Comments
It’s been 22 years since Sonos has been launching cutting-edge home audio devices. In 2024, it’s a crowded market, but will the legacy brand be able to leave its mark with the recently launched Sonos Era 100? Let’s find out!
Design
The Sonos Era 100 looks like most vertical cylindrical speaker systems and can be easily tucked away in the corner of your living room.
Measuring 7.18 x 4.72 x 5.13 inches, the speaker is powered by the mains and has a long enough power cord that lets me install the speaker a little far away from my TV system. Weighing in at 2.2 kg, the speaker is not the most portable, when you’re heading out for a party or a staycation.
The device I reviewed came in a matte black plastic finish - there’s a white colour variant available as well. While it looks semi-premium, it is a dust magnet picking up dust from surroundings every time I use the touch panel.
The top surface of the Era 100 features touch controls for play/pause, and skip tracks and an indent along which I can slide my finger to tweak the volume.
While audible beeps for the controls on the touch surface are welcome, the presence of haptic feedback would have rounded off the experience well.
The rear side of the speaker features a Bluetooth button for pairing devices. There’s also a physical switch for the microphone as well as a USB-C port. This USB-C port can be used solely for line-in audio through a separate dongle, and cannot power the device.
App experience
The Sonos S2 app allows a simple setup, enabling users to name the speaker, adjust equaliser settings, and connect to Sonos Radio and popular streaming services such as Spotify through it. The initial setup using the app took about a minute or two using Wi-Fi. After that, it was easy to play music wirelessly from any source both via Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 6.
Audio Quality
The Sonos Era 100 gives a stereo experience with two angled tweeters and a woofer which makes an immersive surround sound stage. The Sonos Era 100’s acoustic tuning is in one word - perfect. I felt this while listening to Sound of Salaar composed by Ravi Basrur. The deep bass along with the very nuanced instrumental separation among the violins, drums, and wind instruments in the composition left me amazed. What particularly impressed me was the immersive stereo audio experience from a speaker this compact.
I also watched a couple of episodes of the crime fiction TV show, Reacher, and the speaker nails both the bass and treble experience through music and the suspenseful moments and sets up an immersive ambient sound soundstage when entering different locations like a factory floor at night. There was a slight latency issue while watching this high-definition video content though.
This didn’t happen while I was streaming songs from Amazon Music and Spotify, which sounded very immersive too.
The speaker supports voice assistants, including Alexa and Sonos voice control, primarily focused on controlling music. The mics worked well from about 5-6 feet away. Trueplay, an inbuilt technology, uses the speaker‘s built-in mic to gauge the acoustics of the room and accordingly tune the equaliser and output. Using the app, I could fine-tune the acoustics in the location where I had installed the speaker.
However, there’s a subtle difference in Trueplay functionality between Android and iOS devices. iOS devices use the iPhone’s built-in mic and the speaker for precise room mapping, whereas the Android app provides faster Trueplay tuning using only the speaker’s mic.
Conclusion
With a price tag of ₹29,999, the Sonos Era 100 emerges as a strong contender for anyone looking for a reliable speaker with impressive acoustics, bass, and an immersive entertainment experience while watching TV series and movies. Despite the occasional lag during audio and video playback, it stands on the verge of becoming the first choice for audiophile buyers.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.