Sonos a very tasteful living room sound
adornment today we've got the new era 300 and 100 line both Linus and I have
looked at Sonos equipment before in the past he's had a look at the arc I think
I had a look at the beam uh but today I get to fondle the new era 300. can I say
fondle on ShortCircuit today I get to fondle the era 300s so we have all the
colors here today we have both white and black uh but I think we're gonna look at
the 300s this one's got a nice gouge in
it got these cool little locking things on the side you just kind of pop them
open and then the top just slides that's nice got our speaker here in a nice
little wrap pull that oh my God it's heavy
oh it's not just like crappy fabric
covering it's like this it's got a hem on it that's kind of amazing and they're
both white
great this is off to a great start looks like they have matching power cables
there we have a let's get started menu it's nice nice printed heavy cardboard
so we'll leave that to reference in a bit cord is yeah rubbery kind of
plasticky a little memory which is great this is pretty much the whole the whole
thing metal front which is nice metal Grille kind of a soft touch plastic it's
matte no piano black thank God nice big surface on the back slight indent there
which is kind of tasteful it's very pretty thing I would say feet are
rubberized which is kind of nice non-slip this mounting holes on the
bottom for the wall mounts that are an optional extra there's also a floor
stand as well we'll talk about that a bit later controls are up here on the
top there's a voice assistant button and it looks like the little slider thing
and playback controls too and new for
Sonos apparently is Bluetooth yay I
don't know apparently this has always been a thing and I haven't really included that before we have a silence
mute switch here on the back for your voice assistant and then there's a
little USBC cable thing there which we'll also talk about a bit later okay
so that's the 300 the big one we have a nice choice here between white and or
white thanks uh thanks again same sort of thing comes in this nice little sock
we've got similar markings on the back we have our Bluetooth button this one's
vertical which is kind of cool and the silence and the USB port and then on the
bottom we have our power input which goes in there like yeah and uh the same
sort of hole for your wall mounts or stance they come with different stands
you have to buy different stands if you want these in different stands if you want this one this one's power cord is
on the back though which goes like there which is a bit of a weird Choice
honestly you know if I'm going to mount this against a wall as it's supposed to
be a surround speaker then it's going to be here why not put it in the bottom and
then have it route at the back like this I have some thoughts on that later Belle
said he really struggled to get this one out and oh my God it is right
this is awful I'm a weak little man
there's not enough there's enough room to like get a proper grip on it Jesus
okay there we go my hands are broken now same sort of solid construction these
feel really really really solid no compressibility anywhere nice and metal
everywhere there's already some like brown or
scuffing or something I have got Dirty Heads I just washed my hands yeah I wash
my hands first time this month General size of these I think for the 100 the
size is kind of nice just to kind of maybe have on a shelf or like behind you
somewhere should be nice and easy to hide away the weight is really quite
nice and Hefty I'm not entirely sure if that's added in as metal or if it's like
just actually constructed maybe with a metal core or something like that
sometimes companies will add weight to their products to make them feel more
premium I'm not entirely sure that's the case here the power cables do not want
to come out there we go this one same sort of thing it's rather Hefty maybe
about what five ten pounds something like that the construction of this also
feels really good I can't like Bend this
front grill in at all Sona says that there's some specialized wave guides in
the front which have like little spiky things I really wanted to like rip this
off and and demo those but I don't think that's going to happen some small panel
Gap issues right here at the bottom so yeah I mean it's got a nice fit and
finish I think that little panel Gap thing is a little bit problematic I
would expect better for how much this costs yeah now I'm seeing it everywhere
and the speaker's ruined for me uh the shape of its uh shape of it's pretty
nice a little bit fatter at the back than the front like everybody should be
uh yeah I think I could see this on a bookshelf or even maybe mount it up at
the top of the ceiling or on their stands that they do behind I don't think
it would be too in your face the white is probably a little bit more pronounced
than the black but I guess it depends on your interior design some more fun
colors would have been nice too I probably would have bought these if they were like bright yellow they might be
great for bookshelf speakers and accent or something like that you could always
spray bomb them I guess the feet seem good yeah they're really rubbery they're
like gripping really well into the table it's got a lot of weight on just a
little tiny footprint so maybe not a table speaker I
don't know if it's more rigid than this one the 100s are supported completely on
the bottom so they don't and I'll move it all there
they're good well let's see how these
sound we've got to get them hooked up to the app but before we have to get you
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the app no power button I don't think oh there is a light on the front that's
nice it's nice and subtle might be waiting for pairing it'll be nice if it
like bonked or something I need to give it
location permissions storage I don't know what's going on anymore and we'll
