Hey, it's Dan, back at it again at Crispy, looking at Bluetooth speakers.
Today we have the Sonos Era 100 SL and
the Sonos Play, both new offerings. And
I'm excited to finally get to tear into something as the Sonos Play has a
replaceable battery, which is kind of crazy for current year, and it's
only $90. Sonos is bringing back the Play, which
is branding that I didn't quite realize disappeared. They're a bit of a return
to form for Sonos by seemingly
not making everything worse for a change. Look, that's what it says on the
notes. Hopefully, they can keep it up, but before that, let's take a gander
with our peepers. Let's have a start with the Play here.
Got that thing. I guess that's the speaker. And it looks
like there's this wireless charging base, and that's all. I've got some
setup instructions, which seem pretty simple, two steps besides having to make
an account. And then we've also got our
base. Well, it's got quite a nice long cable, which I was not expecting. It's
almost as tall as Linus. That's nice. It's got this cool kind of rubbery
soft-touch exterior with some feeties on the bottom. I'm I like the kind of the
soft-touch feel, but it attracts dust like absolutely nothing else. So,
hopefully that isn't too bad. And then we've got our speaker itself in this
nice cloth bag. Pull that down. Ooh. I notice
immediately that it has actual buttons,
which is kind of awesome in, again,
current year. Power button on the back. We've got a Bluetooth button here. Looks
like this one has a microphone. There's a little lock for that. It's always nice
to see. We've got our two little contacts here for the charger. Sonos
branding. I always forget that it's kind of reversible,
which is neat. Strap.
Build quality is extremely sturdy. No
pressure here. I think this would
survive in the wild, certainly by me
dropping things. Looks like I've turned it on.
Sounds nice. Even getting some air out of the sides, which is kind of cool.
Little green LED there. One thing notably missing from the box, I guess,
is a charger or at least a a brick. That's kind of
the go-to these days, which is a little disappointing, but whatever. I think
it's fine. I think some of the problem is this one needs an 18-W So, I got a
UGREEN 65-W USB-C.
Like that. Goes into there like that. Not magnetic. God, it
would have been nice to be magnetic. Why? Why? One thing that I kind of have
noticed already is this is not removable. You could have just put a
USB-C on there, too. I am immediately going to trip over this and dump it on
the floor and then rip out the cord, and I'm clumsy and probably shouldn't own
products. Okay. Let's have a look at its
sister, maybe? The Era 100.
Got our instructions to start with. Also
setup. Tube. Ah. This one uses power. Nice long
cable. Whoa. Wow. This one has the
capacitive buttons, non-piano black top, which is nice. Should be easier to keep
clean. You can tell I don't like fingerprints. Surround
grill again. No movement at all, which is always kind of cool. Makes it feel a
little bit more premium. Bluetooth button at the top, USB-C at the bottom.
We'll talk about what that can do a bit later. We have a mounting hole here if
you want to screw it into something, and our power plug goes here, yep,
which is all nice and hidden. That's kind of cool.
Neat. Man, I like that this doesn't have piano black, especially since you're going to be using this as your volume
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below. I think we'll focus a little bit more on the Play today, but we'll have a
look at this a bit later. We actually have two of these guys today cuz
everybody needs a nice pair of twins. I mean, realistically, we're just going to
look at one of these today, but you can throw these into a pair. I think it can
do up to four around the house, all kind of Bluetooth interconnected, mostly
because these are kind of designed as a everywhere solution, if you if you know
what I mean. They work on Wi-Fi internally, and then externally, you can
take them and use them as a regular Bluetooth speaker. We're going to be using them as a Bluetooth speaker today,
and yeah, they sit on there. God, it would be nice if they had magnets in the
bottom, but then I guess you would be putting it down and it would go bloop.
I don't see anything wrong with that. One thing about their app is you do need
an account, but I mean, what is current year if not accounts? I've only had this
detected it automatically. Let's push that add button and see what happens.
Chime with an audio pin.
It's a really interesting way to pair things, just kind of like have it make a
little jingle. I don't think I've seen that before. Might be a Sonos standard,
but the last time I looked at these, they didn't seem to do that. And it
looks like it's automatically connecting it to the Wi-Fi. This is nice and simple. It's kind of a pretty refreshing
way to handle this. Ah, and this is LMG
5, so this has 5 GHz. Normally, I see
IoT devices that just are on 2.4, and it's kind of like, okay, I got to make
another network or I got to do them together or separate them, I
don't know. And of course, it has an update, which I can't skip, which is so
fun. Why do I accept this?
Okay, that wasn't as long as I thought it was going to be.
You can use Auto TruePlay, which is kind of neat.
As always, we listen to our favorite song, a crab rave.
Interesting. I don't really hear any
self-limiting, which is kind of nice. At low volumes, we're losing a lot of the
high end, and it's kind of like a little bit bassy and a little more thumpy,
which I think is interesting. Normally, at lower volumes, you kind of boost the
high end cuz your hearing goes a little weird. And then at maximum volume, it
seems pretty okay. Maybe a little scratchy, but not too bad at all. I
think this would sound nice. It's nice and loud. Not quite as directional as I
was expecting. Obviously, kind of your main sound's coming out of here, but it
does seem to open up everywhere. It's really hard to kind of pinpoint it when
I'm doing this. Let's have another listen.
Strangely bassy at low volumes.
If I throw it over here, interestingly, it kind of sounds very similar, like
even from the back, which is interesting. Like you don't lose too
much. I wonder if there's some guides or something in there.
Interesting. Interesting thing.
Ah, loudness was on. And then at low volumes now, it kind of sounds much more
like what I would expect. Nice and balanced, which is kind of good. Let's
jump it back up to full volume. Sorry.
