver speaker powered by three internal amplifiers
- App-based setup and configuration
- Hardwired and Wi-Fi network connectivity options
- Voice control options to provide a choice of control methods
- Single enclosure, stereo speaker includes Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay 2 and USB-C options
- MSRP is $249
Speaker Setup and Installation
Getting going with the affordable Sonos speaker, once again like its other products, all I needed to do was open the Sonos app and follow the prompts. The prompts enabled me to place the Era 100 onto my wireless network and assimilate the speaker into the rest of my Sonos whole-house system.
Initially, I had placed the Era 100 in my bedroom, and shortly afterwards I moved the speaker into my dining. All I needed to do was rename the speaker “dining room.” To do this I pressed the mechanical wheel icon in the upper right of my iPhone screen to access settings and I hit the arrow on the bedroom speaker, which allowed me to rename the speaker.
Later, I ran the basic Trueplay equalization (EQ) option to better integrate the speaker into my room environment.
Audio Performance
I’ve stated this before, and I’ll say it again: I’m a big fan of the Sonos product line and when I think back about previous generations of Sonos products like the PLAY: 3 for example, I think the Era 100 sounds fuller, smoother and bigger.
Listening to the Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and songs like “Red Wine Supernova” and “After Midnight” I can hear more mid-bass than I recall hearing through the older PLAY:3 speaker. That mid-bass allowed me to hear the funkiness of the “After Midnight” bass line and I thought the speaker delivered a nice level of dynamics with this modern classic pop record.
Moving on to some 90s rock I was able to rock out with Sponge, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I loved the attack the Era 100 was able to produce on the beginning of “Ants Marching” during the beginning of the song’s initial snare drum strikes. Listening to Pearl Jam’s Unplugged record I could hear a slight upper midrange emphasis, but overall, the image the speaker produces has plenty of air and depth to allow me to hear all the instruments within the image.
Another performance attribute I like about the speaker is its sound stage or dispersion characteristics. As a single-enclosure stereo speaker I thought the Era 100 is more than capable of filling my dining room with a nice, wide soundstage. Moving off axis I did not find the image to completely collapse, and through these performance attributes, the speaker serves well as an entertainment solution for dinners, background entertainment, and general listening sessions.
App Integration
Focusing on the app and some of its options, I admittedly like previous versions of the app more than the current version, but unlike a lot of apps, the Sonos app is stable and reliable. My biggest issue is as an Apple Music subscriber it’s simply easier to use AirPlay and navigate the Apple Music app. To Sonos’ credit the company does provide AirPlay and Bluetooth options so the only thing I use the Sonos app for is to choose what room/zone I want to use.
Other app features such as Trueplay are easy to use. For my dining room for example, I chose the basic Trueplay EQ process. All I needed to do was place my phone in my preferred listening position and the app emitted several test tones, which the Sonos software/app measures. A moment later the EQ process was completed, and it took less than a minute. After the EQ was done, I found some of the high-end edge had been taken off the Era 100’s sound, which makes sense based on the room’s hard floor and sheetrock wall surfaces, and how sound reacts in a room with hard surfaces.
Final Thoughts on the Sonos Era 100
I feel like I say this a lot when I comment about Sonos products, but I think the Era 100 represents one of the best values in home audio. For $1,000 a homeowner can invest into a four-zone whole-house audio system, or they can simply take it one room at a time for $249. Moreover, for about $500 for a pair dealers can create a turnkey true, stereo system or add a set of speakers to a Sonos soundbar to create an instant immersive audio surround sound system.
Additionally, I’ll contend the complaints about the Sonos app are overrated. If someone doesn’t like the app, they can use AirPlay or Bluetooth to use the streaming app of their choice … problem solved.
With all of this going for it, there’s no question in my mind that if someone is considering a whole-house audio system the Era 100 should be the starting point for their audio needs.
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