Sonos Era 100 and 300 speakers allegedly leaked ahead of March launch
Here’s a first look at the latest members of the Sonos family.
Image: Sonos via The Verge
Details of Sonos’ yet-to-be-released Era 300 and 100 speakers have allegedly been leaked ahead of their official launch in March.
According to The Verge, which claims to have obtained marketing images and their price estimates, the Sonos Era 300 will be priced at around $450, making it less expensive than the brand’s flagship Sonos Five. And just as previously rumoured, the Era 300 sports a rather unusual ‘dual-angled’ body designed to showcase spatial audio and Dolby Atmos.
The speaker is said to feature a total of six drivers that direct sound forward, left, right, and up, and a size that falls somewhere in between the current Sonos One and Sonos Five. While the Era 300 was initially thought of as a direct competitor to Apple’s spatial audio smart speaker, HomePod 2 ($299), that should change given the device’s allegedly higher price tag.
Meanwhile, the lower-spec’d Era 100 is said to retail for around $250. With a smaller size, no spatial audio support and overall less powerful proposition, the Era 100 appears poised to replace the brand’s existing entry-level offering, the Sonos One ($219).
Available in black or white, both Era speakers will launch at the end of March, and are expected to come with features not found on earlier Sonos home speakers. Firstly, both the Era 300 and Era 100 will include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, Airplay 2, as well as a USB-C line in, which allows you to physically connect to external music sources such as a turntable.
The speakers are also said to feature built-in microphones and auto EQ. For those who don’t want their voice assistants snooping around 24/7, there’s a supposedly a new “speech bubble button” that lets you temporarily mute those mics as well as a physical switch that disconnects power to the mics completely.
And like most of their offerings, the Era 300 and 100 can be used alongside the Sonos Arc or Beam Gen 2 soundbars as part of a home cinema system.
One sticky issue remains though: While users will be able to stream spatial audio tracks from Amazon Music Unlimited, Sonos is reportedly yet to reach an agreement with Apple to play Apple Music’s Dolby Atmos tracks on the Era 300. Though that could certainly change in the weeks leading to the launch.