Oops. Pretty damn loud, but I mean, it's in front of my face. Uh
a little bit of scratchy on the high end. It seems like the tweetery things are here, and we got some bassy things
there. Pretty good. Pretty even. But,
you know, if you're blasting it, I don't know. I think it's fine. I think it It
seems to punch in its weight class, especially with the build quality. I'm
going to actually listen to song I know.
Can X Zapata is one of my new favorites, and his album The Consensus of Reality
is awesome. The Trans Margin Adventures
of a JPEG.
Crunchy. There we go. I never said I listen to normal music. Uh yeah, it was
pretty okay. Pretty okay. I think they sound really nice in a pair. Um okay.
Now, it's got line in, which is interesting.
It's all through USB-C. They seem to have a pretty specialized dongle. You
can use external dongles that may work,
but apparently, they're saying that it's quite rare for you to be able to find
one that will do a line in. Kind of nice to see. I would always like a 3 and 1/2
mil, but I think I'm an old person now. My phone's got 3 and 1/2 mil, but not a
lot of things are doing that anymore. I think if you wanted to hook this up to a
record deck or something like that, maybe maybe
maybe it's the children who are wrong. Maybe. Kind of neat thing about the
Sonos ecosystem is if you put line in into just one of these, it'll do your
entire house. Although, speaking of
ecosystem, it looks like you can't use these with the home theater.
I thought the Sonos was an ecosystem, and I think it's
that you can't use every single speaker in their ecosystem.
I don't know if that's a reasonable ask, but if I can have this one on my home
theater, why can't I use all of them? I thought it was the Sonos system. I don't
understand. Is that asking too much in current year to have an ecosystem
product act as an ecosystem?
Am I wrong? I mean, getting to use these as rear
surrounds would be awesome. You know, you have them as stands behind the
couch. You walk past your home theater couch as you're leaving the house. You
just grab one and go. Why? Why? Why?
Okay. Line in. Good throw. I have no idea if this is
going to work, but we'll test it out. Put it in the butt. Put it in the butt.
The iPhone is charging. That's kind of cool. This is one have the one as well
or is that the other speaker? I don't know. It's already charging. Double charging.
I mean, it's connected over Bluetooth.
Your mileage may vary. Not for us, but it does charge the iPhone, which is kind
of cool. Okay. Battery life on this guy lasts
about 24 hours, but I want to see inside
it. They show on the website that there's a little Allen tool and a pick.
So, I've got my iFixit kit. I can see some of the rubber coming up here. So, I
assume that this is where
the battery lives. Unless this just has terrible build
quality. No, look at that. I'm just going to come in here and rip this guy
out. So, we probably got to do the other side as well. Website shows two screws.
Look at me. It's like I've done this before. They're green, which is
interesting. I wonder all the green is coming off. I think it could be some
sort of warranty security thing. Wow.
That was two screws. Current year. Yeah.
That's it? Wow. Boring. Boring. I think it's just two 18650s
kind of smooshed together. That's it. Does it still work? Wow, it
doesn't still work. I wonder if it'll work if I put it on the stand. Let's say
your batteries died and you don't want to buy a new one. We're getting a charging error light on the front there.
All right. It's 10 years in the future. Your Sonos speakers still miraculously
works for some reason. They've gone out of business and you can't get a new
proprietary battery. Does it still play
music? Nope. You're I can very easily see you being able to
mod this in the future, but I am so happy to see
user replaceable battery that is like easier
than anything I've taken apart before. That is awesome.
Now what? Let's have a look at our Era 100 SL. Just going to get that connected
to our app. It's also got the Bluetooth and the things like that. I'm going to
put it in the dining room cuz we have
one of those. Now, this is a kitchen. I up. So, yeah, this is kind of
like another model that goes into the Era line. I always kind of find it weird
that you tack on extra letters to a worse product or maybe not worse, just a
lower model variety. This one is about
30 bucks cheaper than the normal Era 100. You can get this for 190 bucks.
Play, on the other hand, is 300 bucks. I'm not entirely sure it hits the $300
price point, at least to my ears. Maybe 200 bucks, but build quality's there and
it seems like it's quite robust. You might be paying a little bit of the
Sonos tax for that one, but 300 bucks for this is maybe a little bit above
what I would consider worth it. Especially as if you want to
do four of them, you're looking at a lot of money. Having the replaceable battery
is awesome. Replaceable battery goes for $70. You can get a new base for $50 and
you can get the 45 W charger for $30,
not 45, which would have been funny. Dollar a watt. Let's go. They both come
in black and white. Again, if you want it, maybe some spray bomb, put some
plastic dip on them. Don't do that, please. Let's see if this guy is
connected. The 100 SL also supports line
in through the same USB-C hole on the back. It's got Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth
5.3. They're saying that it's humidity resistant as well. So, maybe not like a
bathroom, which would be kind of sick, but sort of a kitchen or an enclosed
patio. I don't know how humid those get.
Like, I'm pretty sure there's some climates in the world that are more
humid than a kitchen, but let's give it a listen.
I like the little pop of the volume slider here.
Let's have some rap crave on it as well.
Yeah, it sounds very similar. Maybe a little bit more refined at the super
high end. It doesn't kind of feel like it's struggling a little bit. Otherwise,
this is kind of also sounds fine. I have no problems with this. This is a $190
speaker. This is That's kind of how much this costs. Maybe you're also paying for
some water rating. This guy is IP67
rated. I don't know. It's fine. Sonos is fine.
I wish I could use them as their ecosystem and their, you know, home
theater. Why can't you make a product that works in your ecosystem if
you're trying to sell an ecosystem? Drives me crazy.
Anyway, if you want to check out some more of my Sonos stuff, I did
another unboxing on the Era 100 and 300
couple years ago. That's in the video somewhere.
Thanks.