give it microphone we'll just give it everything here's my social insurance
number it's getting it ready it's going
to play a chime all right connecting to the Wi-Fi I like
that they can support 5G so many iot devices these days only sport 2.4 uh
there's an update available of course because there has to be and we're
getting advertisements for Dolby Atmos which we'll definitely be talking about
a bit later I'm trying to figure out exactly what these
do because Sonos won't tell us can I add
alarms we can group speakers we can say favorites we can personalize it and
enable automatic updates neat see you in
20 minutes when this is done so it looks like we can set up speaker groups and
things like that on a room basis so if you have these in your bedroom or your living room or your kitchen then they
would all be kind of different zones we can have a subwoofer which is also a
product they offer I believe you can have up to two if they're the same and we can also add a stereo pair each pair
of speakers have to be the same model you can't like Cross Match different
models together we have some EQ settings bass treble and a loudness toggle which
is on by default true play which I believe is some sort of technology to
make it more acoustic that's kind of their version of of room tuning so let's
let's give that a go it's going to be loud I hope
foreign
that was nice uh just from the sound of that it just seems like it's going to be
a nice performative speaker uh it seems to have six drivers or something like
that two woofers in the side two tweeters uh firing up in this direction
another Tweeter that has a horn that kind of fires up and then another one in
the front so it's supposed to do Dolby Atmos and I think it's supposed to be
three Channel um I'm not entirely sure if it's two
channel with some psycho acoustic tuning
to like use the up firing thing Sonos doesn't seem to actually list how many
channels these are they kind of avoid that in their material which is a little
bit strange we also have a height audio
setting which kind of gives me the hope that the up firing is its own dedicated
Channel it also has a line in so no aux
cord on this one they've gone the iPhone root you need to buy a dongle if you
want to have line it you can buy a 20
USBC to three and a half millimeter Jack which plugs in right there or for the
low low price of forty dollars you can buy a combo Jack that has an Ethernet
port and a three and a half millimeter Jack which is strange it's not like
there's any room left to have that on
the back here I think we'll we'll get some crab Rave in this now
foreign right now it really is just coming out
of the sides I guess it's maybe why they're angled forward a little bit so
that's kind of that's kind of interesting
it's half volume so let's turn it up let's see just destroy our brains
okay I can't that's extremely loud uh
that is like hearing damagingly loud that's awesome no Distortion whatsoever
that's a very very good result uh I'm
I'm quite impressed with that actually there's no Sub in it and it's really
quite Bassy as well which is nice I think if you were having this in a home
theater setup I would pair it with a sub but this is a really good performance uh
already which is good to see let's listen to it like I'm actually listening
to a speaker so I'm going to sit here
that sounds bad because it's going that
way it's not playing music at me which is kind of interesting I'm gonna go over
there and listen to it and see if it's better because I'm sitting in front of
it and I think it's supposed to be like a room speaker so goodbye
foreign
okay what I thought was gonna happen happened and it sounds really good sort
of around the entire room uh almost exactly the same as if I was sitting
next to it so this is definitely designed as kind of a throw around the
room speaker sitting here is kind of not great but everywhere else is really
quite nice let's try some Dolby Atmos some music okay so I'm gonna play this
song which is on Apple music in a spatial audio playlist which is the
Dolby Atmos something or other I hope we have that still enabled here unfortunately we'll have to dub over
this with something like Smooth Jazz but uh at least I'll be able to see if the
top firing Tweeter and the front firing Tweeter actually tweet
I don't know if this is even right this doesn't sound like spatial music
okay yeah this says Dolby Atmos down here and those speakers are definitely
on right now
uh yeah sounds really good now uh that
all the speakers are working I don't know why you can't just turn the other
two on when you're playing stereo music because it's one speaker so it's not
going to get the stereo separation just playing all the speakers I mean I'm
sitting next to it and it's supposed to be farther away maybe a little Hollow in
the mids because the woofers are trying to like compensate with a hell of a lot
of bass uh but yeah it was good enough I
think for a tiny little speaker let's get a 100 going and compare the two
the man and I'm here to say you should buy an error 300 and use my promo code
subscription today
foreign foreign
this is also obscenely loud a little bit of distortion from the Tweeter I think a
little bit of crackling but no one in their goddamn right mind would listen to music that loud there's also some nice
air movement from the woofers on the side this one's way more directional
kind of more facing this way the base kind of propagates more from the side
which would be good send it out into the room and have it bounce around where you
want the tweeters a bit more directional than maybe the 300 provides unless you
really want to go crazy with the atmos system you could probably get away with
this instead this one obviously doesn't support Dolby because there's touch
controls at the top where there should be a speaker so yeah it does have these
angled tweeters and one woofers there's three speakers so this will be just a
two channel where this one is claiming possibly a four Channel maybe probably
just a three if I'm being honest let's do a stereo pair
that was actually amazing
okay so what it's done when I've made a stereo pair which is kind of interesting
actually it's disabled these up firing tweeters and it's just playing out of
the front ones now so now they're acting much more like directional speakers which is kind of clever I would like
control over that in the app but removing that control simplifies it for
the end user I think let's actually Point them towards me like they're
supposed to be because I'm just getting all Bass from the sides
yeah that's great um I mean having the mid drivers out the
side is kind of I guess a good idea sometimes depending they seem to be a
little bit lower down in the frequency range than like a traditional woofer it
seems to reproduce the low frequencies better than some of maybe the high mids
but it's not to its massive detriment I
mean I'm being very particular here that's uh certainly of an acceptable
sound quality which is which is really good to see blinding lights in Dolby
Atmos Atmos is really strong there that is
actually amazing
uh that's that's a that's great that's really good um I think that's like worth
the price of admission right there the atmos is where these really do shine uh
yeah I don't I don't know how I feel about that uh I don't like praising
things for what kind of maybe feel like gilinix or maybe I'm old now but that
really does improve it I wonder if that's because the speakers are more
tuned for Atmos then maybe they are like normal playback I think maybe if we just
had the stereo music with these extra
tweeters enabled then it would sound as good I don't know if our ceiling height
or even the layout here really makes the atmos shine but the music sounds better
sounds more spacious probably because we
have some extra drivers in play then we don't with stereo audio
there's something I didn't mention is I like the default EQ on the 300s which I
threw on the ground these 100s maybe a little bit of a base heavy probably
maybe room uh but from sitting here on the desk negative four is a little bit
more balanced they're kind of a bit overpowering and the mids are kind of
squashed so the 300s have a bit more of an even
sound than the 100s here but these are
still quite good I think maybe I'm just spoiled from those 300s I would much
rather have a pair of these than one of
those definitely these are about half the cost of a 300. so these era 100s are
250 bucks each and so that means they're
500 dollars for two and the 300 is 450
bucks so if you buy a pair of these you
get a bit of a discount from them and you buy them individually and the stands
for the 300s are about 280 bucks so you can have a pair of stamps ends or like
maybe one of these for your bedroom right it's kind of interesting and then
you know a forty dollar dongle to put on the back here and if we look at their
exploded view like I think there's a whole bunch of space in the bottom here
so if I want to put on a shelf I can put it like that and if I want to put it on
a stand I can route the cable into the stand on the 100s but I don't know giant
Cable in the back like it just looks gross let me be able to hide it
underneath if I want to put it on a shelf or if I'm going to wall mount it
like I can't have it flush with the wall
there's no reflex at the back it's it's just a little bit frustrating I think in
that same sort of vein I don't understand why I can only pair two of
these so in each room you're only allowed to have one stereo pair which
means that if I wanted to say listen to quadraphonic audio with four of these
and like really experience uh Dolby Atmos music I can only get two speakers
it's like they don't want my money because we have four here it would be
really nice to maybe have two of these guys at the front and two of these
behind me is maybe some side fills maybe I've got a big room but because it's all
in one room I can only have one stereo pair Sonos can support something like 32
active devices simultaneously so why can't I buy a whole bunch of these and
have a what was it 27.1.10 system with 10 up firing
speakers and you know sound everywhere like Dolby Atmos is supposed to be able
to function as something clearly missing from the Sonos document at least what I
could find is a clear indication of how many channels each of these guys have
apparently Sonos can support 5.1.2 but
that's kind of from what I've found on the internet and not exactly from their
documentation I shouldn't have to go digging through Community forms and
other posts and news articles to figure out what I'm actually about to buy if
anybody knows please let me know this is kind of beyond my ability to test here
Labs where are you at honestly uh for
the price and performance ratio these sound really good at least the 300s out
of the box no tuning nothing like that you know we do the room thing whatever
sounds great for 480 each I think I
would definitely recommend getting a pair which is even more money as a
singular speaker listening to non-atmos audio which is
going to limit you to a lot of music it doesn't I think you can do better
with a cheaper speaker if you're getting one two spatial audio even one with
spatial audio quite incredible
um two is really where your money is how great the system is if they would
implement it a little bit differently it's like it's right there you just have
speakers as individuals and let people do what they want with them and have as
many as they want like do you not want our money do you not want me to go out
and buy 10 of these and put them all around my house because I want to this
sounded [ __ ] good and you won't let me because your ecosystem doesn't function
like it should it's sad it's short-sighted it's pathetic
my disappointment is immeasurable and my
day is ruined